Sep 9, 2006 12:10:00 PM cite

China Keitetsi: I think it's a matter of religion and maybe less interest that we have on these two countries. And if we want to help I think we should look at them not as Muslims and Jews, I think we should look at them as a country and people. That will help us more to understand and to solve their problem. And I think there is also a lot of influence and a lot of interests from the Arab side, from the European side, from the American side, but I also feel that these two countries, the leaders should - they are stubborn, but I hope that both sides of the leaders will encourage their people not hate each other. Because also the Palestine and the Jews, the Israelis should remember one thing, that it is the leaders and not the people. I hope the people should leave the politics to the leaders and get to know each other more, because the more you know each other the more you won't call each other Jewish or Arab, you will call each other people. And I think this could be a challenge to the leadership of the world and leadership of Israel and Palestine to make peace. Because imagine where your children will stay, how your children will live on when you will leave them with nothing but hatred and propaganda, which is not true. I think the two countries should be based on truth should be based on fairness. I think this could help them to achieve peace. We should also look close and learn more about those two countries so that we can try to help them. We understand; we will help. If we don't understand, we can't help.

by China Keitetsi

Sep 9, 2006 12:10:00 PM cite

Constantin von Barloewen: The Middle East is traditionally a region in the world, in which since many generations military conflicts prevail. Not least because also cultural conflicts, ethnical-religious conflicts are again-reflected here, which are ever more violent than purely national conflicts. But one must see that in the middle east world power politics are made in a very irresponsible way by America, by England, by Europe, by Russia. The central east is today a mirror image of world-political interests, which combine themselves, which again-speak themselves, from nuclear weapon industry on predominantly at all energy-political criteria by the oil field. Then may one not forget that artificial borders pulled of colonial powers, which absolutely do not correspong culture-claimant borders, i.e. conflicts since generations, it is regrettable that for instance the mediator James Wolfonson, the last World Bank president tried in every 6 points here in its switching readiness between United States, Russia, European community and the UN, every 6 points were not used in the Gaza Strip, in Palestine conflicts, in Israeli conflicts, i.e. again one has seen that even the attempt of an earned world politician failed. The American interests in Israel are considerable, i.e. Israel is still, as it the cluster bombs again and again used against Lebanon supported from America. That is dangerous, the central east is a ball of world-political interests and can in this way not an endogenous or better to find a companionship peace, which will remain also in the future in such a way.

by Constantin von Barloewen

Sep 9, 2006 12:10:00 PM cite

Cornel West: There is no peace because there is not enough justice there. Any context in the world, any region in the world there will never be peace until there is justice. When we talk about why there is no justice, it has much to do, of course, with the oil. There is no doubt that if the Middle East were littered with artichokes rather than oil, it’d be a very different set of foreign policy from America, Europe, Asia. There is no peace because of the lack of justice for Palestinian brothers and sisters living on their occupation of the state of Israel. There is no peace because of tremendous paranoia, understandable, of Jewish brothers and sisters, Israelis, fearful of over 20 Arab countries who rhetorically constitute a threat, no major threat militarily but rhetorically constitute a threat. There is no peace because U.S. foreign policy has been so biased in terms of its alliance with the state of Israel and refusal to really engage the suffering of Palestinian people. There is no peace because the autocratic rule of Arab politicians, who often use the Palestinian issue as a football, not seriously concerned about the suffering of Palestinians, but concerned about preserving their own hierarchical rule in respective Arab countries. And the combination of these forces produces just obscene levels of suffering in the Middle East and the relative lack of justice in the Middle East. Until there is justice across the board, security and justice for Palestinians, security and justice for Israelis, security and justice for the everyday peoples in Arab countries and justice in the U.S. foreign policy.

by Cornel West

Sep 9, 2006 12:10:00 PM cite

Dedi Baron: Answertext will be available soon.

by Dedi Baron

Sep 9, 2006 12:10:00 PM cite

Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas: If you are going to analyze why is there no peace in the Middle East, for me there is not yet a common recognition by the people who are living in the Middle East to come into peace. The problem is the politicians are not also trying to give peace a chance. Its leader wanted to prove their own strengths. But unless both parties will enter genuinely into negotiations that would make them agree that they have to make peace for themselves, that’s the time that peace will be realized in the Middle East. Maybe one of the causes why there is really no peace yet in the Middle East is the outside interveners. These people sometimes who are - who would like to intervene sometimes add to the problem, not make part of the solution. And the most important thing, I think, that we could as citizens of the world can offer to the peace situation in the Middle East is to pray for world peace and pray for the Middle East people to realize the beauty of being at peace in your own lands is sleeping very comfortably in your own land. So, may we pray that the leaders, especially the leaders in the Middle East will realize and come together genuinely and agree to themselves to make peace in their backyard for the benefit of their inhabitants because war does not lead to anything that is positive. It always result in negative, destruction, displacement, casualties and those are the things, I think, that we don’t like to happen in our own backyard. And we hope and pray that people in the Middle East will genuinely come together and say let’s make peace genuinely for ourselves. And often times to work for peace, you should begin by peace by yourself. Be a peaceful person before you work for peace, and that should be the qualities of the leaders in the Middle East.

by Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas

Sep 9, 2006 12:10:00 PM cite

Dritëro Kasapi: Because I feel that the Middle East is a playground for big powers. I think Middle East is a place where big powers like the United States, in Europe, and this growing Arab power that is consolidating in different ways are using the Middle East and especially the Palestinian/Israeli one for, as a field of demonstrating power, and pushing their political wills forward. And unfortunately, the Palestinian people, and the Israeli people are caught in this, in between this kind of, this game. I wouldn’t really imagine that both Palestinian and Israeli people would not want peace. I think this is being made impossible because of, I’m not sure if this is right, but I think it’s because of external power play and interests that are invested in the region, which have very little to do with the everyday life of a Palestinian refugee or an Israeli person.

by Dritëro Kasapi

Sep 9, 2006 12:10:00 PM cite

Eliane Potiguara: As long as there are religious intolerances, economic interests, personal interests the wars will go on. As long as there is capitalism, the exploration of certain commercial products, that enriches A or B, the wars will go on. So, as long as there is this intolerance, this disputes all wars will go on. The autonomy and the decision made of every state and every country must be respected. Why do the United States have to be in every mind and dominate everybody, this is just power and this is the point. As long as the US will remain in this situation everybody will go on with their wars, to defend their countries. They want to defend their houses and their people, we all defend ourselves. If I have, for instance, a production of beans in my house which has been planted for my people, for the community, I, of course defend those beans. Why should I take my beans and hand them out to Ronald Reagan voluntarily? Reagan for me is a person that can be compared to Hitler. Hitler died but he has left his heirs, one of them regrettably is Ronald Reagan, who is a son of Nazism, Fascism and of the hegemony between states. This has to stop.

by Eliane Potiguara

Sep 9, 2006 12:10:00 PM cite

Eliot Weinberger: Well, obviously, the continuing conflict in the Middle East is promoted by political forces that use it to consolidate power. There is no better way to consolidate one’s own power than creating the threat of enemies. I think we need to recuperate a vision of the Levant as it once was. And Levant was a multi-religious, multi-ethnic society of Jews and Christians and Muslims. And one of the great nexuses of civilization, I mean, in the year 1,000, the most civilized city in the world was Baghdad, and Baghdad was a tremendous city of culture and the arts and sciences. It was Muslim, it was Jewish, it was Christian. And I think we need to -- there has to be a kind of movement towards a kind of Levantine consciousness that would replace the idea of, say, pan-Arabism or of Jewish identity in that sense. And I don’t see how peace in the Middle East will be possible without that. My dream -- in Israel, I think I no longer think in terms of a Palestinian state and an Israeli state, and my dream would be a single state with both cultures living in it, with of course absolutely equal rights.

by Eliot Weinberger

Sep 9, 2006 12:10:00 PM cite

Elisabet Sahtouris: The question of why there isn’t peace in the middle east yet is a complex one. And there are many levels involved here. One of the problems is that the middle east has been a fairly tribal set of cultures that has had artificial boundaries imposed on them by people form other parts of the world, from Europe and America. And this causes conflicts inherently because it has disrupted some peoples from their homelands and put them into other places. So there’s that complexity. And then there’s the complexity of the outside intervention of my country, the United States, and other countries that have played roles in the middle east. There are complex alliances that we don’t hear about in the media. We’ve had some documentaries in recent years showing close alliances between the Saudi oil family and the Bush family in the United States. So there’s a lot of collusion of various kinds going on behind the scenes, some of it out in the open. So it’s an extremely complex situation. I certainly don’t think that the United States has done much to foster peace in the middle east when it comes in and attacks countries like Afghanistan where there have been no solutions due to our intervention. And in Iraq where we are told there is the solution of having removed Saddam Hussein from power. We all agree that he was a brutal dictator, however I believe that the people of Iraq would have overthrown Saddam Hussein himself if my country had not actively been involved in preventing that. I do not believe in foreign intervention on the part of my country. I wish it weren’t happening. I don’t know whether there would be peace in the middle east, probably not, if we had not intervened there. However, supporting dictators and then taking them out of power in the interests of foreign capitol are not the way to go to create peace in the middle east. I would love to see peace in the middle east based on the brotherhood of the sons of Abraham and I have a strong feeling that all the people who go in there to do conflict resolution are successful on the small scales they’re permitted to work on and could be successful on a much larger scale if conflict resolution was seriously supported by the world. I hope for peace in the middle east. I believe that people can get along with each other and that in general we are headed toward the formation of global family in the world. The conflicts worldwide have been reduced in the past century and I hope they will continue to be.

by Elisabet Sahtouris

Sep 9, 2006 12:10:00 PM cite

Ervin Laszlo: There are many, many complex answers to this social, political, economic, ecological culture. The basic reason for this conflict goes back thousands of years. Different cultures sharing the same territory, they have territorial conflict with each other now going back to 4,000 years. And this territorial conflict is only made worse by different social and political and economic systems being created in the same area. So, people do not have confidence in each other. They do not tolerate each other and the peace itself would require much more understanding overcoming age of cultural conflicts and that is yet to come.

by Ervin Laszlo

Sep 9, 2006 12:10:00 PM cite

Esther Mwaura-Muiru:

by Esther Mwaura-Muiru

Sep 9, 2006 12:10:00 PM cite

Fernando Solanas: Well. There is no peace in the Middle East yet because the negotiations and the agreements that have been signed in the last decades haven’t been respected. Israel did not respect the Oslo Agreement. Israel did go a lot further. There was the murder of Rabin, they didn’t return the territories that had been annexed and that they had promised to return, they keep thousands of Palestinians in prison, they mock themselves of the people of the Palestinian state, different politicians come and go, they put them into prison, they bomb and destroy things and the humanity is accepting it. They accept the belligerent and killing actions as a daily fact. Every day there are bombings of the Israelian aviation over the population of Palestine. And the recent genocide and the attack against Libanon is something inadmissible, it is inadmissible that the United Nations couldn’t stop it. It is inadmissible that this belligerent state, Israel, is mocking itself of the best human and pacific traditions of the Jewish culture. Israel has aggressive politics. And these attacking and militarist politics are realized by the [] of the economical power of the United States that want the domination of the Middle East and use Israel for this plan of domination. This could make it possible to interpret the necessity of an economical war, the domination of the sources of petroleum, the war of the United States against Afghanistan and Iraq. And it is clear that all this is part of a politic against Iran. The United States said that there are countries which are the axis of evil. And those countries that also maintain their independence are Iran, Syria, Venezuela and North Corea. So there is no other solution for the Middle East than keeping the resolutions that have already been given and fixed by the United Nations but that have been absolutely mocked. The biggest attack has been against Libanon with the pretext of saving two soldiers that have been captured in a combate, that haven’t been kidnapped, but that have been captured while Israel keeps thousands of prisoners of Palestina in order to free two soldiers captured in combate, so they attacked perversely the Libanon which destroyed the whole economical infrastructure. How do they justify the bombings of electrical gasworks, of bridges, of airports, of stations, of motorways?

by Fernando Solanas

Sep 9, 2006 12:10:00 PM cite

Fred Matser: I think that perhaps on the deepest level, there is not enough will power to create such or perhaps there is not enough will power to really understand law and order. And it might be that there are powers that are of enormous influence that even want to the contrary and that is to say to create the conflict and to create fear, to keep on creating fear in order to dominate the situation. Again, I don't know but really that is absolutely an option. So, I think a way to come to peace in the Middle East is to really mobilize all the will power of good willing people and amongst them I see especially a big role for women to really stand up and go and talk to the people that are in the so-called power positions and see if we can help them to have the mind change happen in the minds of the people in power.

by Fred Matser

Sep 9, 2006 12:10:00 PM cite

Galsan Tschinag: Because it isn't about Palestine or Israel and it is definitely not about Arabs or Jews but it is about the interests of the big powers. Because they can be present in the region and become even more powerful because of the chain reaction of violence. To be brief it's about influence and power. To be even briefer it's about oil.

by Galsan Tschinag

Sep 9, 2006 12:10:00 PM cite

Geert Lovink: The Middle East is kind of constructed as a kind of active force, a fault line in global history, contemporary history after the World War II and the process of colonialization. One could say that it's a failed process of decolonization. And it's in fact -- thanks to the British, who we don't hear so much about, but the role they have been playing in the Middle East, in my view, is the main reason still why things have gone so wrong, in fact, in the same way as their very sudden withdrawal from India back then during independence in the late 40s could also be blamed for the death of millions and millions of people then, which in fact is much, much worse than the global problems that we are facing right now in the Middle East, where history is still -- history in the old sense of the word is still a very active force, whereas Europe, which had been a very active force in producing history, mainly has been neutralized, of course, to the benefit of many Europeans and particularly, of course, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in '89. So, the question then should be how can history be diffused in this region as a destructive -- as a productive force. And this new balance of power that should be established there is something that, yes, America is playing of course a very important role in these days. Maybe it's the failed takeover of the legacy between England and the United States in that particular region, and of course other European players such as France would be the main reason why there is no peace in the Middle East yet.

by Geert Lovink

Sep 9, 2006 12:10:00 PM cite

Giora Feidman: Well, why is no peace in the Middle East? If it was only in Middle East there was not peace? Well, you say the problem is small. We can say why is not peace we’ll say in England, 200 years fighting the [Inaudible]. Yugoslavia, Africa, Central America, name it. Why it is not peace in this planet. Why? Why people are accusing each other? Why people -- they have a attitude, if it’s - they don’t -- the other person don’t think what you think and don’t accept, it is thought the solution is to kill. Here is the problem; here is the problem everywhere in our planet. Imagine you, yeah, tell me this topic is not relished, that our brain is clean from the idea to kill. What a tremendous thing, what an attitude! Yeah, how can it be described? It cannot be described, cannot be described. Here we must work to clean this attitude. If there exist different ideas, different approach to points, well, exist. If everyone will think the same, this planet will be extremely boring. But, we see the Middle East, for instance. Israeli or Palestinian, we can sit together; they can sit together. One generation, two, three, four, five generations, we sit together. We will find a solution. Why? Because, if God brought us to this physic life, sure, absolutely not, it is not for the purpose to kill each other. It is to live in peace.

by Giora Feidman

Sep 9, 2006 12:10:00 PM cite

Gladman Chibememe: Yeah, the problem of the Middle East is that it is the center, the epitome of activities. It is the area where most resources are found, especially oil, and oil is considered the highest forest income in the world, and most people, most states are scrambling to get into the Middle East to get hold or to have claims of oil. Also, the Middle East has a number of freshwater resources, and in this case we find that most powers are interested in making this region a very destabilized region so that they can be able to siphon resources, oil resources and water resources from this region, so that they will enrich themselves. So, in that case, the Middle East becomes the hot spot, an area where there is war, no peace, because peace creates a state of nature in which there is no law, there is no fairness, there is no equity, there is no – there is completely nothing and people can just get in and siphon resources out of there. And, this is precisely why most of these people perpetrate wars in the Middle East wanted to continue like that because it is an opportunity to grab resources, to be rich and to fulfill their egoistic and individual interests. It is a question of greediness. And, the only place to fulfill their greediness is the Middle East, because that's where we have the oil, which is the highest earner of income based on the current statistics in terms of contributing to the global economy. So, we don't expect peace in the Middle East. Unless people acknowledge that, they shouldn't be selfish and want to enrich themselves by extracting oil in the Middle East.

by Gladman Chibememe

Sep 9, 2006 12:10:00 PM cite

Govindaswamy Hariramamurthi: The peace in the Middle East cannot be there, will not be there because we don’t want people to exist, we want all the time instability to exist. The peace is something that can happen only when the world outside doesn’t want to benefit from this destructive path. It would have happened, it could have happened if the powerful nations outside Middle East stop interfering in the way Middle East wants to mutually settle it. Middle East is paying a heavy price because of no fault of theirs. But, then, who wants to listen? You can’t legitimate -- legitimize this violence being thrust upon the people of Palestine who have a right of self determination.

by Govindaswamy Hariramamurthi

Sep 9, 2006 12:10:00 PM cite

Hans-Peter Dürr: In my opinion the main problem is that some people believe that they are better than other people. Having more power through possessing weapons, which others don’t have and thereby threatening the others, makes some people believe that they have a higher value than others. This is the idea of the empire, which spreads and takes the place of something, which we once believe to have already achieved: Equality of all cultures and people, something the United Nations represent. Sometimes you might hear from the background that this wasn’t successful. We have built up an empire and we are going to tell you when there will be military conflicts. What is happening in the Middle East is connected to this idea of empire and I consider Israel, or the Israeli government, as an appendage to the American idea of empire at the moment. This is really dangerous if we don’t succeed in convincing the US and their administration that people don’t want to go in this direction, that we need peace, that we are absolutely finished with military interventions. We have to replace all this with something new. Otherwise there will be no peace in the Middle East and we have to prepare for something even worse.

by Hans-Peter Dürr