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I haven't been talking about the situation in the Middle East, largely because thinking about it makes me stressed. But that's not really a good reason; more of an excuse.

My first approximation of an opinion is that both sides are making things worse. Back in college, I saw a TV broadcast in which some well-known American news anchor (I want to say Peter Jennings, but I'm not sure) moderated a discussion between Israeli leaders and Palestinian leaders. IIrc, everyone was on a stage, and there was a fence down the middle of the stage, dividing the two groups. The defining moment came for me when the news anchor asked each side something like "What would it take for you to stop fighting?" and each side said "We're only fighting because they're fighting; if they'll stop, we'll stop."

This seemed to me like the perfect time for both sides to agree to stop. On the other hand, it also looked a lot like a pair of squabbling siblings: "I'll stop if he will!" "No, I'll stop if he will!" To which a parent's response is usually, "Both of you, cut it out!" But there isn't anyone with the moral authority to say that to a pair of squabbling nations or cultures; or rather, the combatants have no compelling reason to obey such a command.

I don't mean to downplay the valid differences and concerns of either side. Thousands of years of persecution have taught Jewish people to be wary of their enemies (and it's hard to engage in dialogue with someone who's explicitly stated that they don't recognize your right to exist). Being thrown out of their homes, living in essentially an occupied territory, has taught the Palestinians not to trust the Israelis. Both sides have strong claims to particular parts of the region, and there are no obvious or easy solutions for resolving those claims.

But it still seems to me that the main thing that's missing is sufficient interest in peace. If peace was of primary importance to everyone involved, they would find a way to make it happen.

Swarthmore was founded by Quakers; though it's no longer a religious school, it still adheres to and promotes certain Quaker ideals. One such ideal is the idea of consensus, the idea of everyone in a group agreeing unanimously to a decision. Outside of Quaker communities, consensus is widely seen as impractical (or else the term is used to mean "broad agreement among most of the group"). It seems to me that there are two things that often make consensus impractical in the wider world: first, that the larger the group is, the harder it is to achieve consensus; and second, and more importantly, that it's almost impossible to achieve consensus unless everyone in the group is committed to the idea of consensus. Someone in a consensus-run group can disagree with the consensus, but can agree to not block consensus, to allow decisions to be made. But doing that requires that the person so agreeing is more committed to the idea of achieving consensus than they are to getting their own way. If you feel more strongly about getting your own way than about achieving consensus, you can simply block consensus, and the group cannot make a decision.

Similarly, it seems to me that in the peace process, everyone has to want peace. Even if you believe (as I do) that Arafat does want peace, that's pretty much irrelevant as long as Hamas does not. (It could be argued that if Arafat truly wanted peace, he would join with the Israelis in denouncing and helping wipe out any Palestinian organization working against that peace. Unfortunately, that idea presupposes that the distinction is clear-cut—that Hamas is a small self-contained group of malcontents, and that all the other Palestinians are opposed to them. My understanding (which is limited) is that that's not the case; that there's widespread support for Hamas and other militant organizations among the Palestinian population.)

So what we end up with is a situation in which the people least interested in a peace process get to dictate the terms of the debate. And the result, of course, is violence.

I ran a roleplaying game for a couple years, set in a precursor to the Babylon 5 universe, in which terrorists were the main bad guys during most of the storyline. Despite doing some reading on the topic, as research for that game, I never did understand the fundamental question: what exactly do terrorists hope to gain by attacking civilian populations? I discussed this question in an entry way back in September, and did come to some conclusions; I guess what I'm really getting at here is that I don't see why any organization today would expect traditional terrorism (as an attempt to get those in power to listen to you) would actually work. Has it worked at any time in the past 50 years? Does Hamas actually think that suicide bombings will make the Israelis more likely to accede to their demands? It seems obvious to me that a nation challenged by such an attack is going to respond with greater violence; aside from all the other reasons, there's the issue of not being seen as weak. You attack a primate male, and he'll fight back even if it goes against his interests to do so.

I find it all very depressing. Predictable actions, predictable responses, but nobody's interested in the big picture, nobody's interested in achieving a solution that everyone can live with. Nobody's willing to compromise, or to try to find innovative approaches. It's all a vicious circle, and unless someone backs down, it can only escalate.

I'm exaggerating, of course. There are plenty of people who are looking for solutions, and again, the problems are difficult ones. But it seems to me that the people most closely involved in the situation are not interested enough in finding a solution.

This all sounds pretty pessimistic. That's partly because I tend to assume that nothing changes; that an object in motion tends to remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. I have been, happily, quite wrong about this in the past. I would never have predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall or the Soviet Union. There was a time a few years back when it looked like people all over the world had magically come to their senses; peace talks between the British government and the I.R.A., peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians. I grew as full of optimism about those situations as I'd been full of pessimism before; if such bitter enemies could grow sick of fighting, could try to work things out together, I felt that anything was possible. And so the return to violence has engaged my pessimism; it makes me feel like any attempt at peace is doomed. If people could try that hard and still fail, what could succeed?

The truth, of course, is more complex than that. There is no steady state; life is perpetual change. Delicate balances are upset, and sometimes are restored, and sometimes are strengthened. There is no end of history; there is no unchanging happily-ever-after. Life goes on, and things keep happening. The political universe is no more Newtonian than the physical one; chaos theory is a better metaphor than the laws of mechanics. This is very hard for me to keep in mind.

I noted above that nobody has the moral authority to stop things. I find it interesting that America is behaving as though it does. The little I've read of Bush's statements ("Enough Is Enough!" screamed one headline the other day) surprise me because I agree with them, as far as they go. But it does make me wonder: will America (and the UN, for that matter) see this as the same kind of fighting that they've intervened in elsewhere? Do we become the world's police? What would happen in the (probably extremely unlikely) event of a US-led UN peacekeeping force occupying Israel?

I was a bit surprised at Bush's apparently taking a more active role in all this, until I glanced at a CNN article this morning that mentioned that other Arab nations are feeling drawn into the situation. And my Cynical-Jed persona told me, "It's the oil, stupid." We've always had to maintain this delicate balance between supporting Israel and not upsetting the countries we depend on for oil; one way of looking at the current American reaction is as yet another step on that long road.

As for pacifism, I don't know what to say. How can one advocate pacifism in the face of an enemy that wants to obliterate you? What I keep coming back to is that that's the wrong question to ask. The right question, to my way of thinking, is: what can we do to teach children to look for nonviolent solutions to problems? What can we do to work on the problems at the source, rather than trying to fix the results? If someone is dying of lung cancer, that's the wrong time to tell them to stop smoking, but that doesn't mean that the goal of getting people in general to stop smoking is a bad one. (With apologies to my friends who smoke.)