Thus runs informed opinion. I’m not so sure. The first objection is that you cannot force freedom - individual or national - on someone, it has to be taken. The same is true of liberation or independence. The Palestinians will not feel free unless they have won it, not been given it. Being independent is as much about feeling independent as having a legal document saying that you are independent.
An offshoot of this is that while Israel is so overwhelming powerful militarily, and Palestine so correspondingly weak, Israel cannot bomb or bulldoze the Palestinians into accepting what they don’t want. Palestine can never win the war; survival is its victory. Israel can provide as much war as it wants but only Palestine can provide peace; thus in the epicenter of the Holy Land the holiest irony applies: the weak have become strong and the strong have become weak.
The second objection is that, as we have seen, grand gesture peace agreements imposed from afar - like Oslo and Camp David - only make matters worse as they give extremists on both sides an incentive to ramp up the terror- ism, to form a holy/unholy unofficial alliance to destroy the peace agreement. All of the above informed opinion solution requires a new Oslo or Camp David. At the moment the vehicle chosen is the so-called Quartet, representing the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia. I visited the Quartet headquarters at the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem. Impressive it is not; not the hotel I hasten to add, which is superb, but the organization itself. The problem starts at the top as it is headed by a totally discredited figure, the ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The inherent arrogance of bringing these foreign bodies to tell the ancient tribes of Israel and Arabia how to conduct themselves is offensive and counter-productive. So is the Quartet’s posturing. Surely if they are asking Jordan and Egypt to be part of the solution they should formalize their involvement, and that of neighbors Lebanon and Syria too?
My solution, the millionth solution hereabouts where everybody has their own solution is to just leave well enough alone and let nature take it course. Have we not seen how imported peace agreements from the 1947 UN Partition Plan to the latest pow-wow in Washington to the Quartet’s pronouncements only make matters worse?
Israel has not known a day of peace since its foundation, not peace as we know it in the real West. When there hasn’t been an actual war, there’s been a phony war, or preparations for war, or rumors of war, or the aftermath of war and always a real or imagined state of emergency. The demographics in Israel are changing; the young - and 45 per cent and growing are under thirty - want peace, they don’t want conscription and they certainly don’t want war.
Over the border, now that Hamas has been sidelined to Gaza, foreign aid is pouring into the West Bank. There is new-found prosperity. Israel has already wound down dozens of checkpoints and outposts and there is good reason to suspect that with every terrorist-free day another will be dismantled. With checkpoints leaving security zones will dissolve. Palestinians can see that peace and prosperity are Pavlovian. As in Israel the demographics are changing fast; youth prevails, change is in the air.
The most obvious problem on the ground are the settlements. They cost Israel a fortune to maintain and subsidize, they are full of unsavory people and are the biggest single obstacle to any... settlement. Why not just leave them and let it sort itself out? Tell them they will no longer live in an armed camp and if they want to leave here’s a Gazan style pay-off check. I suspect many will take the money and run. A lot of the biblical brigade will up sticks the moment an unrestricted Palestinian taxi drives up. The rest will just get used it; after all they have a nice house and garden on the top of a hill, which is more they had when they arrived.
The second most obvious problem is Gaza. In theory it is part of Palestine; in practice it is its own worst enemy. Most West Bankers would cast it adrift tomorrow if their best interest were best served by so doing. As long as Hamas is in power there will never be a solution, so why not just set it to one side and let it sort out its own destiny?
The last most obvious problem is Jerusalem. Here I can offer no suggestions with any chance of Realpolitik success. Again we can just hope that time and education will lessen its significance to all concerned. The Byzantines built the magnificent church of Santa Sofia in Istanbul; the Muslims made it into a mosque; now it’s a museum. When the Muslims made it into a mosque the Christians were angered; when it became a museum the Muslims were angered. Now, well it just doesn’t seem to matter, religiously, to anyone any more - it’s just a wonderful museum open to all. Who’s to say in some years hence the world will be welcome to visit the Museum of the Temple Mount?
So that’s it. Peace is just a dream. Nationhood is as quarrelsome as ever. Religion is as troublesome as only it can be. Hope? No, not on the face of it. And yet, and yet... the old have too much invested in past attitudes and past struggles; too many old scowls on too many old faces. The young on both sides have tasted the new world doctrine - more powerful than religion and politics - consumerism and prosperity. They talk to each other on Facebook and Twitter and see that neither of them are devils. They can read young blogs from students in Ramallah and refugees in Balata, reply from conscription camps in Haifa and kibbutz in the Golan. Their parents’ stories of hard times and hard luck are fading fast. More importantly the numbers are on their side, more and more with every election. Hope? I think so, give or take a generation or two.
For now Sam, thank you for the inspiration to make the trip. It’s right to leave the last word to you, the last words from the Holy Land in The Innocents Abroad, last words we could have sung and danced together:
“The long pilgrimage was ended, and somehow we seemed to feel glad of it.”
Very best wishes, from your good friend and fellow hack,
Ian
49 They want to send me abroad, as a Consul or a Minister. I said I didn’t want any of the pie. God knows I am mean enough and lazy enough, now without being a foreign consul. Letter, 1868
50 Apparently, there has been only one prominent event in the history of Mauritius, and that one didn’t happen. Following the Equator
51 This majestic vice Tom Sawyer
52 I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s. Mark Twain in Eruption
53 Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only true defence. Notes & Journals
54 Assassination of a crowned head of state whenever and wherever opportunity offers should be the first article of every subjects’ religion. Notes & Journals
55 Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either. Following the Equator
Acknowledgements and Further Reading
The main source material of course was Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims’ Progress: Being Some Account of the Steamship Quaker City’s Pleasure Excursion to Europe and the Holy Land. It was first published, on subscription. It was to remain his bestselling book during his lifetime. There are many current editions; I used the Penguin Classic version with its useful Introduction by Professor Tom Quirk.
Among academic studies of the book, research by the University of Virginia is particularly useful; see their The Innocents Abroad homepage. Also helpful was the University of California Press’ Traveling in Mark Twain by Richard Bridgeman and Mark Twain:The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens by Jerome Loving, as well as the University of Chicago’s Mark Twain Abroad:The Cruise of the Quaker City by Dewey Ganzel.
Well thumbed is the Ron Powers biography, Mark Twain, a Life. A real labor of love is David H. Fears’ Mark Twain Day by Day, a reference work which is just what it says it is.
The main Mark Twain research body is the Mark Twain Project based at the Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley. They are
digitizing all the material relating to his life and works and making it available for research through their online facility.
Looking across the cabin at the bookshelves I can see the following:
Edward Said, Orientalism
Benny Morris, One State,Two States
Tom Segev, Elvis in Jerusalem
Charles Glass, The Tribes Triumphant
Alan Dershowitz, The Case for Peace
Brian Sewell, South from Ephesus
William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain
Robert Fisk, The GreatWar for Civilization
Norman Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah
Mitchell G. Bard, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Middle East Conflict
Karen Armstrong, Islam and The Case for God,
Christopher Hitchens, God is not Great
Reza Aslan, No God but God
Once out at sea the politics and religion stay ashore. There are no pilot books for sailing down the Levantine coast but yachtsmen can use the semi-wiki www.noonsite.com or the forums on the Seven Seas Cruising Association’s website. As always Nigel Calder’s Boatowner’s Mechanical and Electrical Manual, Tom Cunliffe’s The Complete Yachtmaster, Jimmy Cornell’s World Cruising Routes and Peter Bruce’s Heavy Weather Sailing are close to hand.
Also Available
Innocence and War Page 32
