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Towards a Mid-East Peace Initiative

A cease-fire: imperative but insufficient

Jean-Louis Roy
President, Rights and Democracy
July 31, 2006

Victims and captives of one another for over half a century, Lebanon , Palestine and Israel are once again condemned to live with destruction and terror.

Thousands of dead and injured, for the most part innocent civilians; massive destruction of private and public infrastructure; mutual denial of the most basic rights to life, security and property, among many others: such are the effects of the senseless provocations and kidnappings in Gaza and Israel, of the unmeasured response and of a paralyzed international community incapable of preserving international law, of fulfilling the responsibility to protect, of imposing its rules and having its vital decisions respected.

A shared catastrophe

A cease-fire will eventually be declared on these killing fields.

For many, however, nothing will ever compensate for the suffering in the affected lands, in the neighbouring countries and around the world. The atrocities inflicted and the inhumanity perpetuated are failures of all the protagonists, of all governments, including our own.

A peace initiative

We must put an end to this carnage now. An international collective of States must take the initiative and fill the peace-broker role that the United States has become incapable of playing, for such obvious reasons.

This peace initiative should have the following four goals:

1. The full recognition of the State of Israel and a Palestinian State , by both each other and by the international community. Nothing can be achieved without this obvious and essential step.
2. The consolidation of Palestinian and Lebanese authority over their respective territories, including exclusive control over their security forces. In these countries, the universal need for security must prevail as well. No group other than the democratically-constituted public powers can have the capacity to wage war. There can be no exceptions to this rule.
3. The implementation of a ten-year reconstruction programme for Palestinian society and the Palestinian State , and for the reconstruction of Lebanon .
4. In due course, the implementation of a peace agreement between the State parties that enshrines the conditions for common security and resolution of their outstanding claims.

This initiative is of primary importance to the citizens of all three of the States involved, for the stability and security of the region and, indeed, of the entire world.

It calls for a basic change in the nature of the relationships governing all the protagonists, notably Iran , the leading power in the region, and Syria , with its undeniably strategic geographic position. We cannot move the Middle East forward by isolating its constituent states and putting them on the defensive.

A role for Canada

Such an initiative and its provisions should be a matter of public debate in Canada ’s Parliament. The government and Parliamentarians must answer two major questions in particular:

• What role can and should Canada play in ending the war in Lebanon and in the reconstruction effort that must follow a cease-fire?

• What role can and should Canada play in terms of launching a peace initiative in the Middle East ?

These questions go beyond party politics; allowing partisan interests to influence the debate of such questions will only serve to devalue our public institutions.

These questions must be submitted to a special session of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, whose recommendations should then inform a clear policy statement from our government and a debate in the House of Commons.

The challenge of fresh thinking and unprecedented action

It would be shockingly irresponsible if negotiations to end the war in Lebanon do not properly address the ancient and current grievances that started it. There can be no rest for this conflict’s dead or its survivors knowing the same dangerous dogmas remain in place, threatening new carnage and renewed agony.

A peace initiative is needed to bring an end to despair in the Middle East , to stop the barbarity in the streets of Palestine and Israel and prevent the killing of more children, their childhood already cut short by the prejudice and hatred around them. This warping of young minds, and the circumstances that breed it, must be stopped.

We have known for a long time the horrors in store if the rules of the game were not changed, if we did not embrace new ways of thinking and risk the unprecedented actions that are required.

Daring to do so has helped solve innumerable conflicts and tensions: between Germany and France after the Second World War; between colonial powers and the colonies in the 1950s; between Washington and Beijing in 1972; between Nelson Mandela and the de Klerk regime in South Africa, to name just a few examples.

Let there be no more blood spilt, no more killing of Jews and Arabs, in Lebanon , Palestine and Israel.