Sustainable peace and sustainable development
If we hope for peace in the Middle East and we hope for peace and a sustainable society in Israel, as I do, as well as for peace in Palestine and Lebanon, we should question Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s leadership, as well as that of the Bush administration and US Secretary of State Rice.
The Secretary calls for “sustainable peace” in Lebanon. Her condition? The military destruction of Hezbollah. Unfortunately, her theory of sustainability is narrow and naive.
Sustainable peace in southern Lebanon requires the region become an active, effective participant in the greater nation of Lebanon, integrated economically and socially as well as militarily. Peace in southern Lebanon requires civil society, civil institutions, well-functioning businesses, healthy villages and neighborhoods, and secure families. Consider Thomas Friedman’s formula: If you want peace in any region, support the development of a middle class. Promote a sense of confidence and trust in young people, so that they put their energies into constructive personal development, constructive social movements, and democratic institutions. Sustainable peace requires sustainable development.
Over the past few days, the post-cease-fire situation in southern Lebanon has been surprisingly promising when viewed from the perspective of sustainable development. Hezbollah and its allies have turned to bulldozers, Iran has promised support for economic and social development. In response to this, the anti-Iran Arab nations and the United States have themselves stepped up to offer economic aid. The locus of competition in South Lebanon has taken a highly public turn toward social and economic development, and away from extremism and war-making.
One can question whether this turn is truly genuine and sustainable. Whatever you believe, this turn is certainly more encouraging in both tone and substance then what is happening in Iraq and other crisis zones.
Winning or losing the peace
I personally believe the competition to rebuild Lebanon provides a promising starting point for new positive momentum in the Middle East. Competition may be shifting from “winning the war” to “winning the peace.” If so, I am encouraged. I believe strongly that the way to win the peace in Lebanon, and in the Middle East more broadly, is by investing in what economists and sociologists call “human capital” and social capacity. Robust social ecosystems are the only long-term way to resist the weeds of extremism, fundamentalism, nationalism, and terrorism in both insurgent and establishment forms.
The key element in establishing social capacity is trust–trust that constructive creations will not be destroyed, trust that personal investments in skills and education will be rewarded with economic security and growth, and trust that one’s society is moving toward justice and durable human relationships.
I would hope that all world leaders involved in moving forward in this current moment would find ways promote the fragile atmosphere of trust that has for the moment stopped the rockets and stopped the bombing. I would hope that world leaders would focus on social development, peace-making, and winning the peace.
So what has the Olmert administration in Israel done in the days since the cease fire? It has continued to focus almost exclusively on
war-making. It has continued down a path that will almost surely lose the peace.
1. The Olmert administration has wrung its hands over the incompetence of its military
operation, and said nothing about a positive vision for the future of either Israel
or its neighbors. This is in sharp contrast
to the constructive vision, propaganda or sincere (take your pick) coming out
of Hezbollah and Iran.
2. At the height of
the popularity of the leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon, a high-level Olmert government official is signaling that Israel intends
to assassinate him:
Despite a cease-fire agreement, Isreal intends to do its best to keep Iran and Syria from rearming Hezbollah and
to kill the militia’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, says a senior Israeli
commander. (August 20, 2006 New
York Times/Herald Tribune)
3. Because of the recent raid, Israel is now widely perceived as the first
to violate the truce. Israel has promised
more such raids, and seeks to justify them under the terms of
the truce agreement.
Under the terms of the truce, Israeli troops are allowed to defend
themselves if attacked, and have done so on occassion. However, the
recent raid was carried out many miles from any existing group of
troops, and appears to many observers to be an offensive action under the terms of the agreement.
An Israel, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark
Regev, said, “If the Syrians and the Iranians continue to arm Hezbollah in
violation of the resolution, Israel is entitled to act to defend the principle
of the arms embargo.”
But in a statement on the United Nations Web site,
Mr. Annan’s spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said the secretary general considered
the raid a violation of the resolution and it followed “several air
violations.” Such violations, he said, “endanger the fragile calm.” (NY
Times 8/20/2006)
4. The raid itself was notable both for its high profile and for its apparent tactical
failure. The raid threatened the peace and emboldening military opposition on
the ground in Lebanon—perhaps
the worst combination result imaginable:
The raid took place overnight under the cover of
sonic booms from Israeli jets flying overhead, which occur often over Lebanon.
But this time they masked the sound of helicopters bringing in the commando
unit and two Humvee vehicles. Villagers said the soldiers were dressed in
Lebanese Army uniforms.
The success of the effort was a matter of dispute.
One Israeli special operations officer was killed and two commandos were
wounded, one seriously, but an Israeli Army spokesman in Jerusalem said the “objectives had been
attained in full.”
Villagers said otherwise. “They failed completely,”
said Sadiq Hamdi, 36, a scrap-iron dealer. “They were still on the road when
the Hezbollah came upon them. They did not take 1 percent of what they were
trying to do.”
The Israeli Army said it would
continue such raids until “proper monitoring bodies are established on the
Lebanese borders,” another task for the United Nations forces in Lebanon. On
Friday, a top Israeli commander warned that Israel would halt any resupply
efforts and vowed to kill the Hezbollah leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. [Page 6.] (NY Times
8/20/2006-)
5. Eroding trust of Israel in Lebanon, the commandos were reportedly disguised as Lebanese troops, in
green fatigues rather than traditional Israeli brown, and identified themselves
as such by speaking Arabic.
Suleiman Chamas, 38, the mayor of this village
about 10 miles west of Baalbek,
gave the following account.
The disguised commandos landed in the eastern
foothills of the Mount Lebanon range, loaded into Humvees and drove east on a
road called Ayoun Semman, where they encountered a roadblock guarded by local
Hezbollah fighters.
The commandos shouted in Arabic, “Peace be with
you, we’re one of yours,” and tried to pass the roadblock without stopping. The
guerrillas started shooting and chased them. The commandos turned onto a dirt
road, and a gun battle broke out, drawing more villagers.
“The whole village came down, both those who could
shoot and those who cannot,” Mayor Chamas said.
Fighter jets and helicopters fired rockets and,
within about 40 minutes, evacuated the commandos, he said. Left behind were two
fresh craters in the rich red Bekaa Valley soil, signs of
casualties — large bloodstains, syringes and surgical masks — and what the villagers
said was some kind of device to guide the helicopters. Villagers reported no
casualties on the Lebanese side.
Yahya Ali, 30, wearing a red shirt and carrying an
AK-47 assault rifle, was one of a number of villagers who said the Israeli
commandos had been dressed like Lebanese soldiers.
He said they had been wearing the mostly green
woodland camouflage uniforms that are standard issue for the Lebanese Army,
along with olive-green flak jackets and green helmets, also standard issue.
Israeli soldiers wear a solid brownish uniform with brown body armor and
helmets.
Mr. Ali said he could see the uniform clearly
because in the rescue the helicopters and Humvees had bright lights turned on. ( NY Times
8/20/2006)
6. The official Israeli government
explanation for the raid appears to many observers as transparently false, as is reflected in press coverage of the event.
Israeli Foreign Ministry official Mark Regev said:
“There was an attempt to bring in weaponry from Syria
to Lebanon.
The resolution calls for there to be Lebanese soldiers and international force
there on the border crossings to prevent this from happening. Unfortunately,
they’re not there at the moment. In the interim period, we can’t have a
situation where Hezbollah is smuggling weapons and is rearming and
regrouping.”
But Israel produced no evidence of
intercepted weapons. And the depth of the Israeli raid — 60 miles inside
Lebanon — led to widespread speculation that the commandos might have been on
a mission to rescue two kidnapped Israeli soldiers from Hezbollah’s hands. The
kidnapping in early July sparked the fighting. (LA
Times/San Jose Mercury News 8/19/2006)
The lack of a plausible
explanation created an opportunity for speculation on the motives of the Israeli government in the raid, for example as
reported in this New York Times piece:
The boldness of the raid during the truce suggested
the Israelis might have had some major objective in mind, perhaps the rescue of
their two captured comrades or the capture of a major Hezbollah figure. Boudai
is the home village of Sheik Muhammad Yazbeck,
a senior Hezbollah leader and member of the group’s Shura Council. The Israeli
Army later said it had not captured him and denied his capture was the
objective, The Associated Press reported.
The village was the scene of a funeral Friday for a
Hezbollah guerrilla, Mahmoud Ahmed Asef, who had died fighting in Bint Jbail.
Such funerals sometimes draw leaders. (NY
Times 8/20/2006)
Winning the peace is our most fundamental challenge
If we hope for peace in Israel,
if we hope for peace in Lebanon
and Palestine, and Jordan and Iran and Syria and Iraq and indeed
around the world (Sudan and Darfur, the Congo, Burma), we must ask our leaders to commit themselves to win the
peace.
Peace cannot, I firmly believe, be won among people whose societies are not
functioning. If we want peace, we must
invest in the social capital, the civil society, the middle class economies of the
regions that are now the home of extremist organizations.
Extremist organizations are evolutionary social species that are adapted,
like weeds, to troubled conditions.
Extremist organizations thrive by providing a modicum of hope to those
who are otherwise terrified of the prospects facing themselves and their
families. Jean Paul Satre analyzed
terrorist organizations many decades ago, seeking to understand how the Nazis
were able to recruit collaborators in wartime France. His conclusion was that people are willing to
submit to authoritarian leaders when they feel that their prospects outside the
cell are even more terrifying than those within. The way to increase the attractiveness of
terrorist, fundamentalist, ultra-nationalist cults is to sew fear and chaos in
the societies in which they are lodged.
The way to reduce the power of terrorist cults is to dissolve them in
stable, functioning societies.
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Both the Bush administration, wrestling with conditions in Iraq, and the Olmert administration, addressing the situation in Lebanon, have put great stake in the moral justification for their approaches. But these moral justifications, right or wrong, may be irrelevant to the challenge of winning the peace.
Moral justification is not a substitute for wisdom, compassion, pragmatism and competence.
I am reminded of the story of the captain of a powerful naval ship who, seeing the light of another boat in the fog, commanded that the other vessel give way.
Back across the radio came the reply, “We can’t, you must give way.”
The captain spoke forcefully into his microphone “I am the captain of a United States Navy vessel, I command you to give way!”
Again the reply, quieter this time, suggesting that the captain’s ship give way, and recommending a heading that he steer toward.
The captain, by now enraged, shouted into the radio “This ship is a fully-armed destroyer, give way or be rammed! What is your vessel?”
The answer came quickly: “We are a lighthouse.”
