Friday, September 25 2009
from compass online (http://www.compassonline.org.uk/news/item.asp?n=5604)
In the merry-go-round world of Middle East peace, this week could be one to remember. Israel’s right wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, spent the first half of the week in London, meeting with Gordon Brown and the US’ Special Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell.
Murmurs of a deal in the offing began to appear- first online, and then in the broadsheet press. Is this silly season sensationalism, or evidence of a genuine breakthrough and the imminent resumption of negotiations? Much more will be known in the coming weeks and months, with talk of President Obama making a major announcement in late September- but one thing is certain: the people of Israel and Palestine will not tolerate very much more foot dragging on the part of their leaders.
The stubborn, almost anachronistic persistence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has succeeded in confounding every effort to alter the destructive dynamic of seemingly endless attrition. The result has largely been much hand-wringing, cynicism and defeatism. Yet this belies some basic truths and critical opportunities. Conflicts do end, and many of the prerequisite ingredients which have been historically absent, are now in place in the Middle East. There is, for the first time, a perceived common threat amongst Israelis and Arabs, in the shape of Iran; who the Saudis would dread to see join the nuclear club almost as much as the Israelis do. There is an American President prepared to give the conflict the priority it deserves, whilst dealing more even-handedly than his predecessors have. Yet- far more important than these geopolitical trends- there appears to be something happening within the grassroots, something common within both Israeli and Palestinian society, something that has historically proved to be both a catalyst and engine for transformative political events: people demanding change.
Earlier this year, the OneVoice Movement, a grassroots parallel organisation that works in both Israel and Palestine, conducted a groundbreaking poll that shed some light on popular opinion in both societies, and looked to harness the same methodology successfully used in the run-up to the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. Three quarters of Israeli and Palestinian respondents are willing to accept a two state solution, with roughly the same proportion finding a negotiated settlement either essential or desirable. There was also a widespread (and- in the case of Palestinian respondents- near universal) desire for close US involvement in the process. It would appear that there is, at a minimum, popular acquiescence for substantial and sustained progress.
There is, of course, still profound disagreement around some of the most controversial issues- issues such as Jerusalem, refugees, final borders and settlements. Reaching compromise on these taboo issues will take great strength and faith on the part of the negotiators, but it will also necessitate genuine popular ownership of the compromises. People need to demand progress from their respective leaders, but they also need to demand the prerequisite concessions from themselves and from each other. OneVoice’s poll showed that 77% of Israelis are willing to freeze settlements as a first step to dealing with the issue. On the other side 77% of Palestinians are willing to stop all rocket attacks as a prerequisite to negotiations. These are the very demands the political leaders are trying to extricate from each other, demonstrating that they are lagging behind their respective electorates.
However you feel about the flawed Oslo Agreement of 1993, much of its ultimate failure was down to the fact that it was negotiated in secret, so that ordinary people never made an internal journey toward compromise. Instead an agreement was dropped on their laps, and when extremists on both sides rejected it (as was always going to happen), ordinary people were not prepared to defend it.
Yet if the popular desire for an agreement can somehow be re-fashioned into an understanding of the nuances of each potential compromise, then a mechanism may exist to not only prepare people for the painful concessions that peace will require, but convince them that the pain they endured in coming to terms with the compromise gives them ownership over any deal- a feeling that they have internally earned it. Such hard-fought gains will not be taken away so easily by extremists. If a shared appetite for progress can be transformed into a popular understanding of- and sovereignty over- the compromises necessary to achieve it, then perhaps that overdue and oft-heralded sea-change is on the way.
John Lyndon is the Executive Director OneVoice Europe
The OneVoice Movement is currently holding Town Hall Meetings across Israel and Palestine which aim to both inform and engage ordinary people about the conflict’s toughest choices yet to be made. For more information about the movement and polling please click here.