http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,146692,00.html
Today Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas agreed to an historic ceasefire between their parties in the ongoing struggle between Israel and the Palestinians. There is much hope that this event will be the first step on the road to peace in the Near East, and perhaps it will. However, before the celebrations begin, there must be a clear, sober evaluation of the reality that is the Near East and the peace that everyone seeks.
The reality of the Near East is complex mixture of modern hatred and time honed distrust, but the steps needed to establish true peace are really quite simple. The solution lies in the simple establishment of secure, independent, and democratic states in the Near East.
How can such a daunting task resolve itself to something so easy? It is really quite simple. The rage that the peoples of Palestine and the wider Muslim population of the Near East feel comes from the impotency of not being able to determine their own destinies.
Consider history. In 1948, the British protectorate of Palestine was broken up and the nation of Israel was established. The people who lived there did not have a say in what was done to them, nor did they gain that say over the next fifty plus years. And in the wider Near East, the problem is much the same. Where in the Near East, before the US actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, was there freedom to determine one’s own destiny?
Such impotence cannot help but breed rage, and such rage is usually directed toward anyone seen as an enemy. Such is the real state of affairs between Israel and the rest of the Near Eastern countries.
Therefore the solution to the question of peace in the Near East is not one of ceasefires or negotiated settlements, but one of brining the self determination that the peoples of that region truly desire to them.
Until that day comes, these negotiated peaces are destined to fail, but as we have seen recently in Afghanistan and Iraq, they are not destined to fail forever.
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