The sudden ouster of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, and then the wave following wave of demonstrations throughout the region, left me -- like many Israelis, I'd guess -- both stirred and shaken. Stirred by the truth-to-power courage of the protestors (as I write, crowds are gathering in Green Square in Tripoli, though yesterday's crowds were strafed by helicopter gunships) shaken by the uncertainty that these protests leave in their wake. And stirred and shaken at once by how suddenly a stable status quo can collapse, passing from inevitable to impossible in a matter of hours. As Egypt readies for what may be the first democratic elections in its 5,000 years, it is hard not to wonder whether there isn't a lesson for us to learn. Might history be casting up new circumstances that may somehow allow new solutions as well for our own enduring conflict with the Palestinians?
Indeed, it's not just the paroxysms of our neighbors to the south that makes people here think that, even after a century of often-violent struggle, the conflict between Jews and Palestinians here may not be as inevitable as it seems. Overshadowed by the uprisings in the Middle East have been the "Palestine Papers," a large cache of notes and transcripts documenting years of negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis released by Al-Jazeera just days before the unrest began in Tunisia. The papers have been variously interpreted by pundits and politicians; some saw them as proof that peace is a pipe-dream, others as a demonstration of the opposite. A month and a half ago, Bernard Avishai shuttled between Jerusalem and Amman to ask the two prime ministers taking part in the negotiation -- Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas -- how they saw matters.
More...
0 comments
Post a Comment