WHEN TWO TRUTHS COLLIDE
Making sense of the Middle East may be easier than you think.

Does the Middle East make your head ache with the complexity of its problems? The best one liner I’ve heard to explain it all is: ‘it’s hot and there’s no water’. This isn’t as patronising as it sounds. Moshe Dayan remarked that the 1967 six day war was really the modern world’s first resource conflict as Arabs and Israelis fought over access tothe waters of the Jordan.

 

As Israel celebrates its sixtieth anniversary and Palestinians mourn what they call the Catastrophe, here are two books on the shape of the conflict in the new century that might help you forge a better understanding. ‘Elusive Peace’ by Ahron Bregman (Penguin, 2005) gives the account of the Camp David talks in 2001 at the end of the Clinton presidency when the two sides came remarkably close to a settlement. Rather like Jonathan Powell’s new book on the details of the Northern Ireland peace process (‘Great Hatred, Little Room’, Bodley Head, 2008), Bregman demonstrates the importance of personal relationships in delivering peace between peoples, the pivotal role that small facts can play and the absurdity which is often attendant upon diplomatic history.

 

The deal fell through on the intractable problem posed by Jerusalem. Arafat felt he did not have the authority to deliver for the wider Arab world on the status of Jerusalem and yet when Clinton phoned round Arab leaders he found they were unable to help Arafat because they had never been to Jerusalem in their lives before and so did not know its layout. Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had never even seen a map of the city.

 

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak (ex-special forces and one of that breed of Israeli leaders that always manages to look harder than their bodyguards) nearly died at Camp David when he choked on a peanut laughing at a profane joke about Arafat. He was rescued by an aide who remembered the Heimlich manoeuvre from his youth, but as Barak recovered, the other participants assumed his lateness in returning to the table was a tactical ploy.

 

When a peace initiative fails, the next time the parties sit down together the situation on the ground is usually worse. After Camp David and Ariel Sharon’s walkabout on the Temple Mount came the second intifada and the rise of Hamas in Gaza. Israel’s decision to build a wall around its self-defined perimeter is the subject of Jerusalem Report journalist Isabel Kershner’s book ‘Barrier’ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Ostensibly to protect against suicide bombers from the West Bank and in lieu of a Palestinian leader strong enough to deliver peace, the wall has created de facto borders which scythe through Palestinian owned land. This is a sensitive subject, but Kershner has done a wonderful job of allowing Palestinians and Israelis to speak for themselves about its impact on local communities.

 

Some Christians have taken a rather obsessive interest in the Middle East because they believe it is the key to unlocking the mysteries of the Book of Revelation. I have always recoiled from such an instrumental approach to the region’s welfare. Instead the Psalmist calls us to ‘pray for the peace of Jerusalem’ (Psalm 122:6). It is a terrible thing that the place of God’s incarnation should produce such suffering today. As the philosopher Isaiah Berlin observed: when two truths collide, tragedy ensues. Such is the poignancy of the Arab-Israeli conflict.