Sep 17, 2020

New Peace by Ari Shavit, from Yedioth Ahronoth

The S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace shared this article by Ari Shavit, originally published in Yedioth Ahronoth, in its September 15th Israel and Middle East Newsletter. I am posting the article here as a solid piece explaining the significance of the recent peace agreements in the Middle East. It may be a tinge too optimistic and overconfident, but I’ll take it!

Yedioth Ahronoth – September 15, 2020

New Peace

By Ari Shavit

*   This new peace is a strange peace. The left is having a hard time with it because it’s Netanyahu’s peace. And Trump’s peace. And peace without the Palestinians. The right wing hasn’t yet fully assimilated its significance. It is intent on believing that this is a “peace for peace” deal. Peace without concessions. Peace with [while retaining] the greater Land of Israel. And the general [Israeli] public is having a hard time getting excited about a remote and distant peace process during hard times. At a time that the coronavirus is pummeling us, we are having a hard time feeling uplifted. Few people hear the fluttering of history’s wings. But history is here. Now. The event that is scheduled to be held this evening [Israel time] on the south lawn of the White House is going to be more than just a dazzling photo-op. It is going to be the inaugural event that launches a new Middle East. Naturally, every one of the participants at the event has his own interests and angles. That is the way the world works. But when push comes to shove, peace is bigger than Donald Trump and Binyamin Netanyahu. Peace is bigger than all of us.

*   How so? Because for Israel, peace is an existential need. In the long term, we are not going to be able to survive here without peace. But after the success of our first peace (with Egypt) and our second peace (with Jordan), came a series of failures-from Oslo (1993) up until Trump (2020). The reason for that was that for thirty years, the old paradigm for peace was based on two assumptions: the land for peace principle and the centrality of the Palestinian problem. However, since the Palestinians are not ready yet for genuine reconciliation, every attempt to give them territories has failed to generate peace and has engendered rejectionism. Or terrorism. Or a combination of rejectionism and terrorism. That led us to a dead end. The Israeli left abandoned the idea of peace and replaced it with “anyone but Bibi.” The Israeli right pushed for dangerous Messianic annexation. And the Palestinians fell in love with the notion of a single state-which would make our lives hell. Whereas old peace died, no one replaced it with an alternative program. Israel was on a path that was liable to lead it to catastrophe.

*   And then, within the space of a single summer, a new peace process evolved that no one had either anticipated or planned. A new peace. What does this new peace say? That the road from Jerusalem to Abu Dhabi (and Bahrain. And Khartoum. And Riyadh) no longer passes through Ramallah. To the contrary. The road from Jerusalem to Ramallah passes through Abu Dhabi (and Bahrain. And Khartoum. And Riyadh). Israeli-Palestinian peace isn’t going to pave the way to Israeli-Arab peace but, to the contrary, Israeli-Arab peace is going to lead to Israeli-Palestinian peace. With that being the case, the initial stage of this new peace is based on four elements of the 2020 Arab-Israeli alliance: a shared hawkish strategy vis-à-vis Iran; strategic patience vis-à-vis the Palestinians; security and intelligence cooperation vis-à-vis radical jihad; and economic-technological cooperation vis-à-vis backwardness and radicalism. Succinctly-progress, progress, progress. Life-loving pragmatism that soberly deals with the threats of Middle Eastern radicalism.

*   But this new peace has a second stage as well. Once Mahmoud Abbas leaves the arena, the United Arab Emirates and its sisters in the Persian Gulf will revisit the Palestinian issue. Until that moment, Dubai is likely to be the new Turkey: hundreds of thousands of Israelis will vacation in its hotels and shop in its malls. The dynamic of life that this new peace will create will soften the extreme right wing’s hold within Israel. And so, once a ring of peace encircles Judea, Samaria and Gaza-Israel and the Arabs will begin to work in cooperation in an attempt to try to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Once that stage arrives, the current cries of celebration on the Israeli right will prove to have been premature.

*    And the skepticism on the left will prove to have been unjustified. Paradoxically, the moderate Arabs are going to be the ones who accomplish something that the Israeli center-left never was able to do-and will save Israel from itself. All of which means that we ought to rejoice this evening with all our hearts. We can all raise our heads above the coronavirus and politics and despair to see how history is beginning to move down a new and promising path. The Israeli-Arab conflict is beginning to end today. Peace.

More from Daniel

You can’t make big ESG commitments while failing at the basics of kindness

,

Ultimately, what we achieve as corporate leaders, even in the form of social impact, must work hand in hand with how we go about achieving it. How we act along our journeys is at least as important as–if not more so than–the destination. For example, if we are donating a portion of profits to at-need communities, but not being open-minded, respectful, and honest in how we lead in the workplace, we risk undermining our larger goals by contributing to a disrespectful, intolerant, or unethical culture. In fact, a company with no stated social mission that is modeling positive values like integrity and respect may be doing more good for our world than one with a big ESG commitment failing at the basics of kindness.

read more

The Media Is Over-Covering Divisiveness. It’s Going to Destroy Us

,

In 2000, President Clinton hosted a peace conference at Camp David that gave many hope for peace in Gaza; but a few months later, the Second Intifada, a major Palestinian uprising against Israel, began. Having been working in the region for decades to found and build PeaceWorks, a company that used market forces to foster peace between neighbors in the Middle East, I was confused and depressed by the news. On Western television, I saw pictures of ruthless violence and terrorism from Palestinians, giving me the impression, at least initially, that the moderates I knew had succumbed to extreme ways. But when I went to talk to my Palestinian friends, and they showed me what they were seeing on the television, I was shocked:. Their news programs depicted all Israelis as merciless killers.

On both sides of the conflict, the news media seemed like it exclusively published stories portraying the worst of the other side, characterizing all Palestinians or Israelis as hateful enemies. It turned out that my friends hadn’t changed at all; they just weren’t the ones the media were showing. And in portraying things falsely in such a negative light, the media fed the conflict rather than helping resolve it.

We Americans are now facing this same problem, with potentially devastating repercussions for our democracy and our ability to lead the free world.

read more