May 24, 2007

A war is going on to the north of me in Tripoli, Lebanon and one is brewing in the south of Israel as Hamas is raining rockets down on the poor city of Sderot in Israel. I am right in the middle of the two. As you can fit seven Israels in the state of Georgia, you can imagine that I’m not far from either of these. The feeling is that another war is simmering to be ready this summer. It may be in Lebanon or in Gaza. Still, life goes on in the rest of the country. People live their lives as normal. However, the people getting shelled in Sderot have had to move out of the city into the homes of family, government provided rooms, or tents in refugee camps.

As this week was the holiday of Shavuot http://www.chabad.org/library/article.asp?AID=2150 , I took a trip with a friend down to the Negev Desert for a couple of days on a camping trip. The first night we arrived at a Bedouin campground and camped on a desert ridge when we arrived after midnight. It was cold at night. The next day I awakened to stark desert. I have my newly published Lonely Planet Israel guide and hiked a few hours in the hot desert sun on the Ein Sharonim trail along riverbed of the Maktesh HaGadol (Great Crater). It’s a huge dry desert canyon. We did see one puddle along the way, limestone caves, desert fauna, etc. It was hotter than Georgia asphalt. We brought food with us and stayed in the Bedouin hut the next night. It is a huge open hut with carpet floors. We slept on mattresses on the floor in the open with the few other “campers” that were there. It was a great place to come and just think about nothing. It was so desolate and hot during the day. You just didn’t want to move. And the silence! You only heard the occasional gust of wind. As we left today, they were preparing for a couple of hundred people for a huge Bedouin party that night. The owner was throwing it. There would be belly dancers; the works. We had to get back, though as I had a meeting with someone who might have helped me put together the investors to buy the real estate in the US. Unfortunately, we had to reschedule the meeting so I could have stayed the night.

Driving back, you wonder how the hell people lived and traveled in that climate. It was so hot during the day and cold at night. You couldn’t travel on foot by night as you couldn’t see in it would be too hot by day if you schlep all you need to schlep. I’m thinking about the spice traders and other travelers in history. I met some guys that were sleeping at the campground under a small shelter that were hiking the entire country, from Eilat to the northern tip. It will take them only a month and a half. They travel about 20 kilometers per day. I would LOVE to do that. They were all friends prior so you have to put together your own group and sometimes just sleep out in the open, I suppose.

Driving through the desert, I couldn’t help but think that this would be the future home of the hundreds of thousands of settlers in the West Bank. Most of Israel looked similar to this a few decades ago. If there will be peace, we all know they can’t stay there. Sure, we can argue that since the Arabs in Israel are full citizens with voting rights, etc, that the Jews could have the option to stay and be Jewish Palestinians. We all know that won’t happen. There is too much street hatred for these settlers.

OK, so here’s my dream peace agreement. I’ll throw it out and maybe someone with some influence won’t write me off as completely naïve. It’s simple.

Israel pulls out completely from the West Bank, keeps Jerusalem but gives Palestinian Arabs open access to the old city. There will only be armed Israelis as the police, though.

Israel gives back Gaza and its Jewish citizens can move or be Jewish Syrians.

Jordan gives up an area along the southern part of Palestine that is roughly equal to 50% of the current area. In return, the US gives Jordan Most Favored Nation status and other benefits.

Egypt takes Gaza as part it its territory in exchange for the US continuing its foreign aid to the country.

Israel allows some 700,000 Arabs from these territories to become Israeli citizens.

Israeli passes discrimination laws where there can be no bias for employment based on religion.

Israel focuses on Arab neighborhoods and on increasing employment and social benefits for them.

Of course, there are full diplomatic relations with the Arab League countries and Iran.

Israel stops subsidizing religious group practices with tax dollars. Tax deductions are OK but not direct incentives not to work.

These are a few off of the top of my head. There is so much resentment and distrust among the Arabs and Jews within Israel. They admit that one on one, each will be nice. They just don’t trust the other as a whole. Jews tend to think Arabs want Israel to disappear and to kill the Jews. Arabs think Jews want to kick them out of the country. There need to be more civil rights projects to better these relations. I have always felt that Israel really has to spoil its Arab population so that the enemies abroad don’t necessarily have allies within the Israel borders.

All of the pro-Israel groups with whom I have worked paint a beautiful picture of Israel. But, there are real problems, shortsightedness, cynicism, and anger that have to be healed.

Randy