Give ‘salom’ a chance
Khaled Diab
September 2006
As the dust in Lebanon settles and the Lebanese
begin to rebuild their flattened country and Gaza remains under siege, many people
have asked themselves who exactly won in these standoffs. Well, the honest
answer is painfully evident to anyone who cares to look – everyone lost.
“Victory attained by violence is tantamount to
a defeat, for it is momentary,” wrote Mahatma Gandhi in the 13th of
his Satyagraha leaflets. Derived from Satya in Sanskrit meaning ‘truth’
and agraha denoting a struggle or effort to discern or discover reality,
this was the philosophy of non-violent resistance advocated by Gandhi.
Although opinions vary on the actual
effectiveness of Satyagraha in expediting the collapse of the British Raj in
India, in the context of the current sorry state of the Middle East, one cannot
help but see the wisdom of Gandhi’s opinion of the futility of violence.
Decades of bloodshed have not done much to bring the region closer to peace.
Drawing on Biblical narratives of ‘an eye for
an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ vengeance, some believe that non-violence would
not work with the Middle Eastern mindset. But forgiveness and peace are an
intrinsic aspect of all the monotheistic faiths, and scripture is littered with
references to the blessings the peaceful gain. In fact, the concept is so
important that Arabs and Israelis greet both friends and strangers alike by
wishing them ‘peace’ (shalom/salam).
Safety in
numbers
The recent fighting in Lebanon and the
situation in Gaza sparked a great deal of popular disquiet across the region.
Brave and dedicated souls in the Arab world, Israel and beyond spoke out
against the violence and called for it to stop. The trouble is that their
voices were drowned out by the loud explosions and fear, as well as the hatred
of the extremists.
Imagine the symbolic potency, if during a
crisis such as the one in Lebanon, thousands of Arabs and Israelis had come out
under the same umbrella at the same moment on to the streets of cities across
the Middle East chanting the same slogans, or joining together in a peace chain
stretching across the border.
For that reason, I proposed during the recent
fighting that Arab and Israeli civil society – along with their international
friends – should join forces to amplify their voices and pave the difficult
road to peace with empathy, understanding and compassion. Together, they should
forge a single trans-national Arab-Israeli civil alliance. Its name, Salom Now,
meshes the Arabic and Hebrew words for peace to reflect the desire to reach out
and reconcile.
There are already numerous small groups and
movements boldly attempting to cross the lines of distrust and loathing and
engage in joint action with the other side, particularly on the
Israeli-Palestinian front. One is Combatants
for Peace, which is made up of Israeli and Palestinian refuseniks. Other
groups include Gush Shalom
(Peace Bloc), set up in 1993 by veteran Israeli journalist and peacenik Uri
Avnery, which held numerous anti-war demonstrations – albeit smaller ones than
in the past – during the recent crisis bringing together Israeli Jews and
Arabs.
Women have been particularly active in the
effort to build bridges. Since it was founded in November 2000, the Coalition of Women for Peace has
been a vocal advocate of “a just and viable peace between Israel and
Palestine”. It is made up of independent women and nine Israeli and Palestinian
women’s peace groups, including the well-known Women in Black movement. Hafla (meaning ‘party’ in Arabic and Hebrew), an informal group of Lebanese
and Israeli friends living in London, organises cultural events underscoring
the common links shared by the two sides.
However,
the trouble with all these groups is that they are small and seen by many as
unrepresentative – even as ‘traitors’ to the cause. Joining together under a
single loose-knit umbrella would help increase their visibility to everyone’s
good.
Turning pain
into gain
Despite the open wounds caused by the recent
fighting, the Salom Now! idea has been greeted with a fair amount of interest –
not to mention the expected scepticism – on both sides. “I, myself, support such an initiative. I am even ready to be an
effective team member,” Habbouba Aoun of Balamand University in Lebanon,
who is also a prominent NGO leader, told me while the bombs were still falling.
“You can sign me up,” enthused Anat
el-Hashahar, an Israeli mother who has set up a lively online forum called METalks for Israelis and Arabs
(and other people interested in peace in the Middle East) to discuss politics,
socialise and build bridges of understanding. “I am actually thrilled to see
the initiative coming from the Arab side... It correlates with what I had in
mind for [METalks]... I think we need to get to know each other, as people, as
nations, as societies. It’s harder to shoot at someone that you know.”
One immediate obstacle to overcome
is the freshness of the wounds inflicted during the latest crisis. “You cannot
forget your pain when you are still in the middle of your agony,” said ‘Amal’,
a Lebanese contributor to METalks, pointing to the destruction of her homeland.
“But people will forgive if they are given a chance.”
In response, el-Hashahar said: “No,
you cannot forget the pain. Some of the pain will surely never go away and
Lebanon has been sorely hit. Israel is undergoing the largest re-building
effort in its history as well, and the wounds are still fresh on this side of
the border, too.”
But this pain could be turned to
gain. “I have never felt more motivated than I am now. The Lebanon war made me
deeply question the silent ‘majority’ and myself as one of them,” admitted Jad
Aoun, a 23-year-old Lebanese expatriate working in the UAE. “If I were in
Lebanon, I would actually try to get Salom Now! registered as an organisation.
I always thought a pro-gay group would be impossible but there’s one now – I
don’t believe peace is a greater ‘taboo’ than gay rights.”
Discarding straitjackets
Such an attempt to find common
ground carries the risk of provoking acrimony. “Being against war is not the same as being
proactively peaceful,” notes Debra Adler, an American Jew who recently made
Israel her home. “Many Arabs and Israelis can profess to be against war and for
peace. But an anti-war stance can easily slip into recriminations of the other
side.”
To overcome this pitfall, the Arabs and
Israelis involved in Salom Now! would not need to agree entirely on the causes
of the current crisis, and they most certainly would not need to agree on
historical narrative, all they would have to agree on is that violence is not
the answer and that common ownership of a peaceful future is a desirable
outcome.
“We reject any form of political violence,”
Salom Now’s draft
manifesto states. “We recognise that there are very real grievances and
disputes in our region. It is our intention to work through these differences
through dialogue, which may sometimes be angry, impassioned, even ugly, but
nothing is uglier than the death of a human being.”
Some have questioned whether exceptions could be
made for ‘defensive’ violence. But what violence in the long and bitter
Arab-Israeli conflict is not seen by its perpetrators as defensive? In order to
break out of this narrative bind, the cycle of blame needs to be broken and new
mutually inclusive narratives composed. The first step towards this is to
condemn all acts of violence, especially those committed by one’s own side.
After trust has been built, the people involved
in Salom Now! can negotiate the terms under which they will co-operate further.
One day in the not-too-distant future, leading peaceniks on both sides can come
together and negotiate a comprehensive ‘people’s settlement’ to the
Arab-Israeli conflict.
In our corner of the world, talk is
anything but cheap – it could turn out to be the most valuable tool we possess.
“Regular people may just do what their leaders can’t or won’t: learn to respect
and cherish one another,” commented Marina Werbeloff, an Israeli of Russian
extraction living and working in the United States.
Read the Salom
Now! draft
manifesto
To join in the discussion http://www.metalks.com/forumdisplay.php?f=10
This article appeared on 19
September 2006 in The Palestine Chronicle
From the
archives
Crisis
in
From complete
failure to comprehensive solutions
July 2006 – Israel ’s
massive onslaught against Lebanon
– and before that Gaza
Getting to
the grassroots of the Middle East conflict
By Khaled Diab and Katleen Maes
April 2006 – The new Kadima
party’s election victory in
Part I: Getting to the grassroots of the Middle
East conflict
Part II: The end of the road for
unilateralism?
The EU’s
new Palestine
February 2006 – It may be better for the EU to
provide more carrots and fewer sticks for Hamas, writes Khaled Diab. Read on
Dressed
to kill –
Under
the cloak of Bush’s foreign policy
December 2005 – Jeff Sommers, Khaled Diab and Charles
Woolfson expose what lies beneath the cloak of US President George W Bush’s
foreign policy. Read on
Time
to rethink the EU’s role in the Middle East
January 2005
– If Yasser Arafat’s death is to signify anything more than the symbolic start
of a new era, the European Union must radically rethink its role as a mediator
in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to persuade the two peoples to work towards
a new dawn. Read on
Commission
wants closer EU-Israeli ties
January 2005
– The European Commission and the EU’s former envoy to the Middle East have
both come out in favour of enhancing economic and political ties with
ã2006
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