Occupied Territories
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Convene an International Middle East Peace Conference to Impose a Just, Equitable and Lasting Settlement on All Parties In the name of
our sisters and brothers suffering and
dying in Lebanon, Israel and the Occupied
Palestinian Territories, we, the undersigned,
call upon the Israeli government, the
leaderships of Hezbollah and Hamas, the
U.S. Government, the international community
and the United Nations immediately take
the following steps to stop the war in
these countries: 1. We call upon Hezbollah
and Hamas to immediately stop shelling
or otherwise engaging in violence against
Israel. These actions, which have killed
numerous Israeli civilians, terrorized
the people of Israel and damaged many
towns and cities, played a central role
in provoking the current crisis, and do
nothing but harm the cause of Palestinian
and Lebanese independence and democracy.
It is this kind of violence which has
over the years pushed many decent Israelis
into the hands of its most 2. We demand that the
Israeli government immediately halt its
attacks on Lebanon. We join with the Israeli
peace movement and the thousands of Israelis
who demonstrated against this war in Tel
Aviv on July 22, 2006 in their insistence
that these attacks are utterly disproportionate
to the initial provocation by Hezbollah,
have killed innumerable innocent civilians,
displaced half a million people, destroyed
billions of dollars of Lebanon’s
infrastructure, and will not, in the long
run, secure peace or security for Israel.
We also call on the Israeli government
to supply food, electricity, water and
funds to repair the humanitarian crisis
caused by its invasion of Gaza. 3. We call upon the
U.S. and government around the world to
insist that Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas
implement a lasting ceasefire, place an
immediate embargo on all shipments of
weapons to all parties in the war (including
Syria and Iran), and join an international
conference to provide security on the
border between Israel and Lebanon. By
endorsing Israel’s attacks, sending
it new supplies weapons, These are the minimum steps necessary to stop the violence and the humanitarian disaster in southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. But these steps alone will not ensure that the region doesn’t return to an untenable status quo which will again eventually break into violence and new rounds of warfare. We therefore also issue:
We call for an International Peace Conference to impose a fair and lasting solution to all aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to the conflict between Israel and other states in the region. Why do we say “impose”? There are too many forces in each country in the region who are committed to continuing this struggle forever. Their provocations will
continue until the international community
stops the violence once and for all and
imposes conditions of peace that will
allow the peace and reconciliation forces
in each country to flourish. Such a solution
would be based on the following conditions: a. The creation
of an economically and politically viable
Palestinian state (roughly on the pre-1967
borders with minor border modifications
mutually agreed upon between Israel and
Palestine); and simultaneously the full
and unequivocal recognition by Palestinians
and the State of Palestine and all surrounding
Arab states of the right of Israel to
exist as a Jewish state offering full
and equal rights to all of its non-Jewish
citizens; b. An international
consortium to provide reparations for
Palestinians who have lost homes or property
from 1947 to the present, and reparations
for Jewish refugees from Arab states from
1947–1967; c. A long-term
international peacekeeping force to separate
Hezbollah and Israel in southern Lebanon
and to protect Israel and Palestine from
each other and from other forces in the
region who might seek to control or destroy
either state; and d. The quick imposition
of robust sanctions against any party
that refuses to sign or violates these
agreements.
We know that no political
solution can work without a change of
consciousness that minimally includes
an open-heartedness and willingness to
recognize the humanity of the Other, and
repentance and atonement for the long
history of insensitivity and cruelty to
the other side. Both sides must take immediate
steps to stop the discourse of violence
and demeaning of the other in their media,
their religious institutions, and their
school text books and educational systems.
They should implement this by creating
a joint authority with each other and
with moral leaders in the international
community who can supervise, and if necessary,
replace those in positions of power in
both societies who continue to use the
public institutions of the society to
spread hatred or nurture anger at the
other. Once the other parts
of a lasting peace have been set in place,
we call upon the parties to this struggle
to launch a Truth and Reconciliation Commission,
following the model used in South Africa. We propose, instead,
a strategy of generosity—to act on
the assumption that people have an enormous
capacity for goodness and generosity (without
negating the truth that certain conditions
promote fear, anger and hatred which sometimes
are expressed in horribly destructive
ways). For the U.S. and other G8 countries,
we call for a Global Marshall Plan: for
each of the next twenty years, the U.S.
and other G8 countries should dedicate
5% of their Gross Domestic Product to
eliminating global (and domestic) hunger,
homelessness, poverty, inadequate health
care and inadequate education for the
peoples of the world. This would have
to be carefully monitored and apportioned
in ways that ensure the care reaches the
people for whom it was intended. But what
is critical is the spirit in which it
is done. Similarly, we urge Israel
not only to return to its 1967 borders
(with minor border modifications mutually
agreed upon including a sharing of Jerusalem
and of its holy sites) but to do so in
a spirit of generosity and caring for
the other before it is forced to return
to those borders by the international
community and before thousands more young
Israelis and Palestinians die in these
senseless wars that will otherwise continue
in the coming years. The only protection
that we in the advanced industrial countries
of the world can ever really have for
our lives is to spread a spirit of love
so powerful and genuine that it becomes
capable of reducing the anger that has
justifiably developed against the powerful
and the wealthy of the world. The “cynical realists”
claim that others are entrenched in their
hatefulness, and that war and domination
is the only way to battle them. This kind
of thinking has led to five thousand years
of people fighting wars in order to “end
all wars”—and it has not worked.
It’s time now to try a new strategy
of generosity, both economic generosity
and generosity of spirit. As stated above,
there will first have to be a transitional
period in which real military protections
are available to people on all sides of
the Nothing can redeem
the deaths and suffering that all sides
have faced in this struggle for the past
120 years. But this very moment could
also be the time in which the human race
realizes the futility of violence and
comes together not only to impose a lasting
solution for the Middle East, but to begin
a new era and to recognize that our own
well-being depends on the well-being of
everyone else on the planet. The International
Middle East Peace Conference should be
structured to achieve this end—which
means it should have an explicit psychological
and spiritual dimension and a visionary
agenda.
The creation of the
U.N. 61 years ago raised the possibility
that we could build a world based on the
equal sanctity of all human beings. But
the U.N. too quickly became a body passing
resolutions that most people in the world
never heard about. The U.N. represented
the elites of the countries around the
world but often failed to represent the
will or interests of their own people.
It largely ignored the need to build ethical
and spiritual solidarity among the people
of the world—the necessary foundations
for an effective global political institution.
We need to strengthen international institutions
that move in a new direction, but we also
need a commitment of the heart from everyone
on the planet to put our joint attention
to building global peace, social and economic
justice and ecological sanity. This may well be the
last chance we in the advanced industrial
societies have to avoid international
catastrophe (either environmental or nuclear)
by modeling something else besides brute
power, military might and indifference
to the well-being of others. In not now,
when? Unrealistic? Nope. What
has proved unrealistic time and again—whether
we are talking about U.S. policy in Vietnam
and Iraq or Israeli and Arab policies
in the Middle East—is the fantasy
that one more war will put an end to wars.
The path to peace must be a path of peace. Religious and
spiriiutal leaders are also making a global
call for days of paryer and fatsting toward
the aim of peace, reconciliation and ending
violence, starting with the evening of
Wednesday, August 2nd and through the
day of August 3rd. Signed by:
And 1850 other
religious leaders, scholars, academics,
cultural leaders, poets, writers, philanthropists,
social change activists, and citizens
of the world. You can find the entire
list at www.tikkun.org/PeaceAd --------------------------------------------------------------- |
