Kants theory of perpetual peace and Arab-Israeli politics - Essay Example

Introduction The academia has been discussing the nature of Arab-Israeli politics throughout the last few decades. Considering the widely shared terminology, one may easily become conscious of some chronic words: change, turbulence, chaos, new world order, governance, civil society, transition, revolution, and peace. It is almost an accepted theory, or in another word, hypothesis, that we are facing a complete change1. From this standpoint, this paper aims to read Kant's theory of "Perpetual Peace" as a practical base to understand and name some ongoing events in Arab-Israeli politics. International Peace(less) Process One can find many an area of agreement or disagreement over the logic and formulas chosen by policy-makers or academics in "what we are fighting for." For over two hundred years2, academics and politicians have articulated at the power of democracy to make global harmony. The Oslo Agreement signed between Israel and the Palestinians in 1993 was ended with a view to develop "a just, lasting and comprehensive peace". Yet, since their coming into effect the Arabs have seen not peace but disgust of the most evil kind in modern history. For several years, the de facto rule of Western administrations and newspapers in evaluating the Middle Eastern political state of affairs was similar to the scene in The Wizard of Oz: "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" This announcement made by an Arab "moderate" politician clarifies briefly why the possibilities of having peace in the Middle East are so pathetic. The elephant in the room can no longer be ignored. This isn't only rhetoric! Instead of getting bogged down into tricacies, Kant clearly wrote some principles and processes and established some solid ideas such as producing a "world federation", etc. In brief, Kant proposed, "republican constitutions, a commercial spirit of international trade, and a federation of interdependent republics would provide the basis of perpetual peace"3. Alternatively, is any of this holds true in sense of Arab-Israeli conflict(s) Only a democratic leadership, actually on behalf of its people's interests, can garner the power to resist the Israeli agenda to dictate the terminologies of 'peace'. Israel's Jewish population got one message very plainly: "If the entire demands of Arabs are met, two further Arab states will be produced between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea". One must retain information that the Arabs control 99.9 per cent of the Middle East territories. Israel stands for only 1 per cent of the territories. The State of Israel was established primarily to be a homeland to the Jewish community. The civil rights of the Jewish people to return to their primeval home town has been recognized by the international community. Creating a 'perpetual peace' is a long-term process, one that should have run equivalent to the Oslo negotiations but was unnoticed in the belief that everything could be changed by tomorrow. If it isn't done at the moment, when the situation of political affairs of Arab States is about as bad as it has been since the ending of the 1967 war, mass support for a 'peace conformity', if and when such an contract is at last signed, will not be approaching, and the forces of irredentism and conflict will again win the day. The conflicts between the Arab and Muslim world on one side, and Israel on another, is top news around the entire world. It is also at the forefront of debate on many institutions of higher education around the world. As Jos Saramago, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, quoted: "We must ring all bells in the world to tell that what is happening in Palestine is a crime, and it is within our power stop to this... We can compare it to what happened in Auschwitz" (Alan Dershowitz 2007). Nicholas De Genova, a Columbia University assistant professor of anthropology, has reported: "The heritage of the victims of the Holocaust belongs to the Palestinian people. The state of Israel has no legitimate claim to the heritage of the Holocaust. The heritage of the oppressed belongs to the oppressed -- not the oppressor" (Alan Dershowitz 2007)4. The Palestinians, regrettably, are triply oppressed. They suffer from occupation by Israel, authoritarian control by the Palestinian Authority and practical rejection by the whole world at large. This does not argue well for their odds in the final-status negotiations. Every time the Palestinian Authority shows some struggle, pressure from the United States and Arab partners like Egypt causes the power to 'surrender'. It could occur that way repetitively. The 'war on terrorism' was directed by the US has made nearly all kinds of punitive actions initiated by Israel more 'inoffensive'; public survey data may show that the best part of Israelis still support a two-state explanation, as well as extraction from the occupied regions and the dismantling of decrees, but thus far they are combating and attacking each other with bombs and tanks on almost every day. The reduction in support for the peace process is partly logical. When Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak and Yasir Arafat were unsuccessful to reach at harmony at Camp David in 20005, any lasting hope between the two sides fell away, terrorism returned to the streets of Israel and absolute war to the lanes and immigrant camps of the West Bank. The pro-peace groups felt treachery and unable to help - and with a small number of courageous exemptions, they became quiet. There do not appear to be any groups prepared to step into the space to resume the peace process when the current session of bloodshed and terrorism at last ends. The assertions of the Camp David revisionists, that the conservative view is unsophisticated, is true, but insignificantly so. In spite of everything, much of what lasted in the talks before, during, and after Camp David is enclosed in misty silence, and it is always useful to endeavor to pad the picture with larger details. Talks are very thorny animals, mainly when they are swayed by peripheral events, political affairs, and individualistic personalities. And surely the revisionist records are worth analysis for any enthusiast of the peace process or international relations, in that they put in a level of detail that was lost before6. But the roots are much deeper than that and return in so far as Oslo itself, if not before. During the last decade, peace activism concentrated on only the instant problems to be settled between Israelis and the Palestinians - resolving yesterday's crisis and trying to stop happening tomorrow's crisis. Although there were many endeavors to support collaborative programs between the two, the Oslo process was cramped to the political, diplomatic and scholastic leaders, hardly ever filtering down to the common public. Most Israelis were cynical of the peace process and required to be encouraged that it was likely to make an agreement with the people who, until yesterday, loathed them and rejected even to be aware of their existential legitimacy. Few resources were spent in "peace education" or the formation of a language of peace that would have been consequential to big sectors of both. The Israeli "Voice of Peace" radio station actually closed shortly after Oslo Agreement. The truth remains behind the bars and that the Israelis and Palestinians remain completely not used to one another's objectives and thoughts. This is in spite of all the people-to-people programs supported by overseas administrations, the informal conventions between Israelis, Palestinians, and other Middle Eastern political leaders and academics, and other small plans intended for furthering assistance. Since 1947, Israeli politicians have, one after the other, contracted to accept the programs that would bring perpetual peace in the Arab States. Israel has had an ever-increasing peace camp. The late PM Menachem Begin ceded Egyptian regions seized during the Six Day War7, the whole of the Sinai Peninsula, in return for a peace agreement, calling for "No more war. No more bloodshed." Upon signing the "Declaration of Principles" with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), PM Yitzhak Rabin declared on the White House lawn: "Enough of blood and tears. Enough." Israeli children are brought up to understand the viewpoint of the Arabs, a task hardly ever taken up by nations in times of conflict. PM Barak attempted to go the extra mile towards a lasting peace by dividing Jerusalem and giving up the Temple Mount, the heart and soul of the Jewish people" (Rubin 1994, pg. 94). But whereas in Israeli people were rallying and protesting in their hundreds of thousands in favor of the peace process, the Arab-Palestinian perception of the so-called "Peace Process" become a very singular one. Indeed, the very term "Peace Process" is a contradiction in terms unless and until the elementary preconditions are met. President George W. Bush always proclaimed that "the continued existence of freedom in our land increasingly depends on the success of freedom in other lands. The best anticipation for peace in our world is the development of liberty in the whole world". Behind these haughty words lies one of the most powerful proposals in peacekeeping. Neoconservative experts like William Kristol and Lawrence F. Kaplan put the point clearly when they called for toppling Saddam Hussein because of "a truth of global political affairs: democracies hardly ever, if ever, wage war against one another". However, in "To Perpetual Peace", Kant argued that a world made up of republics, whose people must tolerate the despairs of fighting and money(ing) wars, should be more peaceful than a world made up of realms, whose kings can go to war with little individual jeopardy. The perpetual peace of Kant theory maintains universal soundness. However, conflict in the Middle East does not instinctively appear to play a role in this perception. The peace argument claims to be a universal one and comprises no regional or cultural conditions. The Middle East region challenges the basic nuts and bolts of the perpetual peace. The region has seen some advancements to more liberal administrations (like Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan, Morocco), but no 'wave of democratization' as seen in other areas. Some Middle Eastern States have higher levels of growth (at least if gauged as GNP per capita), but enjoys lower levels of democratic system and harmony. The Arab-Israeli conflict has outshined and played an unenthusiastic, influential role in provincial politics for more than five decades. The end of this quarrel, along with the need for reform of Arab market economies, will noticeably impact the regions progresses, politically and economically. A vital futuristic issue for many Middle Eastern regions is the legitimacy of the present establishments. The removal of the Arab-Israeli conflict from the political plan in the region may also eliminate hostility or opposition to Zionism8 as a main ideological crutch for some governments and could move the notice to other imminent evils. Respectively, Abi-Aad and Grenon' list of sources for conflict is long and worth notable: The different factors of instability and sources of conflict faced by the regions of the Middle East are largely comparable, and consist of the bossy nature of the administrations and the struggles for power, interstate ideological cleavages, armed forces rivalries and racism, objective and arrangement of military forces, sectarian minorities and religious contention, ethnic heterogeneity and minorities, border disputes, difference in economic growth, social impact of economic restrictions, divergence in oil political affairs, struggles over water, demographic outburst, disparity in economic enlargement, and problems caused by overseas labour movement, domestic flight and flows of immigrants (1997, pg. 10). There is small doubt that the Middle East has the potential and most probably will continue to be a volatile region. However, the conflicts of the future will differ from those of the past, which is why the "perpetual peace" seems to be so important and relevant to the region's future. There is little reason to believe that the Middle East should not continue to be an exception to the perpetual peace argument, since the reasons why the Middle East plays an exceptional role in international political affairs are still present. Oil will continue to be an essential part of world politics, but it will play a lesser role than in the 1970s. The Israelis will not be cast into the sea and will continue to play their odd role in regional, international and domestic American political affairs. Oil prices will continue to fluctuate and structural changes are inevitable. This might be tricky enough to discern at this moment, amid the ongoing violence and mounted up suspicions. But taboos were smashed, the unspoken got spoken, and, during this stage, Israelis and Palestinians arrived at a record level of understanding of what it will take to stop their struggle. Conclusion In the end, it is necessary for the states sharing borders with Israel - Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Egypt - to understand that end the Arab-Israeli conflict is the entrance through which they need to go prior to overcoming the many other evils they are currently facing, the only way they can begin a course of democratic reform, economic growth and public harmony and not fall victim to forces against education, civilization and modernity, indeed, to the standards of progress generally. Only when leaders would create the legal structure within which full respect will be accorded to the requirements and privileges of its own natives will peace prevail. Certainly, Immanuel Kant has drawn this sort of relationship between the 'reign of law' in the State and a situation of peace among States. Kant predicted perpetual peace only when the public of Arabs and Israel's themselves, rather than their selected ones, are those to settle on the issue of waging war: [T]he republican constitution also provides for...perpetual peace, and the reason for this is as follows: If (as must inevitably be the case, given this form of constitution) the consent of the citizenry is required in order to determine whether or not there will be war, it is natural that they consider all its calamities before committing themselves to so risky a game. (Among these are doing the fighting themselves, paying the costs of war from their own resources, having to repair at great sacrifice the war's devastation, and, finally, the ultimate evil that would make peace itself better, never being able - because of new and constant wars - to expunge the burden of debt.) By contrast, under a non-republican constitution... the easiest thing in the world to do is to declare war. Here the ruler is not a fellow citizen, but the nation's owner, and war does not affect his table, his hunt, his places of pleasure, his court festivals, and so on. Thus, he can decide to go to war for the most meaningless of reasons, as if it were a kind of pleasure party, and he can blithely leave its justification (which decency requires) to his diplomatic corps, who are always prepared for such exercises (Kant 1795). When the two Arab-Israelis both resume their pathway toward a Perpetual Peace agreement - and ultimately, they will - they will regain consciousness with the reminiscence of history of more than fifty years, the experience of how far they had come and how far they had yet to go, and with the sobering wisdom of an opportunity that was missed by them. References: Immanuel Kant, To Perpetual Peace (1795), brought in: Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, trans. by Ted Humphrey, Indianapolis, 1982, marginal number 351. Huntington, Samuel P. 1984. "Will More Countries be Democratic" Political Science Quarterly 99: 193-218. Abi-Aad, Naji, and Michel Grenon. 1997. Instability and Conflict in the Middle East. New York: St. Martin's Press. Russett, Bruce M.1993. Grasping the Democratic Peace. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press "End of a Journey," Ari Shavit interview with Shlomo Ben Ami, Ha'aretz (magazine), September. 14, 2001. Barry Rubin, Revolution Until Victory The Politics and History of the PLO (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 94. Cutter, W. Bowman, Spero, Joan, and Tyson, Laura D'Andrea. 2000. We are in "an era of fundamental change". "New World New Deal", Foreign Affairs, Vol. 79, No. 2. Read More