Palestine Israel grim reaping can change

 

           Dwayne Hunn

 

 

To change the Grim Reaper puzzle of Palestine-Israel, six pieces are needed: 1) money 2) kids 3) Marshal Dillons 4) NGOs 5) water and 6) smart politicians.

 

ü     Money, put it up or shut up.  Saudi Prince Alwaleed, whose post September 11th check of $10 million with a ‘lecture US’ note was rejected by Mayor Guiliani, should challenge Israeli supporters to match the $500 million he will raise from his brothers.  Proposing and obtaining his money would be a public relations coup, which Palestine and the Arab world needs.  Then, it should be spent on three items.

 

ü     Kids that school and play together don’t troll killing each other. Spend part of the $1 billion building “integrated Palestinian-Israeli” schools, athletic fields and community centers, especially near areas that grow terrorists and hate.  A UN Education Committee organized by institutions such as Oxford, Harvard and others of that caliber should find and approve teachers, school texts and programs that are balanced and reduce hate inducing propaganda. Many of the teachers should be Peace Corps volunteers.   Kids that play and learn together do more for social and economic harmony than any other program, as America learned from desegregating schools.

 

Spend some of the money repairing destroyed Palestinian homes and paying Israelis to leave their settlements that dot too much of what will be Palestine.  A safe, secure and owned home is the best place, even better than a school, for loving parents to teach children the value of life, tolerance, hard work and learning.  Ask any immigrant or near-immigrant American family that bootstrapped their families up the ladder.

 

ü     Marshall Dillons cleaned up America’s raucous west with guns, rewards and then laws.  Increasing citizens’ responsibilities via debate and fair elections produces better government.  In the meantime, guns, rewards, and paid for counter-insurgency cuffs bad guys.

 

Therefore, for awhile, the Marshall’s posse must ride -– just as it did in the Old West.  That posse must be a UN mix that includes Americans.  The One World Government fear-mongers who oppose this mixed posse will someday see that we are a global village, all made of the same basic stuff, but with sometimes troubling different shades and depths of insights. Remember when the kin of Air Jordan, Bill Cosby and Colin Powell  were just 3/5th of a niggardly person?  Our mission includes developing deeper insights and better understandings, and that includes nation building.  By making developing nations’ military, electoral and court systems better, we make our world of tomorrow safer.

 

ü     NGOs, volunteerism, as exemplified by the Peace Corps, Habitat for Humanity, Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, YMCAs, etc., do more to improve the world than do 95% of the world’s politicians.  After a defined period of peace, groups like Habitat and the Peace Corps should pledge to help build homes and businesses, educate and coach children, assist in health care facilities, etc., so that people-to-people work can cool the cauldron spewing out narrow-minded extremism.

 

Water quenches more than just fire.  Presently 34 countries in, Africa, Asia and Middle East are classified as water stressed (1,000 – 1,700 cubic meters of water per person a year) causing all of them but South Africa and Syria to be net importers of grain.  Between 2.4 and 3.4 billion people are projected to live in water stress or scarcity by 2025, compared with 505 million today.  Israel’s primary water source, the Sea of Galilee,  is shrinking rapidly. Water, poverty, and population control need today’s resources wasted on violence.

ü     The third part of that $1 billion should go to funding a joint Israeli Palestinian water development (including desalinization) project that will have both nation’s people work side-by-side.  If once nuclear clamoring Russians and Americans can jockey through space together, Palestinians and Israelis ought to be able to pound salt, make water and then drink wine.  Saudi Arabia ought to appreciate this, since their aquifers suffer an annual 6 billion cubic meter deficit.

 

ü     Smart politician know, “It’s the economy stupid.”  India’ non-violent Gandhi, South Africa’s Mkhuseli Jack and Mandella, America’s peacefully boycotting Civil Rights heroes, Denmark’s slow-down economic resistance under Nazi occupation,  Poland’s Solidarity union toppling communism, Chile’s mass non-violent gatherings and deft television use saying “No” to Pinochet – all relied on clever, non-violent, economic force to shake the powers, form world opinion and gain their rights.  Sharp politicians know non-violence and economics are forces more powerful than those dumb politicians like Arafat and Sharon are using.  The mad nations of the world need creative, courageous politicians. 

 

To help them bring those politicians forward America ought to tap its deep reservoir.  Send its shrewd, pragmatic pols to lobby and educate the tormented on achieving intelligent, non-violent economic growth.  Send and keep sending Carter, Ford, Bush Sr., and Clinton to talk and prod.  Let the world know we are sending, and resending, our biggest, most powerful, talking guns. The pen – and the good tongue – remains stronger than the gun.

 

While that goes on, today’s Marshall Dillons must lay the foundation that allows smart politicians, money, kids, and people-to-people projects make the grim Israeli-Palestinian puzzle sane and the world more harmonious

 

 

Dwayne Hunn Ph.D. served with the Peace Corpsin the slums of Bombay (Mumbai) and has built homes on Habitat for Humanity Global Village projects.