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Conrad73: A painful path


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Wallace Greene • Columns
Published: 04 March 2011


The issues between Israel and the Arab world (and not just the Palestinians) have been festering for close to a century. Building a wall, stationing American or U.N. troops, or balkanizing the country will not fully address the issues that have inflamed the region for so many decades. Israel is at war with the Palestinians and the Arab world. Now that Iran has nuclear capability, the potential for a wider regional confrontation and/or conflagration is very real. U.N. resolutions, third-party proxy negotiations, and high-profile photo ops will not end the fighting and killing. This conflict can only be resolved if the parties involved engage in appropriate dialogue.
Guest column

Western-style diplomacy does not work in the Middle East. Negotiators must understand the Arab mindset. Brutal street-fighting and guerrilla tactics cannot be met with Marquis of Queensberry rules. The unbalanced standard of morality, decency, and integrity that Israel is expected to maintain in the face of unspeakable horror and amorality is also an impediment to peace. This conflict can only end when the parties themselves really want it to end. An understanding of the dynamics of dialogue offers a viable approach to this debacle. This approach, which works for married couples, can also work for feuding nations or others engaged in conflict-resolution.

There are four types of dialogue. The first is called Negation Dialogue. In this type of dialogue, the parties view each other as a threat. Therefore they negate the “other” via stereotype, dehumanization, and even demonization. We see this in the anti-Semitic rantings of certain Muslim clerics and calls for jihad. It is present in media coverage of “the occupying forces” and other incitable and unbalanced reportage. We also see it in the calls for “transfer” of all Arabs, the razing of Arab homes, and in non-recognition of legitimate Palestinian aspirations. Clearly this form of dialogue is not productive.

The second type of dialogue is called Domination Dialogue. It is based on a fundamental non-acceptance of the “other.” Both sides neither recognize nor validate each other. However, they enter into dialogue with the avowed purpose of feigned relationship-building in order to convert the “other” to their point of view. Arab propaganda has been especially successful with this format. Palestinian representatives negotiate while teenagers blow themselves up at public malls. They make statements to the world press in English, while speeches to their Arabic audiences tell another story. Palestinian textbooks and military insignia show not the outline of Gaza or the west bank but of the entire State of Israel. Israeli security chiefs carry on dialogues with their Palestinian counterparts while curfews and evictions continue. Humiliation and occasional torture of Palestinians is rationalized, while Arab diplomats regularly reconstruct and fictionalize Jewish history on talking-head television shows. Many failed summits attest to the weakness of this approach. Domination Dialogue will not yield positive results.

Conrad73: The third form of dialogue is Compartmentalization. This exchange involves keeping one’s distance while jockeying for position. The parties display respect for one another at arm’s length. This dialogue maintains the conflict and does not yield any synthesis. The Saudi peace plan and the various U.S. envoys’ attempts at triage represent compartmentalization. Sound bytes from Israel and the Palestinian leadership about the need for peace, or pleas from various world leaders to just get along are examples of compartmentalization. The give-and-take just to get the parties to the table and calls for future talks are only delaying tactics. None of this represents any real commitment to do anything concrete.

The fourth form of dialogue is called Gracious Dialogue. These exchanges are normative, not descriptive. Gracious Dialogue offers an opportunity for growth and progress, since each side confers dignity, respect, and validity on the other. It is a dialogue between equals. If the Palestinians and their Arab brethren were to really recognize the legitimacy of Israeli sovereignty, and if Israel would accept Palestinian self-determination, then peace might become a possibility. If the parties directly involved in the dispute were to validate each other’s point of view, strife might be converted to positive energy. If the Palestinian leadership in Gaza and Ramallah could agree to disagree agreeably for the greater good of the Palestinian people, if there were a true recognition of realistic security measures, if Jewish settlements in Arab communities could live safely, if Arab villages were not terrorized by vigilante settlers, if Israel had a partner it could trust, if Palestinians were treated with respect, etc.

Conrad73: However, although the province had been converted from Judea (the Latin-language word for which was Iudaea, meaning Land of the Jews) to Palestine (the Latin-language word for which was Palaestina, meaning Land of the Philistines), and although a vengeful Rome massacred and expelled much of the Land's Jewish inhabitants, it nonetheless continued to be populated by Jews, together with substantial populations of other ethnic groups, but hardly any Arabs, at least until the colonialist Islamic Arab invasion of 638 CE. However, even under the rule of the Arab and all subsequently superseding empires, the Jewish people nevertheless maintained a continuous national presence in the non-sovereign territory of "Palestine" -- right up until the resurrection therein of the Jewish nation-state of Israel in 1948.

In contrast, the ersatz people identified nowadays as the "Palestinians" are a collection of diverse Arab clans plus a smattering of other ethnic groups (such as Serbs -- these are the so-called Bosnian Muslims who were Serbian Orthodox Christians before their forced conversion to Islam -- as well as Circassians and Chechens, all imported by the Ottoman Empire from their lands of origin to the Middle East, including the Land of Israel, several centuries ago), who, for reasons virtually identical to those of the Roman Empire, have, since Israel's Six Day War of 1967, publicly declared themselves to be a distinct ethnic nation named after those very same defunct Philistines -- this despite the fact that the ancient Philistines were not even Arabs.

Moreover, in light of “Palestinian” claims to aboriginal status, it is ironic and noteworthy that the English-language cognate words “Palestine” and “Philistine”, as well as the Arabic-language word “Falastin”, are all derived (via Latin and, before that, Greek) from the biblical Hebrew-language word “Pelishtim” (“Philistines”), whose literal meaning is: “Invaders”. It is indeed telling that the “Palestinians” have created for themselves a faux ethnic identity whose very name originates, not from their own Arabic language, but rather from the Hebrew language.

That the "Palestinian" Arabs constitute a fictitious people is hardly surprising due to the fact that, by 1948, a substantial portion of the "Palestinian" Arab population resident in British-administered Mandatory Palestine originated, not from that territory, but rather from the surrounding Arab lands which now comprise the modern states of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. The mass immigration of impoverished Arabs to the Land of Israel during the Mandatory period was triggered mainly by the many economic opportunities created by the mass Jewish immigration to the Land authorized by the League of Nations in 1920 via the latter’s creation of the Mandate for Palestine.



and that's a Fact,even if it was compiled by a Jew!

robplum: The Jews are very likely creating a future experience for another holocaust, perhaps they think there actions won't have consequence I dunno, but cause and effect is certainly going to catch up one day