(This column was originally written for the November issue of Working Waterfront, but as Ed explained it in an accompanying note last month, “… here is an attempt at a November column well in advance … Besides being enamored of the idea of the column (when am I not?) I would like to get it out of the way … because I’ll be hip deep in my four-lecture series on Climate Disruption for the Thomaston Senior College … which is oversubscribed, I say modestly.” The column’s Maine and Island connection becomes clear about two-thirds of the way through it. – ed.)
The trouble with a monthly publication and columnists with alternating current is that if we wish to tackle a Big One, the issue may be old hat before the Working Waterfront issue hits the stands. So this column is a calculated risk that the issue will still be around [when it appears]. We think it will, so here goes:
There is a lot of stuff in the big-time media that “only the United States has the power to mediate a piece for the Israeli-Palestinian troubles.”
Once the motes and beams stop interfering with vision, this is untrue.
A member of our family is eking out a happy living as a mediator, and there are “principles.” One comes to the table with “clean hands,” as even the barristers have it, a head cleared of baggage, complete absence of bias, plus a determined goal that the contending parties will be helped to reach their mutually acceptable conclusions. There are furthermore to be no leaks, spin, press releases, publicity, or public statements of any kind. Beyond that, the mediator will mention no case to anyone – in this case, not even to her own father, ever.
There is not a single person within the Beltway who can qualify for the mediation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; he or she would have to say first upon sitting down at the table:
“This will be an utterly fair and equitable mediation, but it must not in any way interfere with the U.S.’s annual grant of 3 billion dollars to the Israelis, primarily for armaments purchased in the United States.
“No part of any agreement can be construed as inimical or denigrating to the solidarity of the U.S. Jewish vote, whether or not in a national election year.
“Every part of every agreement will be subject to U.S. review, scrutiny and amendment if any part thereof would be deleterious to U.S. interests as expressed by the U.S., including, but not limited to, arrangements with Saudi Arabia for the purchase of petroleum, the use of Israeli-Palestinian air space and territory for the staging of attacks on members if the Evil Empire as listed by President George W. Bush, or any subsequent additional listings by him.”
How could this ever really work? In the short term, maybe, but for any length of time, it never could.
Speaking of time, the Balfour Declaration (The British Government “favours the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of that object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”) was issued 85 years ago almost to the day, coinciding with an invasion of Palestine by the British, who made it a colony, ending its more than four centuries of existence in the Ottoman Empire. Skipping over a decade of violence, assassination and random bloodshed to 1930, the British colonial secretary asked that Jewish immigration come to a halt as long as there was Arab unemployment. The next big step was a 1938 White Paper limiting Jewish immigration to a total of 50,000 for 10 years and proposing a predominantly Arab independent nation.
Let’s slide by the next 64 years of arrogance, misery and woe. Where in the world can we find a source of qualified mediators?
This being an island newspaper, we can tell you: There exists an Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS by name, but the “o” isn’t needed, and so we prefer the acronym ASIS) which has been around for 11 years beseeching the rest of the world to stop the climate disruption and sea-level rise so that ASIS’s 43 members won’t disappear beneath the waves. (One of them already has.) Examples of the 43 – Belize, Bahamas, Comoros, Cuba, Fiji, Jamaica, the Maldives, Malta, Micronesia, Singapore, Surinam, Tonga, for starters.
Island people know a lot. They know about boundaries. They know about getting along with their neighbors. They know the importance of barriers. They know coral reefs and where the fish are, same as Maine fisherpeople know the best ledges. They’re of mixed ancestry, as many a sailor has jumped ship to an island paradise, found a complaisant maiden, and started his own dynasty. They’re independent and self-sustaining. Most generally they don’t shoot people or blow them up. They don’t have scads of money, airplanes, gun ships, nuclear bombs, and that sort of expensive and useless merchandise. They’ve had a trying era of being colonized by the Dutch, the Germans, the French and whoever and have survived it back to independence. They like children and have never heard of Ritalin. And they are facing extinction, which concentrates the mind in a marvelous way.
For that and a hundred other reasons, we respectfully suggest (which is to say this column does, not necessarily its publishers) that Kofi Annan convene a meeting of the Alliance of Small Island States to start the process of getting a pool of potential mediators from this group, willing to tackle the tortuously abrasive convolutions going back 85 years, or maybe 2,900.
The mediators will have to keep in mind that since the 1938 White Paper specifying “a predominantly Arab independent nation,” the population now is about 4.8 million Jews and about 1.2 million Arabs, so the latter are outnumbered four to one. The Arab population in the Gaza Strip is about the same as Maine’s; the thing is that Gaza is 40-plus percent smaller than Maine’s smallest county, so that there are 8,200 Arabs per square mile, which is pretty crowded compared to Sagadahoc County’s 1/58th of that.
A tough assignment. But we’ll bet the Small Island States are up to it, and it’s worth a try. If there were the surprise of a lasting settlement, it would certainly get some attention for ASOS, which isn’t shouting that the sky is falling (it can’t – it begins at your feet), but is saying that all our oceans may have some really serious problems right around the corner.