Peacemaking is the Work of The People

I have been watching from a great distance the work of the Jerusalem Peacemakers. Witnessing their success is very heart warming. I have never been to the Middle East but as a peacemaker believe that violence anywhere ultimately reaches across great divides – if for no other reason than for its own sake. Maybe my saying it this way personifies violence. It does seem, however, that it takes on a life of its own in communities embroiled in distrust giving birth to fear.

 

I once remarked that sovereign nations do not have the courage to be peacemakers. This was something I intuited in the moment and when challenged by others, was not able to qualify this comment. It is a hard statement and few truly want to accept it, as we all, I believe, want to believe that our governments have this capacity. But, history bears this reality out. I do not know of any government that has survived the centuries without under going significant and painful change – often change brought about through force, if survived at all.

 

I believe that it takes a people to make peace through people to people discourse (track two diplomacy). But here is the rub: This scares the sovereign. It is also easy for the people to wash their hands of non-reconciled interests and scapegoat it on to the back of their governments. Bottom line: The sovereign must provide the listening space for people to people discourse and the people must engage in discourse with integrity. The sovereign then can enforce the desires of all sides.

 

The recent work of the Jerusalem Peacemakers is but one sign of what the conduct of this “discourse with integrity” looks like. Following are commentaries from two religious leaders reflecting on their approach:

 

Rabbi Landes taught from the Midrash (Biblical commentary)– how Aaron would resolve conflicts by going to both wronged persons in a conflict and telling each how badly the other felt for what he did and how much he regretted it.  Then when the two would meet, they would embrace and reconcile immediately.   The Rabbi said that today we have the opposite of Aaron because we have the media and our leaders continually telling us how much the other side hates us and wants to kill us and doesn’t want to reconcile.  He emphasized how important it is for each of us to share our experience here with our own communities, that members of the “other side” do feel badly for what has been done to us and wants to reconcile.

Sheikh Izhak Taha said that the basic teaching of the Quran is a message of love and tolerance and that this love extends to all creatures and all humanity.  Those who do turn to violence are not true Muslims, they are choosing the path of darkness rather the light that the Quran offers. He shared that his grandfather told him many stories of the time when Jews and Arabs lived together here like family, how his grandmother wet-nursed the Jewish baby of a neighbor who couldn’t give milk. Though he hears most often the pain of his own people, the sheikh sees that two nations in the Land are suffering. We should we should eat and dance at each others celebrations, this will build trust and love between us, he said. We have forgotten how we used to live together.

 

What I hear in the above is the important requirement to look at matters through the many different sets of lenses that people bring to the discourse table. These lenses represent life-lived historical contexts and over time have been used to develop the means to evaluate everyday experience live out in community. Right or wrong are never the issue here. It is what truths these lenses bring to the discourse for even though no single lens provides perfect clarity; together they offer the hope needed to make for peace. It takes people to people diplomacy to realize this.