An article by Alfred Farrugia, former Maltese diplomat and ICAR Ph.D. candidate, in the Famagusta Gazette, addresses the structural ways in which conflict can be reduced in Cyprus following the Maltese political model.
The Parliamentary system in Malta has worked fairly well since the island gained its Independence from Britain in 1964. Perhaps the time has come for Cyprus to consider the possibility of moving from a Presidential system to a parliamentary system…
Cyprus needs a paradigm shift to reach a sustainable solution with the two communities represented in a single Cabinet of a united government. With EU membership, the Turkish Cypriots have a guarantee that the past mistakes will not be repeated again. The basic human needs of security, identity and recognition can be satisfied in a united Cyprus if the two communities really wish to live in peace with each other, as they did for generations….
Turkish Cypriots are likely to be in a better position to influence the decisions and developments in their own island if they unite with the Greek Cypriots in a parliamentary system. The carrot – and the stick – that they could have their own state when in fact the strings are pulled by a neighbouring country that has other interests, should have become abundantly clear by now.
Is America learning from its disasters how to hold people together in community, how to prevent and manage conflict? It is not clear that anything will be learned from the current direction of leadership. The level of corruption from the Republican administration has been astonishing, and can only guarantee that people will be at each other’s throats. This is not how to prevent conflict and build community. Here is this note of concern on FEMA’s response to Ike:
With hurricanes Gustav and Ike slamming ashore, focus again turns to FEMA’s performance, and we continue to be less than inspired. After Gustav, the agency admitted that it underestimated how much food and water and other goods that Louisiana would need. It promised the people of Houston ice and water in the immediate aftermath of Ike. It turns out that the Salvation Army had hot meals going and a local radio station had ice and water delivered a day before FEMA’s trucks finally rolled in.
And now we see that the list of FEMA foul-ups in Katrina is still growing with recent news that the government wasted millions of dollars on four no-bid contracts. That includes paying $20 million for a camp for evacuees that was never inspected and turned out to be unusable.
This latest story of government waste comes, not from the media, but from the Homeland Security Department’s office of inspector general (IG). The overall tally of money wasted is said to be at least $1 billion.
The IG reviewed temporary housing contracts awarded without competition to Shaw Group Inc., Bechtel Group Inc., CH2M Hill Companies Ltd. and Fluor Corp. in the days immediately before and after Katrina.
The review found that FEMA wasted at least $45.9 million on the four contracts that at first were worth $400 million, but that were increased twice by FEMA, without competition.
So, myself and Tom Coburn (Republican from Oklahoma) introduced a very simple amendment in the Emergency Defense Supplemental. It essentially said that if there is going to be a contract of more than half a million dollars, it has to be competitively bid. The amendment passed 98 to 0; the entire Senate was unanimous. But, as some of you may not be aware, the way Washington works is a bill that passes in the Senate and a bill that passes in the House has to be reconciled in what is called a conference committee because there are going to be differences, potentially, between what’s in the House version and the Senate version. Those have to be worked out in a conference of House members and Senate members. I wasn’t on the conference committee; neither was Tom Coburn. When the conference committee report finally came out, the bill that would actually be voted on and signed into law, our little provision had been struck – it wasn’t in there.
Since that time we got that news there’s at least 1.4 billion dollars of taxpayer money that could have gone to helping the people on the coast that instead has been siphoned off on a series of fraudulent claims.
We need leadership in this country to not only manage global conflicts but also to manage our relations in this country in a way that builds community not selfish corruption. The biggest lie about selfish approaches to government spending is that it is more efficient and will make us all richer. This is untrue. What makes everyone wealthier, what makes survival more likely, in the history of human community is actual cooperation, sharing and altruism. We need government leaders who understand that.
In the context of major global conflicts, where everyone is analyzing what is right or wrong, black or white, left or right, it has occured to me that the definition of reality sometimes gets lost in the mix.
2 a (1): a real event, entity, or state of affairs reality> (2): the totality of real things and events reality> b: something that is neither derivative nor dependent but exists necessarily
Imagine for just a moment if headlines coming out of the Middle East read like this tomorrow….
Today thousands of Arabs, Jews, Israelis,
Palestinians, Seculars and Religious, Christians, Muslims,
Druze, young and old gathered to dance, to cry, to share, to
laugh, to work, to play and ultimately, to live together for
three days just a few miles outside of Jerusalem.
Doesn’t sound like reality does it?….
If your answer was something like, “no” or “how naïve,” I’m here to say, “quite the contrary!” In fact, I’ve seen it with my own two eyes!! The passage above describes the seventh annual “On the Way to the Sulha Gathering,” a three day gathering of locals aspiring to create a new reality by preparing themselves and their neighbors for a life of mutual respect and trust. I’ve been there the last two years.
Watch it yourself:
Welcome to reality
Would you like to learn more about the Sulha Peace Project? Contact either Gabriel Meyer or Ihab Balha through their website, www.sulha.com
Professor Solon Simmons of the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution and myself have a live discussion on the last stages of the American election campaigns, why it is so close, what are the options left to the candidates to move the undecided voters in one direction or the other.
Solon Simmons
We also consider what this election says about the state of American values and where the country is going. Note: Since this was recorded it seems that Obama is following much of our advice as to how to strengthen his base.
Yesterday Marc participated in panels on Capitol Hill and at The National Press Club to coincide with the release of a seminal report entitled “Changing Course: A New Direction for Relations with the Muslim World” issued by The US-Muslim Engagement Project. Marc was one of thirty four Americans who constituted the Leadership Council on U.S. Muslim Engagement. It was a bipartisan group of leading Republicans, Democrats, Muslims, Christians, and Jews, secular and religious, liberal and conservative. They met over a period of two years to create this report which has detailed recommendations for the United States Government, NGO’s, and for the governments of the Muslim world. The convening this extremely diverse group was also meant as a model of how to change course and what kind of negotiations need to take place in the United States in order to create positive change, as well as in the global community. They have also postecreeated this short documentary about their mission.
See excellent reports in The New York Times and Market Watch. Here is the Exective Summary. Rob Fersh, David Fairman and Paula Gutlove played the central roles in bringing this project to fruition. Coinciding with the culmination of the production of the report, Intersections, a new organization dedicated to forging a common ground for global social justice, has launched a project, Change the Story, to introduce the insights of this report at the grass roots of America. Reverend Robert Chase announced Change the Story at the National Press Club event.
Extensive pictures of yesterday’s events can be found here.
I have been uneasy for eight years with the trend in American politics of anointing men with tempers. This is not safe in terms of global conflict. I think of the incredible pressures of the White House, and the reality of having the ability to destroy the earth many times over. I think of the Cuban Missile Crisis and how we might have all died when I was six years old if John and Bobby Kennedy had uncontrollable tempers. I opposed John Silber and Howard Dean, two Democrats, for president because of their tempers, which I personally witnessed. In conflict, character is everything, far more important than strategy, though strategy matters. More will emerge in the future about anger and George Bush, and about the conduct of the war, but in many ways that is history now. What matters now is whether Americans make a wise decision about their future.
Now comes dark evidence from one of the most senior conservative voices in the country, George Will. Here is what Will says:
“The queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. ‘Off with his head!’ she said without even looking around.”
– “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”
Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.
It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?
Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked the Wall Street Journal to editorialize that “McCain untethered” — disconnected from knowledge and principle — had made a “false and deeply unfair” attack on Cox that was “unpresidential” and demonstrated that McCain “doesn’t understand what’s happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does.”
Will concludes with a devastating critique that I could not have said any better myself, except he is flat wrong about Obama. His character makes him completely prepared for high office.
Will is focused on the economy and on the conduct of politics in Washington. I am concerned about the most powerful position on earth that affects war and peace everywhere:
It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?
Are we going to have more wars based on anger and revenge, or is America about to change course?
The next day, and the final full day in Israel, we spent finally doing a little bit of sight-seeing and traveling through the old city of Jerusalem. Those of you who have been here know the incredible magic of the city. As the sun rises over 2,000-year old walls – walls built by David, Soloman, the Turkish Empire, we visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where the site of Calvary and Jesus’ tomb is located. Just a stone’s throw away, the Western Wall; across from there you have the magnificent Dome of the Rock, gilded in gold. It gives you a sense of just how much history is here and it reminds us that you have to be humble when you think about the Middle East and what’s possible here.
There are a lot of memories, there’s a lot of history, there are a lot of grudges and bitterness and in some ways it reminds us of how lucky we are as Americans that ironically we don’t have this kind of history. It’s easier for us to forget and move on. It’s much harder for people here who are seeing everyday the roots of their own people and the conflicts that go back generation after generation.
On the other hand, as I was leaving Jerusalem on that final day and looking over the Old City I was reminded of how similar in many ways Palestinians and Jews, Muslims, Christians – how similar all these people were; and that despite differences in language and religion and despite the bitter history of the region it must be possible on some level to have each group recognize the humanity of the other.
We have a window here on how Obama will handle foreign policy as president. There are three vitally important legs on which he stands: 1. humility before the complexity of the region, 2. a faith in the basic similarities of the groups beneath all their differences, a faith in their ability to recognize each other’s humanity and 3. hope and vision.
These are vital building blocks of peace and justice that those of us in conflict resolution globally have seen as the successful ingredients of positive change. It has worked in many other places in the world, but it needs a major third party, a U.S. President to embrace them.
That is what my daughter Lexi wrote on an elaborate sign, beautifully painted, that greeted me one Sunday morning.
I could not imagine who Freddy was. Hours earlier, with the family still asleep, I had discovered a small mouse in our guest room. I scooted out and shut the door fast. We knew we had to find some sort of trap before the house became infested. Well, Lexi went into a serious funk. She has just become vegetarian, animals are everything to her, and here I was about to kill “Freddy”. What she did was to name the thing I was about to kill. She had never met the mouse, but she just knew that she wanted me to stop. So she made several pictures about Freddy, but most importantly, she named him. I was no longer going to get rid of a pest, I was about to kill ‘Freddy’.
I thought to myself what a brilliant tactic she used on her larger than life, all powerful father, hell bent on murder, a militarist to the core when it comes to pests. And I looked at myself, and I thought about how many militarists I have confronted in the Arab Israeli conflict….
Lexi made a story, she created a narrative with a living precious being at the core. Next thing I know I am researching hardware stores for which one carries live traps. This was after examining the costs and benefits of inventing a trap ourselves and getting a bite and a shot at the emergency room. Lexi was not interested in that discussion, really. Just thinking about Freddy.
The whole incident immediately flashed to the Sulha gathering of three days that I had just participated in at Latrun Monastery outside Jerusalem together with hundreds of Jews and Palestinians. The sweet sorrow of my practice over the decades has been the face, the name, the life story, of the “parties to the conflict”. The way in which I now know the human beings who suffer at 600 checkpoints, who suffer humiliation at the hands of untrained eighteen year old soldiers, the amazing Jewish young idealistic people i always meet searching for a better world who also ride the buses that periodically get attacked. Their faces, their stories are ingrained in my consciousness and in my heart, and it makes it harder to live with their murder. In fact, it makes it impossible to be at peace. And THAT is the beginning of conscience and commitment to change.
Name the enemy, and even the clearest most understandable plan for liquidation, such as that of a household owner before a pest, becomes a drama in which the hard-hearted cannot win. And that is why I am spending my life these days on film and on encouraging such gatherings as Sulha where real stories and real experiences are exchanged in an open and honest way. Here are some pictures of the interfaith aspect of those exchanges. This is a tiny fraction of the thousands of exchanges, where names were exchanged, and one’s universe became different.
Rabbi Menachem Frohman, one of the founders of the settler movement in Israel, a leading religious Zionist and Chief Rabbi of the settlement of Tekoa, has come to believe that Barack Obama is the only hope for Middle East peace. Here are his startling statements in video and in the form of an open letter to the Senator. Nothing is as it seems on the frontlines of conflict and peacemaking.
With God’s Help
To the person who, with God’s help, will be the next President of the United States of America:
Dear Senator Barack Obama,
“May the Lord bless you from Zion, and may you gaze upon the goodness of Jerusalem all the days of your life.”
This letter from an elder Jewish Rabbi who lives in close proximity to Jerusalem, addressed to the young candidate for President of the United States, may be considered irregular and even reckless. With that said, the Creator of the Universe, blessed be He, granted us, with His grace, the privilege to live in a reckless world. Our grandmothers, from all nations and traditions, used to say that miracles are the fingerprints of the Creator in His creation. The fingers of the Divine hand are outstretched to us in peace. The American Dream that you speak of, about everyone fulfilling all their opportunities, is the manifestation of realizing God’s ability to make miracles for everyone in the world.
It is a fact that miracles happen in the world. To attest to that is this very letter that is being sent from a Rabbi, living in proximity to Jerusalem, to the candidate for President in order to discuss the question: Can the greatest miracle of all take place; can Barack Obama be elected President in less than two months time? This letter comes to let you know that I pray and await this very miracle because we need change.
Jerusalem awaits Barack Obama. The Holy land awaits Barack Obama. The Middle East awaits Barack Obama. The whole world awaits Barack Obama. Your being elected will be God’s outstretched hand for peace.
Not only America says ‘Enough’ along with you, the entire world says ‘Enough’. Not only the American soldiers in Iraq say ‘Enough’ along with you, but also the Israelis and the Palestinians say ‘Enough’. No more War! Also the Middle East needs change and the realization of new opportunities.
Realizing new opportunities in the Middle East is in fact the realization of new opportunities in the United states and around the world. Peace in Jerusalem and in the Holy Land is the key to peace in Baghdad, Afghanistan and the whole world. The Israelis and the Palestinians are two small nations, but there is a possibility that they will be the ones to build the bridge between Western Civilization and the Islamic world. Enough with words and promises about peace in the Middle East, it’s time for realization.
It is not enough to use new words or make new promises in order to achieve realization, what is needed is depth and seriousness. I am writing to you in order to reveal to you the depth of my heart. For me, the concept of God coincides with the concepts of depth and seriousness. The practical applications of being a believer are to be deep and serious. In order to be an instrument of God’s will, one has to be deep and serious. In order to implement the greatest miracle of all – the revelation of the will of God, God’s help is needed.
In our world, depth and seriousness are sometimes revealed by wisdom gained by years of experience. This is the reason that in Hebrew (and in Arabic) the Rabbi or the religious leader is called an Elder. That having been said, the Creator in His grace gave us the privilege to live in a wondrous world that also has other possibilities. Sometimes, the young gain not only the energy of the youth, but also the blessings of the Elders. That very blessing of the Elders is what helps the young realize the greatest miracle of all.
What can I do to help realize this great miracle? Three weeks ago I initiated the filming of a video, filmed in the Holy Land in which I, as a Rabbi expressed my awaiting Barack Obama in the Holy Land.
If the U.S.A. will choose the deep and serious meaning of the American Vision that will be a message of hope for everyone around the world.
We are waiting because on November 4 there is a new opportunity that everyone in the world in his home, or in his little village will get new opportunities for his life directly from America.
I will continue to pray for the greatest miracle of all. I believe that the proper words to express my prayer are ‘Lord, Help me guard against Pride and Despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will.’
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday that the price of an agreement with the Palestinians would “move us very close” to an exchange of equal amounts of territory, and that this must be stated “honestly and courageously.” The alternative to an agreement is a bi-national state, an idea, he said that “ever-growing segments of the international community are adopting.”
Speaking at a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Olmert said the agreement now being formulated would give the Palestinians 100 percent of the West Bank, or territory of a similar area. “I’ll still be here,” he told committee members who said they wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to wish him good-bye, in light of the Kadima primary Wednesday, which is expected to result in his resignation.
According to Olmert, by the end of 2008, it should be possible to attain understandings with the Palestinians on three issues: borders, security and refugees. However Olmert stressed that the implementation of the understandings is conditioned on the application of the Bush road map and eradication of the Palestinian terrorist infrastructures, and so implementation will take place at a much later stage. “It is important to reach understandings, even if their implementation is delayed,” he said.
But on the issue of refugees Olmert said:
“Under no circumstances will there be a right of return, but we are willing to be part of an international mechanism that will deal with a solution to the problem. I share in expressing regret over what happened to the Palestinians in 1948 and also to the Jews who were deported from Arab countries.”
On the one hand, as Olmert leaves office he is revealing extraordinary statements for an Israeli Prime Minister. Now that he is no longer running for office he is saying the unspeakable for Israeli leadership, ‘I am sorry for what happened in 1948.’ But it comes with the mixed message that under no circumstances can any serious amount of refugees return to Israel.
Why? Israel has made the case that there must be two states for two peoples, and therefore a ‘right of return’ for five million Palestinian refugees is impossible. There will no longer be a state of majority Jews. But there is a huge gap between five million and none, or an insulting offer of 5000? Israel could welcome back hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees and still be easily a majority-Jewish state.
Palestinian Refugee Camps
In fact, in 1950 the Israeli Parliament came very close to inviting back most of the refugees in a move that would have put the populations on at least an even footing. Why so stingy now? The answer is that there is zero trust and mostly hatred between these two peoples. There has been no preparation for coexistence between these two peoples since the beginning of official international ‘peace processes’. This is true since the 1990′s, but really since the Camp David initiatives going back decades. You cannot expect a vision of coexistence with serious compromises to emerge if no international efforts have been made to build trust between these two peoples at war for almost a hundred years.
The real problem and tragedy is that neither people is ready for what the other people wants most, safety, security, dignity, a sense of a permanent place and home. All these miserable years of elitist peace processes have only made the relationship worse.
There have been thousands of valiant peacemakers over the years on both sides, and I have known many of them, some secular some religious. None of them ever received serious support from the governments of the region or from other major players.
Thus, the world continues to inherit the instability from this confict that it deserves. Only when governments wake up to the fact that they need people to make peace will the priorities shift and the tactics shift as to how peace actually happens. Until that time we will continue to have suicide bombs, apartheid walls, mass prisons, economic blackmail, collective punishment, and the empowerment of extremist groups, extremist religious groups, and extreme states on all sides. For them the official neglect of human needs means big business.
I know these two peoples intimately and I have worked with them for twenty five years. I am certain that with massive investment in relationships, in projects together, that they could flourish together, and that in fact hundreds of thousands of Palestinians could one day return to Israel itself and become citizens, in addition to a Palestinian state next door (which I believe should also have Jewish citizens). This is all possible if the approach to peacemaking completely shifts away from gimmicks and games of desperate politicians, and becomes instead a deep investment in people and their needs, on both sides.
That Israel is rich and Palestine is poor is misleading. One out of every three Israeli children are born in poverty thanks to the ravages of Republican dominated economics of the last twenty years. There is room to help both these peoples, there is room to build the equality of Palestinian citizens of Israel, there is room to build a Jewish sense of safety in the land, and there is room to make a new Palestine flourish. But it will only happen when human needs become the center of peace processes not the periphery. When human needs move to the center then many issues will emerge and new possibilities will also emerge that we cannot imagine now. But only in this way will we see a safe and flourishing two-state solution that has a deeply Jewish state and a deeply Palestinian state, both democratic and open to all.
