Yet Another Middle-East Peace Plan Effort

President Obama included a vision for the Israeli-Palestinian peace plan in his speech today on the Middle-East and North Africa. So as with many modern Presidents before him, he is seeking an American supported effort to bring peace to the single conflict in the Middle-East that either foments or is used as an excuse for six decades of conflicts between Israel and neighboring Arab states.

I admire the hopeful persistence that American presidents show toward this endeavor. Certainly there is nothing unworthy about attempting to bring peace anywhere, and particularly in this region that has suffered from pointless violence founded upon a poorly conceived and implemented concept of creating a Jewish homeland. But my dissatisfaction with yet another vision is that it is not actually a plan. It jumps straight to the solution without bothering to dealing with foolish things like a process and methodology to handle the obstacles that already exist or that will surface from where we are today to where the ‘vision’ has everyone at the end.

This vision will likely suffer the same fate as previous attempts. The peace process will either collapse after a in a new round of attacks and counter-attacks, or it will conclude with some minor and unfulfilling accord without definitive consequence. The failure inherent in these approaches is that they are conceived and attempted by politicians, power-brokers and religious die-hards; sometimes embodied in the same person. While such individuals are necessary and critical to the success of any peace process, nothing about their positions or authority bestows on them the wits, wisdom or willingness to seek innovative, inspired and insightful approaches to transitioning from their current state of hostility to a peaceful and harmonious coexistence.

The plan that the Israeli and Palestinians need is one which will move them incrementally through the steps and stages that are necessary to provide the time to identify not only the major issues that will require a resolution but the more numerous small and minor issues that will be cumulatively more important than the stumbling blocks that have prevented progress in the past. Additionally, the two principle parties will also need to comprehend why they need to take incremental steps to get to their final goal. It is a reasoned and rational methodology that have evaded past efforts. And it is deficiency that is and has been missing from the peace process toolkit. Processes directed and driven by the mighty and powerful players at the negotiating table are vulnerable to their greatest shortcoming, engaging in a game in which they do not know or understand the rules. Playing at the peace process is not an ideal strategy for something deserving of at least a half-hearted attempt at actually trying to succeed.

What Obama should do now is proceed with suggestions on how the Israeli and Palestinians can initiate the drafting of an approach to peace planning and execution. Part of his proposal would be to include individuals who are skilled at defining and resolving the goals and the requirements that need to be accommodated in the evolving effort of crafting a solution that will deliver a two-state solution of independent, viable and secure nations.

Ah! to dream. As always such a possibility is highly unlikely, it requires the movers and shakers of the world to demonstrate their own inability to deal with the very complexity that they strive to overcome. They have never learned that the one thing you want in subordinates is people who are just flat out brighter than yourself.