The marking of the second anniversary of the Palestinian war against Israel is a stark reminder that violence remains very much a part of the peacemaking process. It also raises questions as to the viability of peace processes and political agreements that try to include unreformed terrorist groups within the democratic process.
This form of appeasement remains the central reason for the current failure of peacemaking throughout the world.
In short, despite the best intentions of “the peacemakers” it is the schoolyard bullies who continue to dominate. These bullies strike at the soft underbelly of Western democracy, against targets where attempts at coexistence between two sets of people have resulted in a degree of normalization that is wholly unacceptable to the bully mindset and ideology.
Nowhere is this phenomenon more clear than in two places close to my heart: Pontypass and Jerusalem.
Pontypass is a small sleepy village in Northern Ireland, which straddles the Belfast-to-Dublin railway line. The locals know it affectionately as Pointlesspass. Though situated in what the British term “bandit country” it escaped “the troubles” for 25 years. That was until two Unionist gunmen from a nearby town walked into the Railway Tavern, Pontypass’s only pub, and shot dead two men, one a Catholic and the other a Protestant. Their only crime, it later transpired, was that they were close friends who came from different religious backgrounds.
This was no indiscriminate killing, but rather as the killers later confessed a premeditated assassination of two people who refused to conform to the religious bigotry and ethnic divide that still today dominates Northern Ireland. It was also a warning to small communities in Northern Ireland, like Pontypass, where coexistence was the norm — places in which so long as you bought your round of drinks in the pub nobody cared in which temple you worshiped.
Cut to Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an institution famed for its efforts in bringing Arabs and Jews together. The shock of the recent attack on its Frank Sinatra Cafeteria has been compounded by the revelation that the bomber was an Israeli Arab employee of the university.
Indeed, the following day he was asked to help clean up the blood-covered room and decorate the cafeteria so it could reopen. It transpires that his accomplices came from eastern Jerusalem where the university is located. They planted the bomb knowing it could kill Arabs as well as Jews.
The university was chosen because of its openness and the fact that it represents one of the few places in Israel where Israelis and Arabs can easily meet.
The conclusion from these and countless other examples is that the schoolyard bully can always wreck the work of others trying to coexist. From this we can also deduce that while such people are at liberty, there is no hope for meaningful peace in any of the world’s major conflicts.
Many argue that the best way to get rid of the bully is to form coalitions to oust him. This achieves little other than replacing one bully with another who, in time, will become just as sadistic as his predecessor. What is required is a concerted attack on all bullies (real and potential) using all the military and judicial tools available in the West.
In philosophical terms, the underpinnings of the Western world lean too much toward the libertarianism of John Stuart Mill and the consensualism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
What is needed is a return to a more Hobbesian approach of the “absolute sovereign.” More specifically, we need to acknowledge the key problem that Hobbes underlines: that man is naturally in a state of war, and only ceases attacks when he fears penalty.
In practical terms, we need a stronger emphasis on law and order. Here there are two current problematic trends.
The first involves policing where police and paramilitary forces are not able to take a hard enough line with known bullies.
The second concerns the liberal tendency of some judiciaries in terms of applying and interrupting the law. All too often a smart defense lawyer can maneuver the many loopholes that exist in legal systems to get his client off the hook.
Northern Ireland and Israel serve as good examples of systems having 50 percent of the necessary equation in place, but which fall short in other areas.
The new Northern Ireland Police Service that replaced the Royal Ulster Constabulary lacks the zeal and drive of its predecessor. Some suggest that this is a good thing, but it should be remembered that the RUC was the most successful anti-terror force in Europe. The legal system in Northern Ireland, however, which abandoned trial by jury and replaced it with trial by judge, remains extremely effective. Witness intimidation still takes place but at least there is no intimidation of the judges, many of whom are flown back and forth between Ireland and the U.K. mainland.
In Israel the opposite is true. Robust police and army operations have resulted in many successes against terror networks, both in terms of preventing attacks and in bringing those, such as the Hebrew University bombers, to justice. The liberal-dominated judiciary, however, has prided itself on overturning government and security-force initiatives on security. Israel’s Supreme Court is probably the most liberal of any in Western democracies, and clearly needs reforming if the country is to win its war on terror.
More coherent and aggressive strategies for dealing with schoolyard bullies are needed. To be sure, this will involve changing our current strategies, and lead to some short-term infringements of civil liberties. The latter, however, is a price worth paying if it prevents barbaric attacks such as those that took place in Pontypass and in Jerusalem.
Our leaders need to start reading more Hobbes and less Mill and Rousseau. If they did they might learn that we have not yet inflicted heavy enough defeats on unreformed bullies to be in a position for peacemakers to solve international conflicts through written political agreements.