RutlandHerald.com - We Are Vermont

Ceasefire just a step

The ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah is only a step on a lengthy and uneven road to peace in the Middle East.

Just how uncertain the way forward is was highlighted when both sides took advantage of a delay before the implementation of the ceasefire to intensify the fighting, looking for a negotiating advantage – or just looking to inflict more harm on the other side.

Ethnic and religious conflicts are among the most difficult to truly settle. It takes decades, even centuries, to develop the trust necessary on both sides to prevent the inevitable grievances from turning into another shooting war. Witness the shaky peace in Sri Lanka, the Kashmir or the Balkans as examples.

But there are other places that give more hope.

Northern Ireland, for one, has had some setbacks in the implementation of a peaceful solution to the sectarian violence that shook the country for so long. But those setbacks have yet to explode into another Bloody Sunday or IRA bombing campaign.

These are the hardest years for that country, because so many still have personal memories of loved ones lost and other grievances. The peace, if it holds, should be easier for the next generation to maintain.

South Africa is another model. Ethnic warfare seemed inevitable in the years following the Soweto uprising, 30 summers ago now, as militants in the black community and the hardliners in the apartheid government each seemed ready for armed conflict.

Only by a series of conciliatory steps, first by the government and then by Nelson Mandela and other black leaders, was the transition possible from a government of, for, and by the white minority to a democracy.

That transition is a long way from over because the imbalance in terms of wealth and influence is a long way from over, an imbalance that is helping fuel one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world. But there are no suicide bombers blowing up trains in Johannesburg today, and the future is bright for what once was the most troubled corner of Africa.

In both cases, the road to peace was possible only because both sides saw a nonviolent solution as the best way out of a stalemate.

It is possible to find people of similar wills in both the Israeli and Arab camps. It is even possible such people are in the majority. But they are not capable of imposing their will on the more radical elements of their respective societies, probably because both sides feel they can gain a worthwhile advantage at the point of a gun, as shown by the last-day fighting before the ceasefire there this weekend.

There is no acceptable military answer to the Middle East problem; Israel and her neighboring Arab states need to recognize that short of genocide, they will have to come to terms with their opposite numbers. A successful Israeli attack against Hezbollah may have bought a few months' or years' peace, but no more, and the military stalemate has further reinforced the folly of trying to impose peace through war.

The Arab states — including Iran and Syria — need to show through their actions, not just their words, that they recognize Israel's right to exist and that they are willing to work to provide security, not terror; Israel needs to recognize it will not have peace by withholding the right to a secure, comfortable existence from the Palestinian people. Walls that divide people from their land and permanent refugee camps, whose residents are a stone's throw from their former homes and orchards, means that Israel can never be more than an armed camp.

Israel's military might — by virtue of American support — can earn it a ceasefire, but history shows that to get lasting peace, Israel and the Arab states must find a way to negotiate a settlement that recognizes the rights of both sides to exist without fear.