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T. E. Lawrence's Vision for the Middle East: We have to demand [of the Arab States] provision for their own defense. . . This is the first stage towards self-respect in peoples. They must find their own troops to replace our armies of occupation which we are going to withdraw. For this they must be armed, and must learn by having arms not to misuse them. We can only teach them how by forcing them to try, while we stand by and give advice (Lawrence, T. E., 1920, pp. 95-96). In 1928 Lawrence wrote, “I think there is a great
future for the British Empire as a voluntary association” (Garnett, 1938,
p. 578). He predicted the importance of the “Bolshevist success” as “a
potent example to the East of the overthrow of an ancient government (Lawrence,
T. E., 1920, p. 94), but he failed to anticipate the demise of the British
Empire and the rise of American power in the region as a result of World
War II which was still several years away after his death. Consequently
Lawrence failed to foresee the degree to which geo-political conflicts
and superpower rivalries under the shadow of nuclear weapons would dominate
the region at the expense of the human beings who lived there. In terms
of regional boundaries and leadership, Lawrence correctly foresaw the
restoration of Turkey under Mustapha Kemal (Ataturk) within Anatolia,
but he wrongly predicted that "Baghdad" (Iraq), "richer, bigger" than
Syria would be the "ultimate regent" in the area. Egypt he rightly saw
would come to dominate North African politics. Persia, he predicted, would
be united and unfriendly or dismembered and fought over. He surely did
not expect anything quite like the rise of Khomeini, but he did understand
that the momentum toward importing western ideas and modern technology
into the Middle East would continue. The "disease" of civilization, Lawrence
wrote, "is physical, material, moral and mental" and "the inevitable effect
of too close contact with the west." Europe he observed evolved machinery
over centuries of struggle "from pack horses to aeroplanes." "But what
of Asia," he asked, "which has stepped in a lifetime of 30-years from
saddle-donkeys to Rolls-Royce cars, from blood-mares to aeroplanes?” “Europe
is not a thing easily digested,” he noted wryly (Lawrence, T. E., 1920,
pp. 72-73). If we extrapolate to the contemporary Middle East with Its
high speed jet airplanes, up-to-date communication systems and bristling
with arms, including remote control car bombs and guided missiles, we
can see how far technological change has gone. But Lawrence failed to
foresee the fundamentalist religious reactions that would take place in
the region in response to these modernizing trends. a conscious effort, on the part of the least European people in Europe, to make head against the drift of the aces, and return once more to the Orient from which they came. The colonists will take back with them to the land which they occupied for some centuries before the Christian era samples of all the knowledge and technique of Europe. They propose to settle down amongst the existing Arab-speaking population of the country, a people of kindred origin, but far different social condition. They hope to adjust their mode of life to the climate of Palestine, and by the exercise of their skill and capital to make it as highly organised as a European state. The success of their scheme will involve inevitably the raising of the present Arab population to their own material level, only a little after themselves in point of time, and the consequences might be of the highest importance for the future of the Arab world. It might well prove a source of technical supply rendering them independent of industrial Europe, and in that case the new confederation might become a formidable element of world power. However, such a contingency will not be for the first or even f or the second generation, but it must be borne in mind in any laying out of foundations of empire in Western Asia (Lawrence, T. E., 1920, pp. 92-93). Chaim Weizmann, first President of Israel, wrote
in 1936 of Lawrence's belief in the Zionist effort: His faith in the Jewish National Home grew correspondingly with the growth and development of Palestine as a result of Jewish efforts. In the winter of 1, 921 1 had a long talk with him, our conversation turning mainly on Jewish-Arab co-operation. He regarded such cc-operation as of the utmost importance, from the Jewish point of view, but equally in the interests of the Arabs. He thought that the Jews acted as a ferment and were likely to be instrumental in bringing out the latent energies of the Arab people. He thought that Arab redemption was likely to come about through Jewish redemption. Lawrence certainly understood both sides, if anyone can be said to have done so (my italics), and he did his utmost to interpret the spirit of one people, and to explain the aspirations of the other, believing that close co operation between the two peoples was to their mutual advantage (Lawrence, A. W., 1937, p. 244). Professor Stephen Tabachnick wrote in 1984: Lawrence (unlike the pro-Arab Gertrude Bell or the pro-Zionist Richard Meinertzhagen) was one of the few and one of the last people in his own time and ours to achieve true sympathy for both national movements. His references to both movements in Seven Pillars are positive. He actually believed that they could be reconciled, and, although subsequent events have seemed to prove him wrong at least to date, this belief only rebounds to his credit (Tabachnick, 1984, p. 37). Let us turn now to those “subsequent events.”
Neither Lawrence, nor Weizmann when he wrote of Lawrence, foresaw World
War II or the European Holocaust and the overwhelming pressure of immigration
and for creation of a Jewish state. Nor did either predict the subsequent
seemingly irreconcilable clash of nationalities between the Jews and Arabs
of Palestine. Serious and potentially long-lasting psychological damage may ensue for many segments of the Palestinian population, especially to children and adolescents, and for the Israeli population, especially the soldiers. The consequences of the present violence may well affect a whole generation and thereby further constrict the possibilities of peaceful resolution in the future. As injury and death become routine, there is a steady erosion of the basic principles that all human life should be protected and that Palestinian and Israeli lives are equally precious. We observed an accumulating burden of rage and mutual dehumanization in response to the unremitting toll of bloodshed. Impulses for revenge lead to further escalation. Violations of medical and human rights are increasing as both sides become habituated to violence and complex political conflicts are reduced to a daily body count (Physicians for Human Rights, 1988, p. 5). Both groups, Israeli and Palestinian, find themselves
locked in a struggle in which each feels its survival is at stake. It
is a conflict of two victimized peoples. Among Israelis there is a perception
of being vastly outnumbered, confronted by hostile neighbors committed
to their destruction. For some the Palestinian uprising is but the beginning
of a sequence that will lead to massive Arab violence against them and
destruction of their state and people, as the West stands by once again
and does nothing. Palestinians experience themselves as victims of a brutal,
unjust and prolonged occupation. They feel dehumanized (as do many other
Arab groups by the policies of the Western democracies) by Israel with
the backing of the United States and its Western allies. Their land and
homes have been taken and they believe that Israel would destroy their
sense of community if not the entire Palestinian population. The Arab
world as a whole is divided, and support for the Palestinian cause is
uneven. But Arabs are united in the view that no peace in the region can
come until the longing for self-determination of Palestinian Arabs is
realized and their national aspirations fulfilled. To man-rational, wars of nationality were as much a cheat as religious wars, and nothing was worth fighting for: nor could fighting, the act of fighting, hold any meed of intrinsic virtue. Life was so deliberately private that no circumstances could justify one man in laying violent hands upon another's (p. 548). Let us look again now at the messages in Anwar
Sadat's speech to the Israeli Knesset in 1977, perhaps the preeminent
example of extraordinary self-responsibility in the Middle East conflict.
Consider some of the things that Sadat actually said: No one could have ever conceived that the President of the biggest Arab state, which bears the heaviest burden and the main responsibility pertaining to the cause of war and peace in the Middle East, should declare his readiness to go to the land of the adversary while we were still in a state of war. And finally, It was a wall that warned us of extermination and annihilation if we tried to use our legitimate rights to liberate the occupied territories. Together we have to admit that that wall fell and collapsed in 1973. Yet, there remains another wall. This wall constitutes a psychological barrier between us, a barrier of suspicion, a barrier of rejection; a barrier of fear, of deception, a barrier of hallucination without any action, deed or decision. A barrier of distorted and eroded interpretation of every event and statement. It is this psychological barrier which I described in official statements as constituting 70 percent of the whole problem (Sadat, 1977, pp. 13M and 14M). We must pay attention not only to the repeated
use of the word responsibility” by Sadat, but also to his emphasis on
justice and security, on acceptance and acknowledgement, on the interconnection
of all peoples, on the recognition of fear, suspicion, and other psychological
dimensions of the conflict. To reverse the dehumanization process requires that Israelis and Palestinians, preferably with the help of third parties, breach the wall standing between them created by their tragic experience and reinforced by the dynamics of victimhood ... Each people will have to teach the other that they are worthy and valuable as a people, sharing the universal desire for security, identity and respect, and capable of recognizing and respecting this right in the other (Montville, 1988, p. 5). But Montville did something more. To illustrate,
indeed to demonstrate, the responsibility of each of us Track II diplomats
he concluded a plenary address to the American Psychoanalytic Association
by reviewing the unprecedented history of Christian oppression of Jews
and then symbolically asked forgiveness “as a private, individual Christian...
of the Jewish people for the hurts inflicted on them by Christendom.”
He asked to be allowed to mourn Jewish losses with Jews and to work in brotherly alliance with Jews and Arabs to mourn unjust hurts suffered by some Arabs as Jews fleeing Christian brutality in Europe established a homeland in Palestine and ultimately the State of Israel. And I ask to work with Jews and Arabs to establish a relationship which assures a secure and just, future for them and their children (Montville, 1989, p.16). But what of us, Jews and Christians, in the West?
What of me, an American Jew, a physician, a citizen of the power that
is perhaps dominant in the Middle East region if not in the world - the
richest country on earth? What can I do? What can we do? It would be presumptuous
of me to apologize or to ask forgiveness as Sadat, Baker and Montville
have done. But surely something of this sort is needed. In the fall of
1979 the Iranian militants holding the U.S. hostages in Tehran, who were
taken after the Shah was permitted to come to the United States for medical
treatment at the request of David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger, asked
that the United States apologize for “crimes against the Iranian people”
(Carter, 1982, p. 467). I do not know if it would have been a good idea
for Jimmy Carter to have made such an apology, but thousands of Iranians
had been tortured and killed by the U.S. backed regime of the Shah. Surely
the Iranian militants' request should not have been dismissed out of hand. But first and foremost, terrorism is for us a part of the political battle being conducted under the present circumstances, and it has a great part to play: speaking in a clear voice to the whole world, as well as to our wretched brethren outside this land, it proclaims our war against the occupier. The real terrorist hides behind his stacks of papers and of laws he himself legislated. (Our terrorism) is not aimed at persons, but rather at representatives, and therefore it is effective. If, in addition, it shakes the Jewish population out of its complacency - so much the better. Thus, and only thus, will the battle for liberation commence (Shamir, 1987-1988, p. 23). Many Israelis and Jewish Americans who are resolute
about the importance of Israeli security are also troubled about the brutal
turn of Israeli policies toward Palestinians. In their report the Physicians
for Human Rights group notes, almost in passing, that “The uprisings are
causing fear among the Israelis, threatening a sense of domination of
Palestinians that has been the bulwark of many Israelis, awakening echoes
of terrorist assaults in others and increasing the ambivalence about the
future of the west bank and Gaza in many" (PHR Report, p.36). Many American
Jews are also becoming increasingly troubled about the one-sidedness of
a U.S. policy in which huge sums of money are given to the Israeli government
with few questions asked, especially about the cost in Palestinian lives. I don't care if it's the devil himself who brings about negotiations for a settlement - where the alternative is to submit to the far worse dictates of settlers and the sundry nationalist-messianic evangelical rejectionists who are pushing us towards a dead end in a country that will continue to send Its sons to beat people with clubs, to blow up ships in foreign harbors and then ceaselessly explain to us that peace hasn't got a chance because of the villainous nature of the Arabs. Turning back to T. E. Lawrence I find new meaning
in his conflicts, in his exaggerated assumption of responsibility. Perhaps
It is his personal struggle, his self-consciousness about violence, his
exaggerated concern for the well-being of each tribal or national group
in the Middle East region, which is of particular value for us now. Feisal's
English biographer Mrs. Stewart Erskine, spoke with Feisal when he was
King of Iraq in the early 1930's. “Lawrence,” Feisal told her, “said many
things about me which are not a bit true and I should probably say things
about him which would not be true either. He was a genius, of course,
but not for this age.” “For a past age,” she suggested. “On the contrary,
for the future. A hundred years hence, perhaps 200 years hence, he might
be understood; but not today,” the King replied (Mack, 1976, p. 204). I believe in a Zionism that accepts both the spiritual implications and the political consequences of the fact that this small but precious land is the homeland of two peoples fated to live facing each other, because no God and no angel will come down to judge between right and right. The lives of both, the lives of all of us, depend on the hard, tortuous, and essential process of learning to know each other in the strifetorn landscape of this beloved country (Oz, 1988, p. 24). Lawrence, in his introduction to Seven Pillars
of Wisdom, which he suppressed because he believed the time was not
yet right for it, wrote the following words. They reflect his egoism,
his susceptibility to the biases of his time, but also his vision of possibilities
for the Middle East and for the planet yet to be realized: If I have restored to the East some self-respect, a goal; if I have made-the standard of rule of white over red more exigent, I have fitted those people in a degree for the new commonwealth in which the dominant races will forget their brute achievements, and white and red and yellow and brown and black will stand up together without side-glances in the service of the world” (Lawrence, T. E., 1922, p. 211).
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