Heavy work zone ahead

I spent much of Thursday and Friday doing family stuff, what with Lorna’s graduation, etc. Today after seeing Joe and Tarek off, I pulled out an essay I needed to finish today: a contribution that World Scientific Publishing and Dr. Irwin Abrams solicited from me, to go into a big book on “Impacts and Consequences of the Iraq War”.
Well, that’s the tentative title of the book. WSP has some special deal with the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm to publish the Nobel Prize acceptance speeches of all the Laureates, and they and Abrams are soliciting contributions to this volume from Nobel Peace Laureates and “eminent scholars”.
Guess that makes me an “eminent scholar”?
So I worked on that for much of the day. It’s near completion. Tomorrow I need to start sketching out my CSM column for my regular slot upcoming Thursday. Monday, I need to plunge back into the work of redrafting the report of the International Quaker Working Party on Israeli-Palestinian Peace– the group that gathered back together a fortnight ago in Philly. I’ve set myself a tight schedule for this redraft.
Here’s the thing, though. In my CSM column this week, can I bring myself to write in favor of W for the moves he’s been making on Israeli-Palestinian peace?
Yes, I reckon I need to. Just as well I have internalized a lot of that Christian teaching about separating the sinner from the sin, and the Buddhist/Christian teaching about giving everyone a chance of future redemption. Because otherwise I would still be pretty angry at Bush about the war on Iraq, and unable to give him the credit that I think he is due for his most recent activism on Palestinian-Israeli peace.
Sure, I know it’s not everything I’d like for him to do. But the fact he’s even gone this far is, frankly, a welcome surprise for me.
Earlier in the week–or was it last week?– I wrote a column for Al-Hayat in which I laid out the arguments why engaged activism on Israeli-Palestinian activism might actually be politically beneficial for Bush at this point in the electoral cycle. And what with Iraq rapidly going down the tubes (from the US perspective), and whatever.
But I wrote that stuff– this was quite a few days before the Sharm or Aqaba summits– almost as an intellectual exercize. That was, intellectually I could see the arguments I was making, but I still didn’t really believe some of it might happen.
And then, it seemed to start doing so.
So, we’ll have to continue with a “watchful waiting” routine as we monitor W’s moves on this score from here on out. But meanwhile, I really do want to continue to give him encouragement to proceed.
I know, too, that there are threats to the “Roadmap” process from a number of directions. The Israeli settlers are hugely upset at what they see as Sharon’s defection. (Check out this revealing interview from Friday’s Haaretz with dyed-in-the-wool Likudnik Ruby Rivlin.) Hamas is upset that Abu Mazen seems to have been giving ways too much away already. (If anyone can resolve the current Hamas-Abu Mazen problem it’s probably my old buddy the Palestinian Culture Minister Ziad Abu Amr, who’s their main go-between these days. Good luck, Ziad!)
… And then, there are all the intrinsic problems of the Roadmap itself, which replicates many of the weaknesses of the old Oslo process. Particularly the rampant indeterminacy of the outcome.
But who knows? In the interview with Ruby Rivlin, RR warns eloquently that once Sharon gets tied into the negotiations, the process may go further than even he, that sly old war-horse (my words, re Sharon), is able to control.
I’m not totally convinced of that. And yet, and yet… Things like that actually do end up happening in negotiations. One thing I heard in South Africa was that the National Party there had entered the negotiations with the ANC still fairly confident it could win a settlement that would involve only minor concessions– but they ended up granting full enfranchisement to an electorate that then rejected them roundly at the polls…
So how can we empower the many people–in Israel as well as the Palestinian community– who in any fair process of popular consultation would end up, as repeated polls have told us is the current balance of attitudes, voting for a decent, viable two-state outcome??
How do we get to that process of popular consultation? How do we start promulgating the definition and the vision of that outcome?
Good questions. Maybe I can use that in the column. Read Thursday’s CSM to find out!