[NetBehaviour] Thoughts on Israel/Palestine

[Alan Sondheim via NetBehaviour]

(apologies for so much posting recently, cutting back)


Thoughts on Israel/Palestine

0. Like everyone else, I've been ruminating more or less in
   despair at the situation in Israel/Palestine. Until my mother
   died, she was active in the Hadassah women's organization,
   and made many trips to the Mid-East and Europe, working on
   peace processes; I have many of her documents and some of her
   talks here. In any case, thinking about the situation,
   however naive I might be -

1. A two-state solution is absolutely necessary; nations need
   self-governance all the way around. There's no reason that
   the West Bank and Gaza cannot be united through physical and
   eletronic internetworking that would be able to respond
   quickly to crisis.

2. Israel must pull out of Gaza; what started as defense and
   retribution has turned into a massacre on the order of
   Dresden or the Warsaw ghetto. Beyond the politics there's an
   outdated issue of saving face which is increasingly deadly.

3. I believe that Israel still has nuclear weapons, and these
   should be off the table completely. A war of any sort in
   these small areas can escalate into annihilation: to the
   limit as I once wrote.

4. The hospital systems of Gaza and Israel should connect and
   the wounded of all parties should be able to receive
   immediate treatment.

5. Talks should begin on all of this, sidelining Netanyahu and
   Hamas; there should be no room for absolutism.

6. Jerusalem, in parts, should be an international city; there
   are a number of religions which are somewhat central there,
   and there should be no competition. It would be governed both
   as the capital of Israel and an important religious and
   political center for Arabs, Christians, and Jews.

7. I would keep in relation to 6, the ultra-orthodox out of all
   of this; their reasoning tends towards catastrophe, and, like
   Netanyahu, they have no interest in anything other, I think,
   than total annihilation of the Arabs. The same would hold for
   any other religion as well. I'd argue for the UN to control
   the temple mount, wailing wall, etc.

8. A great deal of all of this should center on the Jordan River
   which has been known for a long time to be in a contention
   that's damaging to everyone - instead there should be an
   international agency composed of all the countries involved,
   to find the best way to employ the water for agriculture and
   so forth. Likewise Israeli desalinization plants should be
   open to all. Articles I've read have indicated that this
   might well be sustainable.

9. Cross-cultural education should be offered to all and perhaps
   made mandatory; there are too many misrecognitions among
   peoples that are resulting in the growths of hatreds.
   Face-to-face peaceful encounters should be instituted;
   there's already much too much false information online on
   both side to result in anything other than a sense of
   absolute warfare and enemies.

10. In terms of #2, the pull-out should be an immediate priority
    and Israeli hospitals and other institutions should be open
    to receiving the wounded. In other words, there must be
    immediate steps taken, above all, to at least hint of a
    periphery of reconciliation and cooperation; the land-mass
    is too rugged, too alienating itself for anyone to prosper
    without cooperation.

11. Obviously there should be term limits on Israeli leaders;
    Netanyahu, who of course is corrupt, is going the way of all
    strong-men, caressing the state, consolidating power,
    ensuring his continuous re-election, and working with a
    vengeful and underlying militarism that affects everything.
    The fact that he listens to no one but himself in this
    catastrophe - which he is now both creating and continuing -
    indicates he has no desire for a peace process. I'm reminded
    of Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us" - and this is
    absolutely true in this situation, with perhaps the worst
    collateral damage the world has seen since World War II;
    again Dresden comes to mind.

12. There should be any number of "temporary" withdrawals on the
    Israeli side, to see if Hamas could be contained or even
    become part of the peace process. In other words, in order
    to give peace a chance, you need a space for peace, a space
    that would, at least for the moment, refuse recrimination in
    the interests of the families and cultural institutions
    caught up in the middle of all of this. (Remember John and
    Yoko's bed.)

13. I wonder if lessons might not be derived from Hiroshima in
    particular, a cultural backing-away, finding other paths to
    process what is happening and what has happened. I remember
    the long tradition of the Jewish Left in America, saw it
    work out, at least for a while, in New York city, and
    whether one might draw on that as well. We're on the brink
    of inconceivable horror, even worse than the current
    carpet-bombing and violent moving of populations from one
    place to another, what I called at one point "annihilation:
    to the limit." We live in a universal shtetl.

14. Finally, I'd even think of Thomas Merton, Liberation
    Theology, the world's calling for peace over and over again,
    so many protests, so much pain distributed everywhere, and
    see if it would be possible to at least begin the peace
    process. I cannot imagine what it must be like living in
    Gaza with continuous bombing, etc. - no sleep, no clean
    clothes, no shelter, and always in a resulting state of
    inconceivable anxiety and danger, sleeplessness and lack of
    medication, nowhere to go, constant contradictory orders,
    and people dying or wounded everywhere around you - in other
    words a phenomenological environment of pain, fear,
    exhaustion, hunger, illness. That should be absolutely
    paramount.

15. I know of course what I'm writing is a fiction, has no
    ultimate meaning in terms of performativity; it's something
    I've been thinking about for a lot time, way before August.
    A final note, the simplest thing - everyone involved should
    be talking, however where and when, with everyone involved.
    And more than anything, this should be within a safe space
    for listening as well.

- Alan


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