Seventy years since the expiration of the British Mandate, we still have only wars and preparations for war. No one seems to be building peace. Neither Jews, nor Muslims, nor Christians, nor states within or without the area are doing anything to make peace come sooner. I wish I were wrong and will gladly hear counterexamples of how anybody is working towards peace.
I don’t care who’s waging war. I don’t care who’s sabotaging peace. Tell me who is actively building peace today and how.
Christians have done a lot. They did the smartest thing that anyone could do to ensure peace in Israel and Palestine. They picked up and moved.
The real issue is one of incentives. The leadership on neither side has any incentive to really pursue compromise because their respective political base would punish them for it. It would take a transformative leader on both sides to change the equation and that, my friends, is a rare thing.
Thanks for the replies.
A wise person once said flying is throwing yourself at the ground and missing. But what are they doing now?
True, and it incriminates the respective political bases as much as their leaders. But I don’t want to hear about why they’re failing.
Thank you. Some small glimmers of hope.
“If there is to be any hope at all of achieving peace, then it will only grow from the efforts of these courageous initiatives that continue to promote peace, nonviolence, equality, human rights, and human dignity.”
Actually the two main groups in this discussion, the Israelis and Palestinians are in agreement on what peace means to each group.
For the Israelis peace means marching every last Palestinian at bayonet point into the Mediterranean and drowning them.
For the Palestinians peace means marching every last Israeli at bayonet point into the Mediterranean and drowning them.
The Bad Ideas:
What unmitigated bullcrap.
Biased much? Or does the truth hurt?
Netanyahu has said this in several off the record conversations and interviews.
And no, I don’t have a dog in the fight, I’m smart enough to know any hope for peace is idiotic and pointless.
The Bad Ideas, please, start your own thread if you want to discuss that.
The ones making peace are the ones relativizing and minimizing their own religion to make way for others to share the world. Those religious self-relativizers and self-minimizers each deserve far more medals and recognition than the people who end up actually receiving those.
The way to make peace is to not attack or kill anyone today. And then tomorrow, do it again. The majority of people on both sides in that land are doing that. It’s just that it doesn’t take very many who aren’t to ruin it for the rest.
Just finished Sum of All Fears (book), so according to Clancy that should not be so hard unless someone found some misplaced nuclear weapon.
Back to the RL. It is clustersuck no one sane would dare to poke it with a looong stick. But still looks like everyones favorite hobby for 4000y or so.
When those who don’t attack, decide to elect those who will, they are simply attacking by proxy.
Palestinian Christians tended to be wealthier than other Palestinians and had more social and economic contacts throughout Christendom. So to answer your question, they are mostly living in Europe and the US as second and third generation immigrants who are doing the same thing all the rest of us in western Christendom are doing. Probably Instagramming and watching America’s Got Talent. Maybe watching some sports ball on the tube.
Putting my tortured syntax into a more readable form:
When supposedly non-violent people choose representatives who favour violence, then the majority are violent people, but are in denial about it.
Peace will be when peaceful people command the armies and run the governments, and not before then.
People have been waging war there since the dawn of time.
People have been waging war everywhere since the dawn if time.
There’s a large overlap between “times when people aren’t being killed” and “peace”, but I don’t think they’re the same. There could be no killing, yet if people are in fear of attack and have to make accommodations in their lives because of that fear, then that is not peace. Alternatively, small groups could be killing people, but if there is no escalation nor fear of escalation, then that is peace.
And people have been building peace for just as long. This thread is about them, not those who war.
While it’s strongly contested whether or not it counts as “building peace”, I think the wider Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement has to be at least considered in this context because of its focus on nonviolent means to exert economic and public-relations pressure, rather than violent resistance or terrorism.
Their methods may be peaceful, but it’s arguable whether peace is their ultimate aim - BDS opposes a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians.