Time for Real Middle East Solutions!

The Sojourners' God's Politics blog has put up an excellent piece by Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center. In an essay entitled "Beyond Gaza: An Abrahamic Peace," Waskow offers suggestions as to how we might work to bring change in the Middle East. Everyone has a part to play in making some sense of things, now that the horrors of the Gaza Conflict have simmered down.

He suggests that the Palestinians give concerted effort at non-violent resistance, resistance that would garner European, American, and even Israeli support. From that, there are possible options pro-peace Israeli's can take to push their country to a position of seriously considering ending the occupation of the West Bank.

But the key is America.

He suggests the calling of a Middle East Peace Conference, one where all the interested parties are present -- including both Hamas and a Netanyahu led Israeli government. That Saudi sponsored peace plan, which neither the US nor Israel has to this point taken seriously could be starting point.

So the necessary counterweight for this domestic paralysis will have to come from outside -– that is, the United States. Appointing George Mitchell, the weaver of the Irish peace settlement, as peace envoy to the Middle East is an excellent start. But it will mean little unless the U.S. adopts a whole new policy toward the region.

The alternative policy for the U.S. government would be to use the disaster of Gaza to insist on a regional Middle East peace conference; to insist that even a Netanyahu government of Israel and even a Hamas leadership of Gaza or Palestine take part and accept a decent peace; to connect the end of the U.S. occupation of Iraq with serious diplomacy with Iran and a political settlement of the Afghan agony; and to move swiftly off the fossil fuel addiction that drives a planetary disaster and drives American policy into corruption or conquest in the Middle Eastern oil pools.

Only the biggest response can meet the need. Half-measures, the normal response of governments facing complex conflict, will not work.

But we have our role -- Christians joining with pro-peace Muslims and Jews to put pressure on the government. Personally I think that Barack Obama wants to do all of this, but he'll need support to get through the usual roadblocks.

The promise is in a Grand Abrahamic Alliance:

The building blocks for such a coalition now exist. Can they be mortared together? A roused Muslim-American community, not yet well organized for political action but speedily getting more so; the beginnings of an independent base in the Jewish community (Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, J Street, Americans for Peace Now, The Shalom Center, the Israel Policy Forum, Tikkun, Jewish Voice for Peace) that could draw strength from the majority of real live American Jews – who support such a result but whose politics are unvoiced by the big American Jewish organizations; mainstream Protestant groups that are raring to go and will be effective if they can focus on changing U.S. policy instead of parading their own personal purity as in the divestment campaigns, and if they have Jewish allies so as not to be accused (or accuse themselves) of anti-Semitism; a vague Roman Catholic support for the same result, which might be stimulated into action; black community support, pro-peace and ready to affirm Palestinian self-determination, but so far not focused on this issue because there are other urgencies and they feel the need for Jewish allies to address those urgencies; and non-religiously or ethnically identified progressives, if they can get over their habit of treating the word “Zionist” as a curse word and start clearly condemning terrorist attacks on civilians by the underdogs, as well as military attacks, occupation, and blockade by the uber-dogs.

It is time for us to move beyond the usual responses and engage in concerted action that will bring peace and justice to this fractured land.