How to Make Peace 1

In the world today, I find that most political discussions always get stuck on the problem. Rarely do I see people discussing a solution.  But to create influence and earn the credibility of the listener who cares and wants to learn, it is highly effective to discuss where we go next.  I do often hear people just saying, “hey man, I can explain the problem, but the solution is just too complicated.” Well, while it is somewhat more complicated, it is very much possible to explain.

To talk about peace, you must go beyond the region and figure out what’s adding flame to the conflict. To achieve that, I need to break down the problem into several components. Yet, for my friendly neighborhood ADDs, you can skip to the summary, which should give you enough information to understand the solution.

As I mentioned in the PR section, the key to influence is easily distributed information. That means understanding the problem and, in this case, the solution, where you are able to explain and teach it efficiently to as many people as possible. Hopefully, you will be able to create mass influence that will eventually reach the leaders that can actually implement changes.

So making sure that as many people can understand, agree, and explain the solution to others is how you get more voters and more influencers to get policy changes that can affect peace in the middle east.

Now, before I start explaining, I have to offer a little disclaimer. The real solution is not this coexistence, peace-loving approach. Don’t get me wrong, I think coexistence programs are amazing and have their place, but on a global scale, they don’t seem effective enough to tilt the scale. What I’m suggesting is tough love. It’s avoiding that common practice we have in the community where we try to find these fake common grounds just to get a discussion. It is all about bringing to light, ideas that people often try to avoid or ignore. For anyone who reads any of my content knows that I’m an unapologetic Zionist, and I preach an unapologetic mentality. That means I subscribe to the idea that Israel does hold the ethical high ground in the conflict. Saying that, my solution is not about blaming the Palestinians either, because I actually do believe they are also victims. So you get none of that, “if only the Palestinians would get the shit together, we could have peace.” It is far more complicated than that.

I’m not even aiming at Hamas. While I do believe that if Hamas or Hamas alternatives like Islamic Jihad did not exist, we might have had peace already. Considering that they are not going anywhere anytime soon, at least not without diminishing outside forces, trying to remove the unremovable is not a solution—just a talking point.

The last introductory point that I need to make is offering a definition of what I actually mean by a solution. For me, the only reasonable solution is 2 states.  Now to sink a bit deeper, what I’m really trying to solve is how to get the Palestinian leadership to say yes to a reasonable 2 state peace treaty. Again I do feel that Israel does hold the ethical high ground and has an incredible track record for peace with Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf countries, often at Israel’s expense. We also can’t ignore all the offers that Israel put on the table for the Palestinians.

So busting Israel’s chop after all these efforts is not only unfair, it pushes the entire process backward. Because it makes the Israeli voters, and with that, the government loses interest and redirects focus more on security issues instead of peacemaking ones. So the goal is to get the Palestinian leadership that often refused in the past to accept the 2 state solution.

Some people claim that 2 state solution is not possible, but they never seem to explain why, besides blaming it on the settlements. The reality is that the settlements can be dismantled and have been in the past, just like they were done in Gaza 2 decades back. It’s painful, but again Israel has made the sacrifice for peace. Also, the west bank settlers only comprise about 6% of the land, and g-d forbid, maybe the future peace agreement would include some Jews in a Palestinian country like there are plenty of Arabs and Palestinians in Israel. I feel that anyone who claims that it’s not possible to have 2 state solution simply just doesn’t want that solution in the first place.

So, if I didn’t discourage you yet from listening to my strategy, in the following article, we will start discussing the few key players and historical facts that we need to understand in order to explain the solution. Starting with the UN and Unrwa.