DIALOGUE OF THE DEAF

Critics of the monumental stand-off between “democracy” and the fanaticism of the Islamists (as opposed to the everyday Muslim who believes but continues to live in a civilized way) say that there is no possibility that the gap can be bridged. The ideological and religious differences are so extreme that it will be impossible to build a bridge. (I put democracy in quotes because not all our friends are anything like democracies – i.e. Saudi Arabia)

The same critics believe that all of us should pull out of Afghanistan and leave it to the Afghans to solve their problems. In short, we are simply no good at nation-building, especially against a background of fanaticism and ideological absolutism.

Critics like to suggest that the flash point is the State of Israel, an alien nation in an Arab world, and that somehow, if the state did not exist, the stalemate would disappear. Tom Friedman, writing in the New York Times, makes this trenchant comment: “Today, the Arabs, Israel and the Palestinians are clearly not feeling enough pain to do anything hard for peace with each other — a mood best summed up by a phrase making the rounds at the State Department: The Palestinian leadership “wants a deal with Israel without any negotiations” and Israel’s leadership “wants negotiations with the Palestinians without any deal.”

I agree – somewhat. There is no negotiation either with the extreme orthodox Israelis who believe that “God gave them the land” or the equally extreme Islamists who believe that America is on a war against Islam and the Crusades are still alive and well.

President Bush took a stand that implicitly suggested a kind of Armageddon between the dark and the light, between enlightened Christian democracy and blighted Islamic intractability.

Friedman is wrong. Bush was – well let’s not even talk about him.

The fact is that it makes political good sense for the Muslim world (I avoid the word “Arab” because Iran is not Arabic) wants to see the end of Israel, which, for political purposes, they view, not as an island of democracy in a sea of absolutism, but as a puppet of American oil-crazy imperialism.

Israel obliges by continuing expansion of their settlements in the West Bank. Israelis say it is not expansion” but the improvement of existing settlements. Quibbling over what they are doing doesn’t add light to the darkness.

The only light will have to come from an initiative so massive, so generous, and so workable, that neither side could resist. Only America, with the support of the reluctant Chinese, Russians – and even Iranians, has the financial power to make it happen.
To continue to revile Hezbollah and Hamas does nothing. To quibble over “war crimes” in Gaza does nothing.

Only to turn an entirely new page will work. Only to fund and support a Palestinian state will work. Or will any success in that direction magnify the reality: the fight is not over a Palestinian State or the survival of Israel – it is still the almost Armageddon between suicide bombers and the “democracies” of the developed world?

We need change. We need a whole new vocabulary. We need change on both sides, backed by political will and money.