Which is the biggest obstacle to peace in the Middle East?

[BurtWorm]

[Totally Committed]

1. The situation is FAR MORE complicated and nuanced

than your poll suggests. I voted "other".

TC

[BurtWorm]

2. Fill in some of the nuance, then.

Please.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. The biggest impediment to peace

is the hatred found in the hearts of people.

[BurtWorm]

5. I think that's a little simpistic, with all due respect.

People hate for a reason over there. It's not just passed down. Lives are at stake. This is not to say that hate is reasonable on either side, just that I don't think it's possible to end it without addressing more fundamental issues.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

17. Peace must start within each person

if one doesn't have peace in their heart, they cannot practice peace. If there is hate in the heart, there is no room for peace.

[cool user name]

30. Please see ...

The in this forum.

[porphyrian]

4. Getting past blaming each other for starting the conflict.

There's enough blood on everyone's hands now to drown the entire region. Let it go. How can you make things better now?

[BillZBubb]

6. The only real obstacle to peace is not enforcing UN 242.

All the dominoes fall into place if UN 242 is implemented. Ideally, Israel would do it voluntarily and without gimmicks--but that won't happen.

[sabbat hunter]

28. 242

goes both ways. it isnt all on israel.

it also calls for all the warring nations to offically recognize israels right to exist, guarantees israel safe and defensible borders.

[sutz12]

7. Combination........ Wishy-washy, I know....

But the world kind of screwed up when we let international policy be decided basically on claims from the Bible.

Meanwhile, the Arab/Palestinians are a pretty hard headed bunch. Normally, and this goes for the original Israeli claim to the land, claims die out after a generation or so. We're working on 60 years; that sounds like at least two generations to me.

One thing I do know, there ain't enough fucking troops in the WORLD to get between the two sides and make them stop. In a perfect world, we could send them all to a big island and duke it out, winner take all. The way things are, they'll drag the world down with them, with American Fundies singing and praising the fall toward Armageddon.

[bryant69]

8. People

If we got rid of all the people, there would be no more middle eastern problem.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[BurtWorm]

9. They're working on that.

;)

Both sides evidently agree with you.

[yurbud]

10. Greater Israel--google it. It's their version of Manifest Destiny

That they are entitled to claim all the historical land of Israel.

Not all Israelis agree with this, and it is not necessarily stated policy, but building settlements in the occupied territory and building the wall within the Green Line border tends to confirm it.

[porphyrian]

12. It's a small minority who buy into that.

The problem with radicals is that they are often the most vocal. People who don't know better often falsely assume that the radicals speak for the entire population.

[yurbud]

13. yep--but sometimes radicals have power like here

Most Americans would probably not support a wider war in the Middle East so Bush can give control of their oil to his cronies.

That doesn't seem to be stopping it from happening.

[Selatius]

24. Your statement rings true, unfortunately

Governments are not necessarily representative of the will of their respective populations regardless if they claim to be democratic governments.

[porphyrian]

25. Well, neither does complaining about it.

Someone needs to DO something, here, there, everywhere, anywhere. Nothing that's been tried is working.

[jarnocan]

11. no justice/no peace? there is a powerful far right side

to Israel, just as there is here, and the PNAC/BU**SH**INC. have close ties with them. there are also fair-minded people longing for peace, and many just plain frightenned people-who don't know what to do. We have to face the painful realities all around.
There can never be full justice and accountability for all the horrors (same as with all great tragedies in history -Native Americans, slavery, the holocaust etc. many other massacures ) but many refuse to even acknowledge the almost daily atrocities that occur.

[yurbud]

15. Moshe Dayan after '67 War: 'you shall continue to live like dogs'

In their private deliberations, Israeli leaders were more frank about their intentions toward the Palestinians. It is worth noting that Perez didn't like this approach because it would cost Israel some moral authority in the world--but it hasn't hurt their relationship with us.

'Let us approach them and say that we have no solution, that you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wants to can leave -- and we will see where this process leads." After they have lived "like dogs" under Israeli military occupation, Dayan continued, "It is possible that in five years we will have 200,000 less people -- and that is a matter of enormous importance." Peres objected to Dayan's advice that Israel become "like Rhodesia," arguing that these measures would harm Israel's international image and prospects for immigration. For these tactical reasons, he argued, it is necessary to preserve Israel's "moral stand." Dayan's response was: "Ben-Gurion said that anyone who approaches the Zionist problem from a moral aspect, he is not a Zionist."

http://www.zmag.org/Zmag/articles/chommi.htm

[bdamomma]

14. the biggest obstacle is us

[The2ndWheel]

16. Agriculture

But that's the actual root problem(pun completely intended), and we don't fix root problems.

I know, no agriculture, billions would die. Yes, that's why it's not going anywhere. It's also why the same problems seem to pop up all the time, and we always ask ourselves, "why can't we learn from history!?!?!?!?! Why are we so stupid?!?!?!?! What, ANOTHER war?!?!?! Wait, ANOTHER war now?!?!?! Come on, ANOTHER one??!?!"

[PATRICK]

18. I would say religion

both at its best and worst creates an extraordinary complication that ties in racism, land disputes, resources. Many here easily rant against religion but do not get to the clear specific that is the massive absurdity and contradiction and challenge of everyone having a religious stake in a mess that involves all the disputes of the "world" without religion. it makes the problems intractable for all parties. Seeking 'democracy' in the ME means more frankly, diluting religion to a farcical or cultural blandness that puts markets above all personal affiliations. That is impossible because the worst of the world sees every benefit in keeping the peoples there fighting among themselves so long as it the lynch-pin of crucial oil supplies. Blaming oil, though tangible, seems a bit heartless toward an inanimate unreplenishable liquid.

The raison d-etre of Israel and the Jewish experience might be the Exodus. Seeing Hitler as the new Ramses and Palestine as a new circle of salvation is just as powerful as the Babylonian exiles returning to Palestine to remake modern Judaism. Like their predecessors who took the land (back) from the pagan Semitic tribes, those who had learned to keep strict cultural identity in captivity persecuted and shunned even the Jewish remnants still living there. The same thing happened when the Europeanized immigration embraced Zionism toward other types of Jews and of course the Palestinian Muslims. The Exile return soured badly and they were knocked off by Alexander's armies with little of the Biblical fanfare of the old days. Since 1949, the fight, as determined by the long reach of fascism, is still for survival.

Since it seems that will never change and the abyss will be staring at them on all borders and among questionable friends, a better hope would be for a total and critical rethinking and redoing of the whole religious imperative. You won't get anywhere toward a "Holy Land" by killing. Seeking a place among the nations has always been a tragedy no matter what "smart" policy was employed. The resolution would always have to take into account a major act of faith beyond a myriad of false or traditional paths that will end up like all the others.

I think part of that would be to move beyond the concept of a "Jewish state" and not adopt any model currently existing as THE solution. Because that is impossible and the stuff of unpopular prophetic warning, the march of doom is inexorable barring some salvific twist beyond human planning or an even bigger sea change among the other nations of the world. Because it is religious, even if Islam should cease to exist, nothing can save the Jewish State except the people following a path beyond the secular ruthlessness of pragmatic power demos.

Either the world removes the surrounding problem around Israel or Israel unilaterally redeems the situation- at great peril to its people. Few are proposing a religious solution because the most one hopes is for everyone to go soft and agnostic. Religion is a practical ME headache even for those of the same faith. Moderation seems a weak solution evading, or postponing, something rather than facing it.

I think the whole earth, in its future, is the Promised Land, so small and elusive as it is becoming. The first thing we do is botch it with violence, intolerance and all the usual vices. We need to make an Exodus from all the old massive tyrannies of the past to a new life. Same old, same old means dying in the thrall of an enslaving, now poisonous past bereft of any future.

[BurtWorm]

19. I used to think religion was at the heart of it.

I now feel fairly convinced the issue is land and colonialism. Israel was forceably wedged into a country where Palestinians had been living for 1,000 years or more. Religion may have had something to do with why European Jews felt entitled to commit this injustice, but I think it only provided an excuse and a smokescreen for the more fundamental colonialist principle at work, which is that Europe owns the world and can divide it up as it sees fit. That, I believe, is the root cause of all the years of violence we have all grown up with and come to expect from the Middle East.

[PATRICK]

26. I agree that is what

it has become, a nexus of familiar world problems. I say religion, because this is what distinguishes and complicates the ME beyond most other and makes it observably worse than even the Balkans, another religious hotbed without the vital centrality of crucial holy places. Brokering deals without religion is precisely setting the problem of religion aside. Either way I think the spiritual and crazier obstacle that needs to be dealt with some way(some way other than some mysterious "moderating" of all religious adherents to the point of banality). Trying to tinker with the secular issues has been going on for some time and desperately needs a miracle to work other than to delay the inevitable.

The long term problem whatever the agreements or victories is that Arabs will increase- at least until oil evaporates all development and the elites flee to Switzerland or somewhere. Moderate and wiser Jews will choose the wisdom of leaving, leaving the hardliners ever more entrenched in a fortress mentality.
This dynamic is not a barrier but a tsunami of futurity. Facing the future now is always the path to salvation. The other odd nation, Christian Lebanon is being severely punished for trying to survive democratically yet pluralistic, a case of Israel ironically burning someone else's bridge to survival. They probably don't have an idea of that at all, but practically it is one pariah knocking off a recovering pariah who suffered all the crap and was invaded by everyone and given advice by everyone. This is supposed to be a sign of hope for Israel?

Maybe what I mean to say that the obstacle is that we should be looking for a miracle, not more policy solutions.

[BurtWorm]

27. You seriously believe "a miracle" is what is needed?

I think people need to stop waiting for a miracle, roll up their sleeves, get down to serious work, and deal with the real causes of the chaos. The last thing that's needed is anything mystical. Demystification is what is required.

[Beelzebud]

20. I don't know!

And lately I feel like the only person on the planet that doesn't claim, or pretend to know.

[mopinko]

21. other- the military industrial complex

we twist arms for the arms makers, take american tax dollars to provide "military assistance" to the poor beleaguered israelis, with the quid pro quo that they spend that money on our crappy overpriced military hardware. but you need to gin up an enemy to justify this. this is easy. repress people, treat them brutally, and in a generation, you have war.

peace making is not hard. focus on the next generation, feed pregnant women and children, take good care of them, and voila, in 20 years, you have peace. period. much cheaper than war, too.

[mtnester]

22. The real obstacle, as in all conflicts of all kinds

is the inability of humankind to get along.

It will be our undoing, as a species, unless the entire population, as a whole, has a MASSIVE change of heart and attitude.

[BurtWorm]

23. The head has to lead the heart in this case, I think.

Israel needs to confront the original sin behind its existence, and the Arabs need to figure out what is realistic recompense for this sin.

[cool user name]

29. I clicked the second option but ...

I want to include the fact that the US refuses to be a true honest and fair broker for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

I think, by far, that is the biggest impediment to peace in the Middle East.

[Lithos]

31. Locking per I/P guidelines

Threads may not be based on a poll.

Lithos
DU Moderator