What is the meaning of peace?

So here is my final essay. 3,000 some words. Topic selected from Irene's list. (The course isn't over yet, though. One saturday school and final Thursday evening.)

I really left it till the last moment. I hadn't read half the books, half as thoroughly as I would have like but, hey! I was too busy living.

I went to the main university library Monday. It was deserted, pretty much. Found a few of the books I wanted: Kant's 'Perpetual Peace', Barash, Weil. They didn't have Hinsley or 'The Meaning of Meaning' (a classic text on the subject). Amazing. Lost. (Neither did the college library when I went there later.) Still I read TMOM once upon a time and there is a crib of sorts in Wikepedia.

Tuesday I assembled my essay plan. I had the idea of constructing the essay as Language, Concept and Reality. First I would introduce the semiotic triangle (TMOM), then have a section about 'peace' as a word (indo-european root and all that), then a section about the concepts that the word is used to 'symbolise' ( to use the jargon) and then about the reality that these concepts were 'refer' to.

Wednesday I wrote the beast. I started with the introduction, as I have been taught. Write an account of what the essay is going to about. I did that. The centre of gravity of the essay was always intended to be an analysis of the conceptions of peace used in the 'conflict resolution' community, so that is probably where I should have gone next. I didn't. I started of with the philosophy of meaning and the linguistics of peace and got a bit lost and used up a lot of words and became tired. Half the day was gone. Started with Michael Bank's conceptions and started to get fired up. Realised that I would have change my plan. Hell, I was enjoying this. I should write about something I'm fired up about. So I changed plan. Its late in the day now. I decided to dump my attempt at 'A history of peace' and replace it with an analysis of JFK's big speech on peace. Much more fun. So this took me most of the way. When did I decide to include a reference to Prem Rawat? Not until the end really. When I looked at quotes I was glad I hadn't tried to construct a concept of peace and that I acknowledged the utility of conflict resolution, even if it is not 'peace'. To bed at 3.15 am.

Thursday I tried to polish it up. I like it. Given more time I think I would have cut some stuff out and clarified and developed the argument more but hey! its done. Its a polemical (look it up) rather than a scholarly piece, given that I make an argument and seek to support it, rather that weigh up the pros and cons of contending meanings. But that's the way it came out and I don't think I would change if I could. Perhaps there is too much opinion and I didn't conduct my analysis in the manner of an academic in the 'conflict resolution' community. It will be marked down. It was when I had a rant about the Chinese military buildup. But here it is...[footnotes missing]

What is the meaning of peace?

Introduction
In this paper I will be considering which of the many conceptions of peace should be considered to be the meaning of peace. First, I will review the way the word is used in different discourses and then I will critically evaluate explicit concepts of peace as principally as expounded by John F Kennedy, Michael Banks, Johan Galtung and Pierre Weil. And present some remarks on the subject from Prem Rawat. My argument will be that the way peace is conceptualised should serve a purpose: to facilitate the achievement of peace. I will therefore reject possible meanings that have been found impossible of achievement; I will also reject meanings that are capable of achievement but fall short of qualifying as genuine peace.

My conclusion will be that of all the formulations offered, none pass both tests wholly satisfactorily. None of them both qualify as genuine peace and have evidence of attainability. Pierre Weil’s concept of holistic peace may reach towards a fruitful conception of genuine peace, but fails, in my opinion, through lack of evidence of attainability. Michael Bank’s concept of peace as conflict management has the benefit of attainability, but fails to qualify as genuine peace. So what are we left with? The concept that emerges from my analysis of Michael Bank’s peace as harmony most closely resembles my own view. A view, as yet, unsupported in the literature, but most clearly enunciated by Prem Rawat.

The language of peace
Peace has long been a word of diplomacy: The Peace of Boulogne (1550) and more recently peace talks, peace negotiations and peace settlements. It is a legal word: in time of peace as in time of war is a recurring phrase in the Geneva Conventions . It is also a sacred word (sometimes capitalized to indicate this): the Prince of Peace and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding , from the King James version of the Bible. It is a word (sometimes hyphenated, sometimes conjoined) much used to describe the activities of various military and civil security institutions: peacemaking, peacekeeping, peace-building. It is a word that at one time appeared frequently in political oratory. In 1963 President John F Kennedy used the word forty-nine times in one short speech at American U using the phrases such as Pax Americana, genuine peace, community peace, institutions of peace and world peace . It is a word adopted by various militaries: the US Air Force named its multiple re-entry MX missile system the Peacekeeper, the Israeli military high command designated its 1982 deployment of forces into Lebanon Operation Peace in Galilee, US Army thinkers now talk of the need to win the peace and their paymasters the phrase peace dividend. It is a word adopted by a certain counter-cultural or non-conformist elements with the peace sign, peace camp and peace movement. With peace gardens and days of peace. And in reaction: the term peacenik. Finally, of course, the word appears in the literature and practice of Conflict Resolution: negative peace, positive peace, holistic peace. The use of the word peace may be going out of fashion in certain spheres; peace to be replaced with security or stability, peace studies with conflict studies and what might have been called the All Party Parliamentary Group for Peace became the APPG for Conflict Issues .

Some would argue that the word peace is sometimes being ‘abused’ here. You can do that with words. Especially evocative words like peace, freedom and love. Some would argue that peace movements are really just rebellious civil unrest movements, that the Peacemaker missile was really a particularly powerful nuclear weapon system. Fair enough. These usages seek to promote one conception of peace at the expense of another. They are a form of advocacy. Their advocates belief that their conception will lead to the prize of peace, however they conceive it.

Concepts of peace
So now it is time to move on from the linguistic to the conceptual. What kinds of peace are there? As shown above there are many different discourses that utilize the word peace. To appraise the merits of the contending conceptions of peace we may consider not only what information about peace is being offered, what is the impulse behind the offering of the conception and the intended effect of the message on the audience. As Russell says, language is used for three purposes: to indicate facts, to express the state of the speaker and to alter the state of the hearer .

John F Kennedy
As a representative of international political discourse addressing the nature of peace, and the best way to achieve it, I have chosen President John F Kennedy’s Commencement Address at the American University given 10 June 1963.

After a jokey preamble he starts by reminding the audience about of the importance of peace. “I have, therefore, chosen this time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth too rarely perceived. And that is the most important topic on earth: peace. ” He immediately addresses the issue of the multiplicity of conceptions of peace. “What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of peace do we seek? ” Here we are. We need to know what kind of peace, what meaning of peace, so we can find it. He starts by eliminating some misconceptions. “Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. ” No comment. “Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. ” Ruling out ideas that nuclear war or surrender to communism could be considered peace. I can hear his voice now, “I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time. ” So we have a concept of a peace that is not only does the things peace should do, like make life worth living, but is also for everybody and for all time. But the concept is not fully articulated. There is no indication of how we are to reach this desired end state. First, though, he reminds the audience of why we need peace, as though his description is not alluring enough. Indicating, perhaps, that we are going to think the carrot not tasty enough and that the stick will be required too. “I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age where great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age where a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War.” Yes, this is scary but it also implies that genuine peace would be off the table if only Soviet nuclear weapons could be neutralised somehow. That actually Pax Americana is the real peace, but in the circumstances the audience will have to settle for genuine peace. Perhaps he doesn’t really believe in genuine peace, but hopes some of his audience do.

He then talks of world law and world disarmament, but essentially rejects these as visions of a peaceful world because the Soviets won’t play ball (I paraphrase). He then makes a nod to peace education and his version of looking inward “… every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward, by examining his own attitude towards the possibilities of peace, towards the Soviet Union, towards the course of the cold war and towards freedom and peace here at home. ” This is a conception of peace through thinking about peace. But he doesn’t want the audience to think about the wrong things. “I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of universal peace and good will which some fantasies and fanatics dream ”. Rejecting pacifism and revolution as paths to peace.

Now he sets out the vision of peace he thinks the audience should adopt. “Genuine peace, must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process – a way of solving problems. With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations, it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. ” It is ‘practical’, ‘attainable’ but is it the genuine peace he held out to the audience before? It sounds a lot like coexistence to me.

By any standard this speech was a tour de force, matching Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s seminal speech World peace is the desire of all peoples from August 1959. Pedagogical in tone, he was addressing students after all, it is a brilliant piece of rhetoric advocating a difficult course of action in dangerous times. The use of references to peace are both truly inspiring and, arguably, grossly manipulative. It suggests that Kennedy had already concluded that genuine peace was not attainable and sets out to draw support for his pragmatic approach using the concept of genuine peace as a lure.

Michael Banks
Michael Bank’s analysis of conceptions of peace has the benefit of simplicity, clarity and honesty. His proposes four alternative conceptions of peace. Peace as harmony, peace as order, peace as justice, peace as conflict management. He judges each as to its efficacy in promoting a better future for the world: the pragmatic, social-scientific approach.

His successful candidate conception is peace as conflict management. Selected because ‘traditional views of peace are inadequate, especially for the purpose of conveying to students of conflict resolution a clear impression of what it is that they are trying to achieve. ’ To critically consider the validity his selection, and its implications for the meaning of peace, one must first review the rejected conceptions of peace.

First let us consider peace as justice . The argument runs that without justice there is grievance, with grievances unresolved there can be no peace. The problem, interestingly, is that concepts of justice, and entitlement to it, are so much more contested that those of peace. When those who use violence say: we will give you peace, if you give us justice, it is immediately known what the peace part the bargain entails, but it is so much more debatable as to what the justice part might entail. One is tempted to say that while peace is hard to find, justice is impossible. So Banks says that those interested in promoting peace should not take sides or become emotionally involved in claims for justice. Receiving justice is highly to be desired, but it is different from peace. And justice certainly is not the meaning of peace.

Peace as order . This is, in a sense, the other side of the coin from peace as justice. This is the cry of those who want to maintain the status quo, because to some degree they benefit from it . Banks says ‘a conception of peace merely as the product of an ordered international political system can never help to achieve a future for the world which is substantially different from the past.’ It is hard to disagree. It has been said that it is a sign of insanity to do the same thing in the same way and expect to achieve different results . The implication of this definition would be that anything that threatens the interests of the powerful can be suppressed in the cause of peace . This is not to say that physical security is not a good thing, but that it is not the same thing as peace. Why? Is it because peace is a feeling and without that feeling no amount of physical security of itself can bring a feeling peace? If this is true of individuals, is it also true when the will of those individuals is reprocessed as the will of the state. The consequences of a state, essentially a military formation, ‘feeling’ insecure are well-known: arms races, aggressive alliance building, war .

This allusion to ‘feeling peace’ brings us on to Bank’s other conception of peace: peace as harmony . The one he dismissed with the most ease and the least words. I have a problem with his analysis here, though it provides much material for discussing the meaning of peace. In fact, in this section, rather than giving fair and informed consideration to this conception, he seems to dismiss it in the most trivial terms. It deserves deeper consideration. Before we do this we must first eliminate the material from his argument that is irrelevant, inaccurate or merely tendentious. To call something ‘utopian’ is simply a stock jibe indicating a foolish fantasy. What does that term represent? Not the Utopia of Thomas More, which belonged clearly the peace as order realm . Banks would have been better off citing Voltair’s Candide. Of course, one understands why there is a repugnance to idealized visions of a peaceful society. Attempting to realise them has been blamed for most of the bloodshed of the 20th Century: the imagined end state of a Marxian revolution justifying millions of killings; the dream of a world made peaceful through the abandonment of weapons and the adoption of pacifist principles complicit in the tragedies of appeasement and isolationism .

But he doesn’t use these arguments. Instead he associates the idea of ‘peace as harmony’ with the bad but easily attainable ‘self-absorption’ of ‘mystical existences’, fashion, psychotropic drugs and the ‘self-indulgent diversions’ of dropping out, self-sufficiency and subsistence farming. I fail to see the connection. True, in the popular mind these things are remembered together as part of the sixties and seventies. But does he show any evidence at all that ‘peace as harmony’ cannot exist perfectly well without any of these vices. He goes on to say that “Peace interpreted as personal tranquillity does, of course, form a plan of life for that distinguished minority of people who are able to retreat to a monastery. It may perhaps be just within reach of persons who were born to sainthood or who have benefited from first-rate psychotherapeutic care.” Quite the expert. But where is the evidence that you need to be distinguished, in a monastery, born to sainthood or have benefited from first-rate therapeutic care to experience ‘personal tranquillity’ of the most profound and life-enhancing kind.

Having now eliminated the trivia from his argument against ‘peace as harmony’ , what is left? His first substantial argument is to equate ‘peace as harmony’ with the absence of any form of physical or mental conflict and then to assert that, as this is all but impossible in real life, ‘peace as harmony’ is non-runner. That ‘peace as harmony’ needs the absence of conflict is, surely, just an assumption. What if there is evidence to the contrary. As a final clinching argument he asserts that even if ‘peace as harmony’ were possible, it would not be desirable because “In the language of social science, conflict itself is functional, but its but its functional benefits can and sometimes are accompanied by dysfunctional costs: hostility, rigidity, violence and destruction .” We know where is going to go with this. ‘We need a practical approach to resolving conflict’. Fine. But because his previous argument fails, so must this one. Where is the evidence that ‘peace as harmony’, the personal experience of ‘inner peace’, requires the absence of problems, of physical conflict, of mental conflict? Absent evidence, the jury must remain out.

This is not to say that when Banks moves on to his conception ‘peace as conflict management’ it is not with the highest possible motives. The world needs people who help people solve their problems. It is essential work. To stop people shooting each other, though, is a ceasefire; to stop them hating each other so much is reconciliation and to teach them to avoid problems is education. But is ‘peace as conflict management’ worthy of the title ‘the meaning of peace’?


Johan Galtung
A pioneer in the field, his analysis is truly awesome. He names a hierarchy of types of peace; a typology . Principal division: negative peace and positive peace. Negative peace being the absence of violence of all kinds. This includes structural violence (racial, sexual or economic oppression). Positive peace can be sub-typed as natural peace (co-operation, not struggle), direct positive peace (kindness, love), structural positive peace (freedom, dialogue, integration, solidarity, participation, harmony of mind, body and spirit) and cultural positive peace (legitimation of peace in society and the relaxation of self-repression personally).

This appears to be an excellent agenda for social and personal change. Is it peace? Certainly, if people behaved the way that Galtung wants them to behave and felt the things that he wants them to feel, it would come very close to genuine peace. Is peace thus conceptualised attainable? Galtung’s mediation work, surely, must have done much to facilitate the resolution of inter-communal strife. His writings must have inspired the hearts and educated the mind of many students. But is his concept succeeding in bringing about genuine peace? Is it capable of bringing about genuine peace? From where will the ‘transformative impulse’ come from? With the best will in the world, there must be many doubts. There have been plenty of social changes before and they may have improved some peoples lives, but they did not manage to bring genuine peace. As for the idea of personal change, in the manner Galtung describes, can we really hope that his ideas will succeed ? With regret, I must reject Galtung’s hypothesis as noble, but unattainable by the means implied by the concept.

[It is unfortunate that I did not receive a copy of the Arbinger Institute’s Anatomy of Peace in time to properly critique their conceptions of peace. On a preliminary scan I think I would be putting their ideas into the ‘useful’ but not really ‘peace’ category.]

Pierre Weil
Pierre Weil is firmly in the UNESCO camp of peace conceptualisation. For if it is agreed that war begins in the mind of man, then surely it is in the mind of man that peace must be implanted. His conception is explicit both as to the nature of peace and the way to achieve it. He says that the established paradigm can be changed through education. The established paradigm is described thus : “Peace seen as an external phenomenon. On the external level peace is seen: 1. As the absence of conflict and violence. Many theories: cultural, judicial, socio-economic, military, religious. 2. As a state of harmony and brotherhood between people and with nature. 3. On the Inner level peace is seen as the absence or result of dissolution of intra-psychological conflicts, known as a state of Inner harmony. There is a lack of integration of these various points of view.” Thus he assembles the body parts of peace, but now he must somehow breathe life into them.

He proposes that they may be synthesized them into an Holistic Paradigm and that in this synthesis they will come alive. His formulation is “Peace seen as an external and internal phenomenon. Peace is the result of a convergence of measures relating to inner ecology, social ecology and planetary ecology. In which the principal theories of the established paradigm are taken into consideration and find their place in an integrated manner. This convergence results in a transpersonal state of consciousness, of which peace is one of the manifestations. ” This is a wonderful theory. His formulation is surely as complete as one can imagine, having the strength of being prepared to incorporate any and all useful aspects of the understanding of peace. But is it destined to remain just a theory? While the education offered may make people better people, does it in fact bring them peace. Can peace be obtained from a concept however noble?

Prem Rawat
Where can peace be found?
“It is within every individual. And it is up to each individual to say, “I want peace in my life.” Societies do not have peace. Societies do not exist; governments do not exist—just people. Peace is a simple thing. It can be felt by the individual. When we forget the meaning of being at peace and only grab onto formulas for creating peace, we have problems. ”

“Try it all, try it all, I say. Anything that works for the purposes of peace is a good thing .”

Conclusion
At the start of this paper I said that conceptualising peace, saying what its meaning is, is only useful if it provides an indication of how humanity can achieve peace. In the course of the paper I have dismissed various contenders because whilst achievable, what was going to be achieved was not worthy of the name of peace. Other contenders have been eliminated by the contributors cited as being unattainable and justly so. There is just one contender left. The concept that emerged from my arguments against Michael Bank’s dismissal of peace as harmony. This is the concept of true peace as a inner experience. As with any of the concepts they are largely useless if not acted upon. In the case of this concept the requisite action would be to have that experience. Finis.

Bibliography
Arbinger Institute, The Anatomy of Peace, San Franscisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2006
Ashdown, Paddy, Swords and Ploughshares, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007
Barash, David P & Weber, Peace and Conflict Studies, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications Inc., 2002
Banks, Michael, Four Conceptions of Peace, 1987 from Sandole, Dennis, Conflict Management etc.
Burton, John W, Conflict: Resolution and Provention, London: MacMillan Press, 1990
Crocker, Chester, et al, Turbulent Peace, Washington: USIP, 1996, 2001
Francis, Diana, Rethinking War and Peace, London: Pluto Press, 2004
Ignatieff, Michael, Blood and Belonging, London: Vintage, 1994
Kennedy, John F, American University Commencement Address, 1963, (MP3 and transcript)
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkamericanuniversityaddress.html
Machiavelli, Niccolo, The Prince, 1532 Oxon: OUP, 2005
McNamara, Robert S, In Retrospect, New York: Random House, 1996
More, Thomas, Utopia, 1516, London: Penguin, 2003
Orwell, George, 1984, 1949, London: Penguin, 1966
Poole, Steven, Unspeak, London: Little, Brown, 2006
Ramsbotham, Oliver et al, Contemporary Conflict Resolution, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005
Rawat, Prem, At Rotary, Malmo, Sweden (DVD), Los Angeles: TPRF, 2006
Rawat, Prem, Peace Within, 2007 www.tprf.org/Maharaji_on_peace.htm
Ricks, Thomas E, Fiasco, London: Penguin, 2006
Russell, Bertrand, An Enquiry into Meaning and Truth, 1950 Oxon: Routledge, 2002
Sandole, Dennis & Ingrid, Conflict Management and Problem Solving, London: Francis Pinter, 1987
Schlesinger, Arthur, A Thousand Days, London: Andre Deutsch, 1965
Schweitzer, Albert, The Problem of Peace, London: A & C Black, 1954
Silverman, Kaja, Semiotics, New York: OUP, 1983
Tolstoy, Leo, War and Peace, 1869, London: Penguin, 1978
Weil, Pierre, The Art of Living in Peace, Paris: UNESCO, 2002

Stay tuned. More to come. Some stuff about peace-keeping and humanitarian intervention from this week and whatever is yet to come.

Any comment on the essay? I'm happy to debate. I would really like to get these gentlemen on TV with David Dimbleby: A Question of Peace. Finis.

Conflict Prevention

This week's topic is about what can be done by third parties to stop conflict becoming violent. Some useful fellow has calculated how much taxpayers' money could be saved if the West intervened in conflictual situations before they became genocidal rather than after. In practice the 'international community' likes to be real sure there's a BIG problem before they intervene, unless there happens to be other considerations beyond the merely humane. There is a problem, you see, with International Law. You are not meant to go messing in someone else's country unless they ask you to, unless, unless you think you ought to. Well, back in the 90s the government of newly unilaterally independent Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (Macedonia to its friends) was worried about the Former Yugoslav Republic (Serbia to its enemies) taking military action. The UN sent its first ever preventative deployment force and war never happened (as it did with Croatia and Bosnia). Did the UN save the day? Or was it a waste of money because the Serbs were never going to attack anyway? Nobody knows. It was some kind of a success, anyway. There was also concern about friction between the Macedonian majority and the Albanian minority in Macedonia. They didn't want to be treated like a minority. (Who does?) They wanted equal language and education rights. The Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) sent their High Commissioner for National Minorities, Max Van Der Stoel, to troubleshoot. And he did. Not a lovey-dovey type apparently, but he did the job. Squared away the problems at the diplomatic level: kept Macedonia on the international agenda and got the leaderships of the two groups talking. At the grass roots level i an NGO called Search for a Common Cause (and others) did the business. In one journalism project a Macedonian journo reported on Albanian affairs for a while and vice versa. Intervention at three levels: military, diplomatic, grassroots. Score two for prevention: one war between states and one between ethnic groups averted. Max scored a triple by smoothing things over in the Baltic States as well. Then comes the bad news. Rwanda and now Darfur. The prevention people reckon there are early warning signs of when group rivalries are going to turn nasty: group incentives for collective action, a group history of lost power, active economic or political discrimination, group capacity to undertake violence (strong identity, availability of weapons, supportive diaspora). Anyhow they missed Rwanda and now they are missing Darfur. (They, we, whatever.)

I realise I sound too off-hand discussing these tragic conflicts. But my mind is on other things. I have to do my presentation today and I want to do a good job. After the break my friend goes first with her presentation about Darfur. The most memorable information is about the economically symbiotic relationship that used to exist between the now warring groups. By arrangement the nomadic group used to take the farming group's cattle away with their own for one of the seasons of the year: feeding them but being entitled to drink their milk. However climate change, economic stress and government mismanagement combined to sour this relationship and it became conflictual. OK, now for me. As discussed with Irene, mine will be...

Presentation on Prem Rawat

This week the topic is “Conflict Prevention”. Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and Miall tell us about ‘operational’ and ‘structural’ conflict prevention; Burton about the difficulties of prediction and the dangers of ‘games without end’; Bruce Jentlesen about ‘preventative statecraft’, the art of making military threats. Thomas Ricks (the author of Fiasco) says there is a rule of thumb that you require one soldier per 50 inhabitants to bring peace; Paddy Ashdown in his Swords and Ploughshares, at great length, concurs. But what kind of ‘peace’ are they talking about? Although I disagree with Luttwak’s conclusion in his essay in Turbulent Peace that peace can only occur when one party to a conflict is utterly defeated, he has a point when he says that humanitarian intervention has had the effect of freezing conflicts, not of bringing peace.

Many talk of peace; how to define it; how to bring it; how to build it; how to keep it; how to enforce it. Few talk about what peace really is; how to feel it; how to know it; how to enjoy it; how to spread it.

My talk today, then, is about one man. Prem Rawat, (Maharaji as he is known to many.) He is a man who travels the world teaching peace. He teaches it to people who live in many countries, who speak many different languages, practice many different religions, hold many different political beliefs but all of whom have come to recognize the need for peace in their own lives. His talks are attended by senior politicians and prison convicts, by successful businessmen and subsistence farmers from small villages, by religious people and atheists and by ordinary and extraordinary people like me and you.

If I may quote Pierre Weil, the internationally renowned peace educator of whom we heard earlier in the course, speaking in October last year on the occasion of Prem Rawat gaving an address at his University of Peace in Florianapolis, Brazil: “On behalf of the University of Peace, I grant you the title of Ambassador for Peace. You don’t need a certificate, because your mission is to help people find where peace is, to help open a spring of peace in their hearts. But many people need to know who the Ambassadors for Peace are, they need to know whom to look for, search for—that is why we are giving you the title of Ambassador for Peace.” The Vice-Rector Roberto Crema added: “We welcome Prem Rawat’s presence as one of the greatest representatives of the peace movement in the world. More than his ideas, his actions are the concrete expression of a world of peace that we can know now.”

I quote Pierre Weil, because he is part of the ‘Conflict Resolution’ community. But I could equally well have quoted Franco Marini, the President of the Italian Senate; Emilio Colombo, former president of the European Parliament; Paco Gallegos,the Mayor of Quito, Ecuador; Kofi Annan the former Secretary General of the UN; George Pataki, the governor of New York; Governor Richardson of New Mexico and many other civic leaders. I will quote the Vice-President of India, Shri Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, who after introducing one of Prem Rawats’s events in India in July last year said, “I am amazed at the magnitude of this event and at how many people are deeply moved by Prem Rawat’s call to peace. I’m convinced that the people of India and our brothers from other countries need to embrace in their hearts Prem Rawat’s call to peace. For the last 40 years, as a messenger of peace, Prem Rawat has been making a constant effort to teach a lesson of peace to people. I would like to express my heartfelt feeling towards him, as a most trusted and respected person who takes a message of joy to society, and society puts it into practice. Doing so is the greatest success there can be in life. I want his message to reach the people around the world.”;

These and many other accolades have been showered on Prem Rawat in the past months and years both for his work teaching peace and for his humanitarian initiatives throughout the world in partnership with the UN, the Red Cross and Oxfam. The Lord Mayor of London received him this month at the Mansion House and best wishes for his humanitarian work came from Prince Charles and Tony Blair. I had the privilege of attending an event where Prem Rawat spoke that evening in the Guild Hall.

So I have introduced Prem Rawat as someone who works for peace. As the Vice President of India said, he has been working for peace incessantly for the past 40 years, since he was a little child. He has personally visited 250 cities in 50 countries on every continent and has students in 88 countries listening to his message in 70 languages.

It has been my pleasure and privilege to have known Prem Rawat for 33 of these years. I have worked out that over the years I have travelled to at least 46 different cities around the world to participate in his events. My enjoyment of the inner peace he teaches has been the most constantly good thing in my life: it is as sweet today as it was the first time I was shown how to feel it. For much of this time it has been a largely private, personal experience for me but I am delighted that now, in this special time, more and more people are at last finding out about Prem Rawat and his message – in all kinds of ways.

So the big question: what is his message? There is no point in me giving you a second-hand version when, thanks to technology, you can listen to direct from Prem Rawat himself on satellite TV, the internet or on DVD. (In Calcutta, it is true, and in 17 other Indian universities, you can study Prem Rawat’s message as part of the curriculum in a course called: ‘Performances, the Self-Discovery Program’ based on talks he has given at Harvard, Berkeley and other internationally renowned universities). I am going to show a short DVD and hand out some DVDs afterwards. I can also offer a selection of DVDs from my own collection and a recent biography to lend..

So I would like to read three short quotations from Prem Rawat:

The first is from the address he gave to a Rotary International meeting, in Malmo Sweden July 7, 2006:
Understand that if you don't feel peace, you may not be able to give it to anyone. If you want to quench the thirst of another, the least you need is water. Without water, you cannot quench somebody else's thirst. The water of peace flows within you. I'm not talking about creating something, but about discovering what already exists inside of you.

And then a couple of responses from him in an interview published on the TPRF.org website:
We live in a world at war. Is it realistic to hope for world peace?
When I was a child, I used to be enamoured with the idea of ‘world peace’, and it was a great thought to have. Then, as I started travelling throughout the world and meeting people, I realized there was no such thing [as the world]. It is not the world that needs to be fixed; it is people. When people are at peace within, there will be world peace.

Where can peace be found?
It is within every individual. And it is up to each individual to say, “I want peace in my life.” Societies do not have peace. Societies do not exist; governments do not exist—just people. Peace is a simple thing. It can be felt by the individual. When we forget the meaning of being at peace and only grab onto formulas for creating peace, we have problems.

Some people, like the seven million viewers of his award winning programme ‘Palavras de Paz’ (Words of Peace) in Brazil, simply enjoy watching his broadcasts on TV. Some people just appreciate the fact that his Foundation is delivering well targeted humanitarian initiatives. A large number of people are interested in learning his way to peace for themselves. (How to do this is explained at the end of the Designed for Joy DVD. It is free of charge, by the way.)

The idea of bringing peace one person at a time may seem impractical to many mainstream thinkers in ‘Conflict Resolution’, such as our friends Jentlesen, Burton and Luttwak, referred to earlier, but now you know that there is at least one person who not only says ‘Peace is Possible’ but also has the ability, the resources and the commitment to attempt to make that possibility a reality.

Finally to quote from a talk at Salamanca University
"I have a dream that all civilizations, all people on the face of the earth will soon live in peace. To those that say, 'Isn't that reaching too far?' I say, 'If that is true, then it is the only ideal worth having.'"

Any questions? Silence. How did you first meet him? Uni...

I show the short DVD of Prem Rawat at a Rotary International conference in Malmo, Sweden (also previewed by Irene). There is more of a rapport than there was during my presentation, thank God. Prem Rawat makes a joke about a lion and an elephant and though the audience in Malmo stay stony silent (serious business, peace) my class mates get it quickly and there is a ripple of female laughter. We run a little over the end of class time, and Irene thanks them for staying. Good old Irene. I have some DVDs to give away. Most people take one. One classmate wants all I've got, for her friends. She is from a country in conflict. She knows the value of peace.

Now I have a few days to pull together my final essay: "The Meaning of Peace". Irene liked my piece about Edward Said's Culture and Resistance. A lot. So now I have to try to keep the standard up.

Paddy Ashdown at the APPG for Conflict Issues

And so to Portcullis House. There isn't one, of course. Nor a drawbridge. There are x-ray machines and metal detectors manned by bobbies with HK53s. (What tactical need is being met by a ported 5.56 mm sub-machine gun, I wonder, as opposed to a holstered 9 mm handgun? I guess they are deployed for their menacing appearance - like the beefeater's halberd, which also would be pretty useless in a close quarter scuffle.) Anyhoo, the chaps are efficient and friendly enough to one, such as me, also in uniform (you know, the grey suit, white shirt, black oxfords sort). Up the stairs and round to the MacMillan room. Kind of ironic, I suppose, for a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Committee for Conflict Issues (peace by any other name), since Mac's enduring fame in the history of international relations was the retro-colonial Suez fiasco. But we are not here to talk about him. We are here to listen to Lord (Paddy) Ashdown and his thoughts on peace-building as articulated in his new book (yes, I bought a copy just to be polite) 'Swords and Ploughshares'.

I'm early. Greeters at the door. Pleasant room with plenty of natural light; cool and airy thanks to the building's novel airflow system (look for the outsize ventilation stacks on the roof, drawing fresh cool air through the building.) If I didn't know better I'd think the greeter had enjoyed a bracing beverage before starting her shift, so chatty and gracious is she to such a lowly one as I. Perhaps she has assumed I am a professor not a student. I correct her. The 'Ministry for Peace' provides the secretariat for the APPCCI. I am interested in MiniPax. The project was initiated in this country by Diana Basterfield, I am told, around the time of the invasion of Iraq and the consequent mobilization of peace groups. Those involved, it seems, are generally of a religious bent: Buddhist, Quaker, Sufi. John McDonald from the Labour left has championed their cause. I should find out more about what this Ministry would do. (I had thought that foreign ministries or departments for International Development would be the other side of the coin to Defence, but I apparently not.) Other guests arrive. The greeter checks an older gentleman on the list (older and more gentle than me, anyway) and he proffers a flyer about his peace group. Do we all have our own agendas?

Paddy arrives. Six foot, handsome, smiling and asking what kind of people turn up to this type of event. I am wondering too, but my ears unfortunately aren't sharp enough to catch the reply. I take my seat and others start to settle down too. There are about 50 of us in five rows of ten. (There are green monitors on the wall facing us telling us what else is going on the building: parliamentary committee meetings. Intriguingly there are two digital time displays: one is two minutes different from the other. Why two? Why different?) I spot Kat who invited the class to this event. It's a good thing they didn't all come: its pretty full now. Gary Streeter, MP and Chairman of the Conservative Party International Office introduces Paddy as a man of three careers: Marine, Liberal Democrat Party Leader and High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina (who exactly he represented, I still haven't established). Paddy grins and, feeling his way with this audience, starts of with a joke about George Brown getting drunk. No. Not the right approach. We laugh politely but are clearly not in need of cathartic release. He switches gear.

First he gives a sketch of his understanding of the world political situation as it is about to unfold: impending retrenchment by the US (no isolationism, that's impossible nowadays); the reemergence of Russia as a global military force; China's impact as yet unknown, unknowable; globalization; chill winds in Europe as the US withdraws its security guarantee making defence integration a necessity; the rise of Asia. Conclusion? Governance must be brought to the 'global space'. [Ah, more of the same then. We've tried political solutions for 3,000 years without lasting success, but lets keep plugging away.] Paddy fears that the US public will be so scarred (scarred, not scared) by the Iraq experience that they will not support future 'good' interventions (like Bosnia, of course). "The world is full of dry tinder and fire-brands". A quote. There are 74 conflicts in progress at the moment. But on the positive side, the UN has intervened on average once every six months in internal conflicts and has a 66% success rate in containing, preventing or curtailing armed hostilities. We KNOW how to do this. We KNOW the principles of how to deescalate conflict and build functioning states. Iraq though: "hubris, nemesis, amnesia". So sure were the Americans of their overwhelming power that they ignored the lessons of the occupation of Germany, of Japan, of Bosnia, of Kosovo and the well established expertise that exists in how to stabilize conflict zones. [Read the book, it develops all these themes.]

The gospel of Paddy: we should intervene; we should do it legally; we should plan for the peace at least as much as we plan for the war; we should become as expert at projecting governance as we are at projecting force. Attempts at pacification in Iraq and Afghanistan are failing because we have failed to provide security (Maslow's hierarchy of needs gets a mention) and thus have failed at step one to win the support of local public opinion and allegiance. (Security is a very basic need: people give their first loyalty in stress situations to those who provide it whether that be foreign troops, police, militias or war-lords.) We tried to do Iraq on the cheap in terms of manpower resources, compared to Bosnia. Afghanistan even more so. There is a way to succeed as a liberating power, but the window of opportunity is short for you to win over the population and lay foundations for a new state. In Iraq the US (alright, and the UK) flubbed and the window, the honeymoon period, is long gone. Paddy discusses the sequencing: of military action; of establishing civil judicial, police and penal systems; of rebuilding economies (enterprise, self-employment, not just aid); of institution building. The timing of elections, as a legitimacy tool, are critical. Involve the neighbouring states. It takes 10 years to build a functioning state; much longer to heal the rifts caused by civil war (like 250 years, apparently, for the English Civil War?!)

Is it just me, or is Paddy starting to sound like a liberal imperialist (the 'we' is indicative; Paddy is part of the power in the world; the audience are invited to become complicit too.) Gladstone, was it? The international community has the right and duty to intervene anywhere and everywhere. No need to reflect too deeply on how things seem from the local point of view: 'global norms' are self-justifying, self-evident and should be efficiently enforced on needy backward societies with barbaric tendencies. I paraphrase. Hey, don't get me wrong, I like self-evident truths as much as the next man and a real international community of equals would be a great idea. Never mind that we are being asked to ignore the self-serving behaviours of the big boys on the world stage and the fact they want to build states compliant to their own desires. [I recall that Ramsbotham. Woodhouse and Miall suggest that economic growth creates peace. Makes sense? Hmm. Maybe its true that economic growth papers over the cracks of latent dissatisfactions, but that is scarcely the same thing as bringing peace. It also implies that without constant economic growth there would be conflict. Too right. Wealth can be an anesthetic, not a cure for unpeace.] If you like the Paddy world-view, though, I think you will find 'The Utility of Force' by General Rupert Smith chimes in with it quite nicely. They mutually admire.

Question time begins. Shamir is first out of the blocks with what I can only guess, through the rather thick accent, is an articulation of my own thinking on the imperial tenor of Paddy's outlook. Paddy straight bats with a non-answer, ignoring the critical implications of the question. Gary intervenes to move us on to more congruent topics. Q: Reform security council. A: Sure, but I prefer imperfect legitimization to adventurism. [Njal, I want to say, as usual.] Q: Darfur, why not French no-fly zone? A: Aid aircraft not the problem; we managed in Bosnia. Q: Bosnia - stopping dealing with consequences start looking at causes. A: Thomas Aquinas says it is no sin not to do that which you are not able to do. He compares Aquinas's and Grotius's formulations for Just War with the UN formula. (Yeah, their the same - and this is meant to surprise you. ) 1) State breaks law 2) This effects neighbours 3) You've tried all other means 4) You're gonna use proportionate force 5) You have secured legitimization for action 6) you have a prospect for success. [ 7) Ok, go ahead, nuke 'em!] Then comes the 'why are there more women involved in peace negotiations and governance' question. (At the Brunei last week the answers were that women are just as hard ball as men anyway and that women are better in as much as they tend to focus on practical issues rather than principles). Paddy's answer is that try as he might he couldn't persuade women to come forward and participate.

So that was that. Meeting breaks up. MiniPaxers hand round glasses of wine and Paddy starts signing books. My neighbour turns out to work for ConflictsForum.org who, to quote their website, 'connect the West and the Muslim world.' Sounds good to me. I will check it out.

That's it for now.

A day of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations

Someone from class told me about an event on campus on Sunday. A day of unofficial discussions between veteran Israeli and Palestinian negotiators.

I reached the venue about 2pm. There were a dozen people watching a video feed into the conference room. A mixture of middle aged and young.

When I arrived the moderator was having the Israeli representatives describe the route of the ‘separation barrier’ and explain section by section why it didn’t follow the 1967 ‘Green Line'. This was in order to connect adjacent Israeli settlements with the main body of Israel. The Israeli’s pointed out, however, that all the settlements have ‘separation barriers’ around them already.

Let me introduce the guys. Meet General Shlomo Brom, Deputy National Security Advisor to Ehud Barak and former Director of the Strategic Planning Bureau, Israeli Defence Force General Staff. Very measured manner, unlikely black hair, mildly aggressive sense of humour. His younger colleague, Reserve Colonel Shauli Arieli, a veteran of Geneva Accords and the Camp David negotiations: taller, shaven headed, lets Shlomo make the running. Meet Hussein Agha, advisor to the Palestinian Authority (PA), analyst, writer, academic. No, not glasses and smart casual: that would be Edward Said. Hussein was more of a rough-and-ready figure, light blue polo shirt unbuttoned and untucked, last shaved yesterday or the day before, robust sense of humour, passionate but able to bridle his passion. His colleague Dr Ahmad Khalidi, also an adviser, academic and writer, had a more serious manner but, even after a long day, tireless in picking up detailed points and keeping his remarks remorseless on topic. The supporting cast included Dr Claire Spencer, Head of the Middle East Programme, Chatham House occasional interjecting remarks for clarification or procedure and her colleague Professor Yossi Mekelberg, improbably young.

I was amazed as the Israelis happily reeled off their statistics about how the wall will now only annexe (my word) 5% (or 6 or 6.5%) of the West Bank into Israel proper, down from 9%. What a deal! My Palestinian boys are unflinching. (My mate Sami would have gone through the roof! YOU ALREADY TOOK 80%! NOW YOU TAKE 5% MORE AND CALL THAT A COMPROMISE! AND IT’S A PARTICULAR 5%. WHAT ABOUT CONTROL OF THE WATER!) Dr Ahmad and Hussein are unfazed. They only make notes and seek clarification: what about Jerusalem…

They need to keep their cool. There is more provocation coming. General Shlomo drops in his opinion that Ariel Sharon is a ‘good man’. Isn’t he is a Palestinian bête noire?, if so, Ahmad and Hussein don’t rise to the bait. “The Israelis would like to negotiate, but they don’t have a partner.” Another barb from General Shlomo. Nothing, not a flicker. These guys have had it all before. They don’t even bother to suggest that Israel and the US have done everything they can to undermine any potential Palestinian ‘partner’ that really represents Palestinian opinion. I am unclear as to whether General Shlomo does this to express stereotypical Israeli opinions that will have to be appeased, or, as I fear, does it almost unconsciously as an expression of institutional disdain. I say this because, under the guise of a joke, he also calls his opposite number ‘Corporal Agha'. Agha, a Senior Associate Member of St Antony's College Oxfored, does not appreciate the joke, but swallows his reaction. Of course, many would agree with Gen Shlomo’s viewpoints; think he’s being reasonable. In a tea-break I talk about things with a Israeli-born former South African. To him the Palestinians have succeeded in hijacking the ‘left-wing’ media to their cause. European liberals have been fooled by Palestinian propaganda into thinking Israel is the aggressor. What can I say? They’ve fooled me.

The stated aim of the daytime session was to come up with a statement of things that the two sides could agree on. Not an ‘agreement’. Simply facts, descriptions of the situation, possible approaches to a next step could they agree on. Much reference to Track II negotiations, being jargon for unofficial discussions used to find ways towards frameworks for formal Track I negotiations.

Here are my notes on the ideas floated, concepts raised. Not so much cut and thrust, but feint and counter-feint.

Dr Ahmad: at present Israeli and Palestinians positions are not on a course for convergence; Palestinians are taking a harder line. This is partly because, as internal conflicts reign in Gaza/West Bank (GWB), the Palestinians living outside the GWB are starting to assert themselves more. They have a greater stake in the details of a final settlement especially the right of return. The centre of gravity of Palestinian nationalism may move ‘outside’ again, as it was before the return of Arafat. Encouraged by the Geneva Initiative, did I hear him say? ( www.geneva-accord.org). All bets are off: 2 states, 1 state, no states… popular talk about dissolving the Palestinian Authority.

Gen Shlomo counters this by contrasting ‘process’ and ‘mood’. This reaction is just ‘mood’, easily influenced. What matters is process. The Palestinians need to put their house in order. Hamas are religious, but Fatah, the secular party, de facto accept the two-state solution. They need to stop encouraging violence. The best way forward to ‘real negotiations’ is to threaten the Palestinians with more violence. (I paraphrase.)

Hussein says he agrees with Gen Shlomo (?!), in as much as a unilateral approach is called for. Because there is no appetite for broad bi-lateral agreements on either side, it is up to each side’s leadership to initiate unilateral, single-issue measures in order to change the climate. Hamas should declare a ceasefire; Israel should pull back from some positions in the West Bank (to 28/9/2000 line?); prisoner exchange. Ahmad concurs: intermediate steps, rolling process on ground, create an environment for ‘final status’ talks.

Col. Arieli strikes a different note in this diplomatic jam session: ‘In the meanwhile we should be putting pressure on the Palestinian government.’

The problem, it is suggested is that while Israel is institutionally capable of delivering on agreements once made, the Palestinian authorities are not. A debate starts about eventually having a Palestinian referendum to ‘seal the deal’. Hussain points out that, on the Palestinian side, the minority in a 51% to 49% referendum would not accept the outcome. To secure the agreement of a bare majority of Palestinians is inadequate.

General Shlomo says that before trying to make progress on the ground, as suggested by Hussein, they should ‘share an ultimate vision’. (Is this code for: we can live with the current situation, unless you agree to a final deal that we find acceptable, we are not going to relax our position?)

By way of diversion we now move to discuss Syria. Formerly it was the conventional wisdom that the Israeli polity could not handle two negotiation processes at once and that the Palestinian situation should come first. Shlomo said that now the US had lifted its ‘veto’, the way was now open to negotiation. It was so hard, though, for the Israeli public to accept the surrender of the Golan Heights. Hussain agrees that the time was right to bring in Syria. He says that a deal with Syria would weaken Hizbollah and Hamas (?) and make them more amenable to negotiation. Hussain repeats a favourite aphorism of his: ‘Hamas may sponsor suicide operations but they are not going to commit organisational suicide’. Dr Ahmad spoils the party by saying that the threat to return the Golan is mobilising the settler activists of the Golan and the West Bank. General Shlomo replies by distinguishing between settler activism, which is a real factor, and the influence which settler activists have on Israeli opinion and policy as a whole, which he thinks is overestimated.

This spins Hussein off into remarking that the US will not allow any agreements without its say so. The US is the biggest obstacle. It is Israel’s responsibility to tell them to accept any deals it wants to make. Shlomo doesn’t gainsay this assertion. Hussain, whom I have definitely warmed to as a personality, goes on to say that prisoner exchange and a ceasefire is in both their interests. There is no need, initially, for a strategic shift, just a mistake-free execution of the mechanics of such a deal. But Israel, as a matter of practicality, has to realise and accept that Hamas is not going to be disarmed. Shlomo kicks in. No ceasefire unless there are guarantees that Hamas will not move missiles into the West Bank. Unilateral moves must be ‘coordinated’. Hussain: get real – Hamas will re-arm ceasefire or no ceasefire. But a ceasefire will help create an environment for a next step. Shlomo: it’s not a happening thing – Israel will never allow missiles that could reach Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to be made or brought into the West Bank. Hussain: The only thing that will prevent it is Hamas self-restraint. Their political judgement. Threats and attacks from Israel won’t work. They may be launching rockets out of Gaza, but there are other more powerful missiles and anti-personnel weapons that they have chosen not to use; they don’t want to escalate at this time.

Another break: a PhD student tells me about how after 1967 there were open borders between Israel and the West Bank. The Israelis spent a lot of development money for the benefit of West Bank Palestinians. Hmm, didn’t know that.

We reconvene for the evening session. The negotiators line up in a panel with the Chairman of Peace Now UK to take questions from the floor. Audience is about fifty or so, a number of whom are evidently members of Peace Now and known to the chairman. The negotiators present on a screen the outcomes of the days ‘negotiation’: things both sides agreed on. There were four. I guess they will be on Peace Now’s website soon. (www.peacenowuk.org) I should have taken better notes, but this is the gist.

1. Final status talks should be deferred until the situation on the ground improves. Final status issues inflame opinion on both sides. Better to take small practical steps.

2. USA does not help by introducing its own ideas of what and who is acceptable and what and who is not. Israel should be left to make its own decisions on these things. The same applies to Europe.

3. Hamas must be allowed to govern. Hamas has been elected and cannot be wished away. It is in Israel’s power to make Gaza and the West Bank ungovernable: they should not be exercising that power.

4. It would be beneficial to the Israeli-Palestinian process for Israel to make progress with Syria.

The evening progresses with questions from the floor, many criticising or questioning the statements proposed as ‘outcomes’. The negotiators have to take a deep breath. It’s been a long day. And now some smart alec who thinks he knows it all and wants to show of a bit tries to throw them a curved ball. They all exhibit great patience as they repeat discussions had during the day for the benefit of those who weren’t there. Basically they all hold their ground and there is little more in terms of information. What about the right of return? We need things to improve on the ground before we can even start to talk about that. What about control of water? Here General Shlomo gives the example of Singapore as a state that has to rely on its neighbour without a problem. No one bothers to challenge the parallel. Someone from the floor says that it seems to them that things only happen when the US knocks heads together. There is a collective sigh. No. US interventions have not been as helpful as it might seem. Col. Shauli describes Dayton as 'problematic', Hussein, as 'idiotic'. Dr Ahmad rapidly ascribes the failures: Oslo - to much focus on confidence building; Camp David - too much focus on a final settlement; Road Map - a muddle of both. A recent Arab proposal was welcomed as a framework to implement a solution, but not a solution in itself. Hussain pushed for unilateral moves; General Shlomoaid the unilateral paradigm was dead.

I try to think of a question I like. Basically I am quite shocked by the way the Israeli’s treat the Palestinians and the way the Palestinians more or less accept it. General Shlomo says Israelis will never accept this or that, meanwhile assuming that the Palestinians will have to put up with whatever the Israelis choose to grant them. As I said it was a mystery to me as to whether General Shlomo really was a supercilious, bullying son-of-a-bitch, or whether he was just trying to represent the typical Israeli man-in-the-street. Talk about asymmetry. It was taken for granted that Israel should have absolute power of the Palestinians now and for ever. General Shlomo wasn’t totally unlikeable and seemed to be trying to be helpful by constantly reasserting Israel’s security demands. I was surprised at one point when he agrees with Hussein that any agreement on freezing settlements was pointless. Some settlements should just be abandoned, he said.

The session ended without my question coming up so I approach Hussain afterwards. “What gives you hope?” I ask. “Despite all the problems and obstacles and failures, here you are negotiating again. So what is it that gives you hope?” Hussain, without a moments hesitation, says “We are not so different the Israelis and us. It is just a difficult situation we find ourselves in, that’s all. We don’t really hate them.” He went on in an animated way and, frankly, it was the most uplifting part of the day. The guy was suddenly telling me that despite everything he had hope. Hope based on fellow feeling for the Israelis. I then found General Shlomo and asked him the same question. He started by giving me a more cerebral reply, saying that he had realised negotiation was not a bargaining process but a process of finding common interests. Then, with more feeling, he said that twenty years ago he had thought the Arabs were devils but, yes, yesterday’s terrorist is today’s negotiating partner.

So, yes, I learned something. As much from the behaviour and banter as from the declarations. Through negotiating the delegates come to know, perhaps respect and perhaps even like each other. Step one. So now between them they need to find approaches they can sell to their respective governments and publics. The rapport they all had was remarkable. They didn’t argue their points, they just carefully corrected any misapprehensions and explained the position as they saw it. An education.