Ask the Box

01 aug 06

"How would you solve the crisis in the middle east"

this is a practical question, and i'm afraid it doesn't particularly inspire me. a preferable way to approach the issue, for me, would be "what are the underlying causes of the israeli-hezbollah conflict?" from there, i'd analyze the cause of the causes, until text became so theoretical that i felt safe and in familiar territory, dealing with philosophical inquiry again.

i just now got home from work, and emerged from my cool shower which washed six hours of grease, dirt, sweat and heat from my body. it's 12:13am, and i have to return to work tomorrow at 11am. i just had a big glass of milk, which replenished some of today's lost fluids. i've been dawdling on this question because it requires some thought that i'm not used to doing: namely, practical thought.

i really do need to be in bed before 1am, so i'm going to write this up quick. i'm not getting the kinds of questions i want, but i guess that's what i should expect. if i want to write about what i want, i need to ask the questions myself, which i might end up doing. also, i haven't been getting very many in the mail. so be it.

my solution is "let 'em fight it out, and watch the fun on CNN". if we're feeling expeditious, we could neutron-bomb the whole of the middle east, after which any conflict should come to an abrupt halt. but i'm not really that evil -- i recognize that these are human beings suffering, etc, etc. but arab-israeli conflict is not a solvable problem, on a deep level, so it's tempting to default to facetious sweep-and-clear. i remember the words "israeli forces" on media broadcasts when i was something like four years old -- that phrase made some poetic sense to me, and echoed around in my head, even though i didn't know what it meant. i remembered hearing and considering those words as a young child after they sounded again in the past few days: "israeli forces".

israel is mostly a reasonable state, or at least isn't completely insane, even though they seem to be a little bent on revenge (sort of like the united states), as opposed to seeking real solutions to problems. some days ago, i believe israel only demanded the return of its soldiers, at which point it'd stop attacking southern lebanon. but now, i think policy may have evolved to "wipe out hezbollah", which is problematic inasmuch as it's sort of hard to draw a line between hezbollah and lebanon. furthermore, some analyst on NPR this evening mentioned that hezbollah is, essentially, a manifestation of iran. consider this, and consider that syria is now doing some saber-rattling. the possibility of a return to 1948 seems to be creeping up on us.

you know, you should really be asking someone else about this. i'm not up on my middle east history (although i'm more up on it now than i was 15 minutes ago, after some quick wikipedia skimming), and furthermore i tend not to get excited about these sorts of things. if i were to propose a solution, i guess i'd say "quit acting like a bunch of babies". i mean, really -- these are adults here. nations behave like petulant 3 year olds, and need a diet of a few years of mr. rogers until they calm down and learn to share their apple juice and crackers.

see, these things wouldn't happen if the world were made up of a bunch of "me"'s. if the world were made up of a bunch of "me"'s, we'd all get along fine. if a group of "me"'s came streaming down into another group of "me"'s land and said "we want to hang out here", the second group would just say "fine". then, everyone would share their apple juice, and everything would be great.

but people are xenophobes, and can't stand the presence of any culture other than their own. this is the root of the problem, really: ethnic intolerance and xenophobia. a lot of people default to "racism" when they talk about this, which is simple-minded and makes me want to ignore them. but they have the fundamental concept right: members of group A, who are more like each other than they are to members of group B, refuse to understand or interact with group B because of these differences.

it's tempting to blame desert monotheism for all of this -- certainly some of the rabid extremism comes from religious passions ("this is our land because our god says so!" "no, our god!" etc). even in north america we had "manifest destiny", which was religious in nature -- god wanted white ex-brits to dominate what is now the united states from shore to shore, displacing heathens as necessary. it's the same thing in the middle east. but the problem is not limited to "the three madmen" (judaism, christianity, and islam) -- for instance, the japanese have been taking big bloody, ragged bits out of china since forever, and they're not being lead by a spirit in the sky.

so maybe we can't blame desert monotheism (even though it sure as heck doesn't help), but instead can only chalk the problem up to tribalism in general, which i'm afraid might be something that comes as naturally to us as reproduction.

the conflict isn't something that is solvable, on a very deep level. it goes back thousands of years, and is a matter of ancient civilizations and ancient religions. all we can do to stop the immediate fighting between israel and hezbollah is give them a reason to stop fighting -- ie, set things up so that the goals of each party will be better accomplished by not fighting than fighting. unfortunately, hezbollah wants israel to disappear, which isn't a reasonable goal. israel wants hezbollah to quit messing with it, which seems a little more workable.

i'm a more than a little disappointed in israel (no apple juice!), frankly, for stooping to hezbollah's level by waging a war of vengeance against civillian targets (again, i haven't seen any intelligence documents -- there might be military plans here that i'm not able to consider). civilian deaths undermine israel's credibility as a reasoned state, and frankly puts them on the same level as extremist groups like hezbollah. ultimately, behaving this way is counterproductive, and only fuels the fires of rabid anti-israeli sentiments in the arab world. violence begets more violence. but i don't need to remind anyone of this -- everyone knows it already. right?

i believe hezbollah would respond favorably to being treated as a serious political entity -- ie, be a party in hosted talks. so, we can try that -- leaders of israel and hezbollah can go meet somewhere and say "you suck" at each other for a while.

so, diplomatic talks. yeah. those.

treating hezbollah as a bunch of rabid animals that can't be taken seriously is a mistake. even if they are, they still should be involved in any negotiations, and recognized by the world as a legitimate political entity. this is not to say that they're not a bunch of shits, but so are lots of diplomats.

whether or not it was a good idea to create the state of israel in the first place (i'm not saying one way or the other), the fact is that it's there now, isn't going anywhere, and finding ways to live with it is more productive than sulking and occasionally throwing rocks at it. on the other hand, israel shouldn't be so haughty and unapologetic -- after all, they did sort of barge in. "screw you, we're going to do what we want, it's our land" is the general attitude of israeli statism, a stance that reflects the impetus for that state's inception, but one that does not constitute a helpful attitude. nor is the arabs', who just want the israelis to go away. well, they're not going to -- sorry. you don't have any choice but to try to get along.

often ignored is the fact that the vast majority of jews and arabs in the middle east just want to go on about their business, going to work, shopping for junk, and watching junk on tv. as always, we can blame the zealotry of leadership for all of this -- people on the whole are actually rather docile creatures. but, unfortunately, there are always a few "type A" beasts in the herd who lead the herd over a cliff. furthermore, i don't believe the problem of leadership to be a solvable one. what are you going to do, test kids for leadership potential and then kill them off if they score over an 80?

the root cause here is tribalism, which isn't something that can be eliminated. basically, as arnold the terminator says, it's in our nature to destroy ourselves. i like to carry high hopes for the distant future, as evolution holds the possiblity of a less hierarchy-based creature. but i don't think an egalitarian, peaceful, leader-less society is possible now.

diplomatic intervention, basically -- hosted talks that treat hezbollah as a legitimate state-like entity. an "enforced ceasefire" seems a bit of an oxymoron to me, but no matter -- what do i know? i'm not qualified to talk about these things. but hey -- somebody asked for my opinion. i'm going to bed.