Einat Wilf and the long view of history

Sometimes on a beautiful sunny warm day it is so much easier to do nothing than to do something I had to push myself to go to Einat Wilf's talk, sponsored by the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs, but I did make the effort and was rewarded by one of the most lucid, well constructed, thought provoking lectures I ever attended. Einat Wilf is a smart woman, academic, politician, businesswoman. The subject of her talk was 'The Unravelling of the Post-Ottoman Order'. It was hard to know what to expect. In the event she took a very broad view of history to gain an insight into into the current events in the Middle East. She talked about the 'Arab Spring', which she thought should have happened after the First World War, when the Arab world was in turmoil. It didn't happen, because the European powers carved up the Middle East, taking no cognisance of reality in the region. They imposed artificial borders on lands that were made up of tribal groups with no common sense of nationhood. She likened the Arab Spring to Europe in 1848, when all kinds of disparate liberation movements with human rights agendas swept Europe. These movements were put down by despotic conservative forces, much like the democratic liberal Arab protests were suppressed by conservative despots and Islamic fundamentalists. It took most of Europe a hundred years to attain the objectives of 1840, with Eastern Europe taking a further fifty years. We can expect the Arab Spring to take a hundred years to bear fruit. This places Israel in a uniquely difficult position. Israel's objective is to establish a Jewish state in the Biblical land of Israel, in the midst of an Arab region. The single dominant objective of the Arab countries is to prevent this, stop the hitherto despised Jews having their own country. For this reason Arafat turned down the chance to have a Palestinian state because the price would have been the acknowledgement that the Jews, the Jewish state, was here to stay. Arabs view Israel as a Crusader state that will vanish, like Medieval Crusader states, over time. To the question from the floor about the prospect of peace in the region, Einat Wilf replied that this will happen when the surrounding Arab states will embrace democracy, human rights to minorities and women, and tolerance of different beliefs. The Arab Spring held out such a hope, but for the time being with the ideals that brought protesters to the squares suppressed, the immediate likelihood of peace is remote. The worst people, the great powers and the UN can do is to hold out false hopes and foment the sense that with further bloodshed peace can be achieved. The differences between Arabs and Israel are irreconcilable. They are differences of existence or non-existence. Once this is acknowledged, and the continuing existence of Israel is accepted there may be a prospect of peace.