The Only Hope for Peace

As an Arab American and an American Jew, we usually react quite differently to news from the Middle East. One of us is more sympathetic to the Palestinians, the other to the Israelis. We disagree on which side bears more responsibility for the current carnage, and our anger is often directed at different parties to the conflict.

But these days, we have identical, appalled reactions to the images from the region that bombard us from our TV screens. The pictures--whether they depict Israelis or Palestinians--are too horrible to bear: pregnant mothers delivering children even after they have been shot; a bewildered and bloodied young man standing amid the rubble of a shattered coffee shop; mourners wailing in the universal language of grief; three-foot long coffins for children whose lives were cut short because grown-ups could not resolve their differences.

It is tempting for us, like others in our respective communities here in the U.S., to fall back on familiar, furious pronouncements of who has been more wronged and why the U.S. should lean on and pressure the other side. But, as we reel from the TV images, we think it is time for Arabs and Jews in the U.S. to change course. If we truly care about friends and relatives we know in Israel and the Palestinian territories, now is the time to set aside our traditional differences and unite behind the U.S. government’s efforts to stave off utter disaster in the Middle East.

Now that Vice President Dick Cheney has returned from his Mideast diplomatic mission, and U.S. Middle East envoy Anthony C. Zinni is continuing his tireless efforts to restore stability in the Israeli-Palestinian arena, we should tell the Bush administration, passionately and vocally, that it is the only glimmer of hope for a sustained end to the violence. It is painfully clear that Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon cannot reach an agreement on their own. Israelis and Palestinians cannot seem to stop themselves from escalating both violence and hatred. Unless the United States steps in, they will fight until one brings the other down or, more likely, until they bring each other down.

As Americans with special connections to the peoples of the Middle East, we should take advantage of our perspectives to try to influence the direction of U.S. policy in a new way. Rather than trying to score political points inside the Beltway at the expense of each other’s positions, Arab and Jewish Americans should have one position: support for the administration when it calls on both sides to make the painful but necessary compromises for stability and peace. It would be wrong and unrealistic for the U.S. to try to impose its will on either party. But viable, substantive negotiations will not be possible unless the administration presses both Israel and the Palestinian Authority to end violence, take political risks and build mutual confidence. This will undoubtedly mean concrete and potentially difficult measures, like adhering to the Mitchell plan’s ideas of halting Israeli settlement expansion and Palestinian incitement against the Jewish state.

Unfortunately, there is sometimes rancor and bitterness between our communities, as there is between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. However, while putting aside partisan squabbling and working together for the same foreign-policy goals is not easy for either of us, it is essential. But our doubts and reservations are assuaged when we see those horrible images of the current conflict on the evening news.

And we are also motivated by other terrifying images, particularly the ones that linger in our minds from Sept. 11: the planes colliding into New York City skyscrapers, the firemen weeping over lost colleagues, the daily photos in the morning paper of people slaughtered for the “crime” of being Americans. These, too, are reasons why both our communities should endorse balanced, even-handed Middle East diplomacy by the administration. It is not only our Palestinian and Israeli brothers and sisters who need this kind of diplomacy: We Americans urgently need successful diplomacy as well, because ending Palestinian-Israeli violence and political stalemate is a vital element of the war on the terrorists who threaten our country.

Unless there is progress toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it will be much more difficult for the U.S. to sustain a global anti-terror coalition that includes Arab and other Muslim states. The willing participation of those states will be particularly vital if the U.S. aggressively takes on other Mideast extremists who threaten American lives. That is why Cheney’s mission to drum up support for expanding the war on terror and combating weapons of mass destruction occurs simultaneously with more intensive U.S. involvement on the Israel-Palestinian front. These objectives are vital to the country we share, as well as the other region of the world we care so deeply about.

Regardless of the dire emergency facing Palestinians and Israelis, regardless of the need to protect American lives, there will be those in our communities who undoubtedly will be unhappy if the U.S. proposes formulas that neither party prefers but both can live with in order to end this bloody nightmare. But too many lives are at stake for parochial politics and business as usual. The current U.S. initiative faces daunting odds and may well not make the picture any more positive in the Middle East, but it deserves the wholehearted support of every American.