Every day the community faces the possibility of breakdown — not from the forces of nature but from sheer human unpredictability. Robert Heilbroner
The fundamental idea is not that of removing disturbing elements and letting things settle down, but that of introducing a peace-power among the disputants. Vilhelm Grønbech
Endless numbers of speeches, publications, political debates do not have the function of getting at the root of important questions of life but of drowning them in verbiage. Wilhelm Reich
A late justice is a lame justice. Amit Kalantri
We protect ourselves to excess because we learned abruptly and painfully that no one else would. Sarah Olson
There are innumerable ways to murder a person, but the most subtle and pernicious of these is to mutilate the soul of the innocent by denying or downgrading their uniqueness and their beauty. Gerry Spence
Is not most talking a crazed defense of a crumbling fort? Hafiz
Like others of my ilk, I am poised in front of a computer screen early on a Sunday morning waiting for the start of the Security Council emergency session following another long week of deadly violence in a conflict between Israel and Palestine that is as old as the UN itself.
The images from this recent, relentless exchange of hostilities have been heaped on top of so many others over many years, the fires we have addressed when they rage but which we never bother to completely extinguish, the embers of incitement and occupation, of intimidation and brutality that are one brisk wind away from igniting yet again, forcing the Council and other UN member states to public affirm their client interests or shrink into the background hoping that the red glow beneath the ashes from the last rounds of hatred and violence will somehow spare us all from what has almost become inevitable — more misery for the people, more trauma for the children, more narrow, nationalist justifications for occupation, more incitement to violence, more talking unattached to remedial response.
Amidst the disturbing images of buildings reduced to rubble with little warning for the civilians and media professionals who occupied them, the “iron dome” patterns in the night sky in response to missile attacks emanating from Gaza, the brutal measures adopted by Israeli defense forces on worshippers in Al-Aqsa Mosque at the end of Ramadan, the ecstatic jumping for joy of a group of Israelis as that same mosque was seen engulfed in flames, the young boy rushing to the head of a funeral line to say a final goodbye to his muirdered father. There is no shortage of heartbreak in these images of conflict allowed to rage, allowed to recur over and over. There never is.
Perhaps the most heart-tugging image of all was courtesy of a video widely circulated of a young girl surveying the wreckage from one of many air attacks on Gaza this week. As she held back tears, she remarked while pointing at the rubble “You see this? What am I supposed to do? Fix it? I’m only 10.”
She’s only 10, living in what some have called an “open air prison,” wanting to “help my people” but for now having to live with rubble both physical and psychological as she awaits her turn to serve and to lead, a turn which unless we cease this recurring cycle of misery might never come.
Sadly, as we know, hers is not the only story of childhood-denying misery, misery that will likely require herculean efforts to heal, misery which will turn a few children into heroic adults while leaving many others angry and despondent over years of having their beauty and potential denigrated, leaving scars that won’t easily disappear. Such scars represent a future in grave jeopardy for us all, a future for which we all bear some responsibility but certainly for the nations and institutions which continue to cover up abuses and other crimes, which continue to advocate for client states, simultaneously selling them weapons and undermining any timely prospect of accountability.
The UN earlier in the week gave good attention to another tragedy not as long on its watch, the genocidal violence committed beginning in 2014 by ISIL terrorists against the Yazidi people of northern Iraq, including mass executions of men and young women forced into conditions of sexual slavery.
There are differences between the situation facing the Yazidi and that now faces Gaza. While it may turn out to be the case that some UN member states have enabled ISIL violence through some nefarious back-channel means, ISIL itself has no visible state protectors. The violence which was inflicted against the Yazidi has been widely encouraged by the international community to be thoroughly investigated by UNITAD though this has so far not resulted in tangible prosecutions seven years after the occurrence of these abuses. Such investigations have only recently enabled the conditions for Nadia Murad and many other Yazidi to properly bury their murdered loved ones amidst a cloud of revisited sorrow, one piece of a relatively uncomplicated (if deferred) promise of some genuine closure, some eventual justice for perpetrators, some final resting place for the unimaginable pain inflicted over many months. Gaza currently experiences few such tangible promises.
And yet, there are several lessons from Iraq that could be applied to the violence in and around Gaza which as of this writing shows little prospect of abating: the importance of thorough investigation of abuses and competent justice mechanisms; the need for transparency regarding the political alliances and backroom deals that undermine the peace and justice we claim to want; the firm resolve to cease all arms sales and transfers into conflict zones; the importance of investigating and then sharing not only the specific consequences of armed violence but exposing the reticence of those tasked with ending violence to uphold their full responsibility to ensure that violence once constrained is not allowed to recur. In addition there is the lesson, largely unheeded, to put an end to a Council practice which enables the major powers to shield clients (Israel, Syria, Myanmar and more) from the legal consequences of the most horrific of their actions.
As the emergency Security Council meeting on the Israel-Gaza violence earlier this morning draws to a close, it is not at all apparent that we have learned the lessons which are now required of us. Despite some passionate and eloquent statements by Palestine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and his counterparts from Ireland, Jordan and Norway, it is unclear that the US will loosen the most toxic connections to its support for Israel; it is unclear that the “back channel” efforts to resolve the violence claimed by some states will ever see the light of public scrutiny; it is unclear that arms trade restraint will soon become the norm rather than the exception; it is unclear that states are uniformly willing to help the International Criminal Court and other legal entities apply the lens of justice now becoming operational in Iraq to bring closure to so many Gaza children and others in the region terrorized and victimized over so many years by a range of violent acts; it is unclear if states understand beyond their own rhetoric that putting out the Gaza fire is not the same thing as suppressing the immediate flames, but requires more attention, more hands-on action, more responsibility to address all aspects of our current cycles of violence.
And part of this responsibility requires a commitment to discernment that is often hard to come by in diplomatic settings, discernment regarding our failure, metaphorically speaking, to ensure that the “campfire” of violence is completely snuffed out, that those embers of future destruction which continue to smolder long after we have damped down the most damaging and obvious flames are no longer allowed to flare up again and engulf entities and citizens with what in our current circumstance seems like an otherwise inevitable renewal of their searing heat.
We have the capacity to turn current political impediments into peace power, a “power” that demands of us a determination to ensure that the fire of mass conflict has been fully and utterly extinguished. So long as the embers of our once-raging violence continue to glow, so long as they continue to threaten, we in the peace and security community simply cannot claim to have done our proper jobs.
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