{"id":360,"date":"2009-01-11T17:19:10","date_gmt":"2009-01-11T17:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2009\/01\/from-status-quo-to-solutions.html"},"modified":"2009-01-11T17:19:10","modified_gmt":"2009-01-11T17:19:10","slug":"from-status-quo-to-solutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/01\/from-status-quo-to-solutions.html","title":{"rendered":"The Gaza Conflict: From Status Quo to Solutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

My friend Eboo Patel, the executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core,<\/a> wrote a great piece on the On Faith blog<\/a> at the Washington Post. \u00a0He has three status quo approaches that continue the cycle of violence and then contrasts them with four solution approaches that he proposes to break through the deadlock. \u00a0I wonder if we have the guts to try what he suggests:\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Rule No. 1 is use the current crisis to advance your narrative.<\/em>\u00a0If you’re Jewish, that story involves words like “security”, “terrorism”, and “right to exist”. If you’re Muslim, it includes terms like, “humanitarian crisis”, “occupation” and “disproportionate violence”.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rule No. 2 is talk about how bad it is where your people live.<\/em>\u00a0If you’re Jewish, that means highlighting the number of Hamas rockets fired into Israel and the number of lives lost and disrupted in cities like Sderot. If you’re Muslim, it involves talking about the prison that is Gaza and the disaster that is the West Bank.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/span>Rule No. 3 is blame it on the other side.\u00a0<\/em>If you’re Jewish, that means pointing at the violent and belligerent defiance of Hamas. If you’re Muslim, it means talking about the suffocation of the blockade in Gaza and the occupation in the West Bank.<\/span>
Following these rules makes perfect sense for the parties involved because just about every one of their talking points is true. Hamas is violent and belligerent. The blockade and occupation is suffocating. Life in Sderot is rife with fear. Life in Gaza does feel like a prison.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

vs:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rule No. 1<\/strong>:\u00a0Make your first phone calls to the people who disagree with you on the current situation, but who agree with you on the basic outlines of a long-term solution – two states, with security and dignity for all.\u00a0<\/strong>That’s a Coalition for a Solution, creative and courageous enough to get people’s attention. This means, difficult as it might be, resist the instinct to use the current crisis to find more people who will wave signs for your side, show up at your rallies or sign on to your petitions. That logic serves mostly to further prolong the conflict. Instead, use the spotlight on the Middle East to reach out to those on the other side who have the courage to play for a long-term solution and say, “Look, the status quo is untenable for everybody. It’s time for a different set of rules.”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/span>Rule No. 2: Acknowledge the real issues on the other side.<\/strong>\u00a0Minnesota U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim in Congress, models this in his\u00a0recent press release<\/a>\u00a0when he says that he has been in Sderot and has “seen firsthand both the physical and emotional destruction caused by the rocket attacks”. That acknowledgment doesn’t take away from something else that Ellison says – which is that conditions in Gaza are “unliveable”. It merely means that Ellison has the eyes and the heart to imagine life on both sides of the fence.<\/span>
In Status Quo Rules, recognizing the challenge on the other side makes you a traitor. In the Solution Rulebook, it makes you a true patriot, because it’s the fastest way to build trust with the people you have to build peace with.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/span>Rule No. 3: Recognize that certain players who claim to be on “your side” are part of the problem.\u00a0<\/strong>The truth is, you don’t want them on your side anyway. They are dangerous and destabilizing to your community. When peace is finally made with the other side, your first battle is going to be against them. Hamas is a destructive force to Israelis, and a destructive force to Palestinians. Muslims should feel no obligation to defend them. The militant settlers are murder to Palestinians, and also murder to Israel. No Jews should feel like they have to defend them either.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rule No. 4: The politics of the Middle East is about where your family is.<\/strong>\u00a0If your family is in Sderot, it is unbearable. If your family is in Gaza, it is also unbearable. Talking about whether scattered Hamas rockets are the equivalent of precision Israeli air raids, or whether Islamist rhetoric is as bad as Israeli occupation is logical but irrelevant. Logical because you can write press releases for your side using such talking points, irrelevant because it doesn’t build a bridge to the other side, which is the only way to a solution.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Eboo Patel’s entire piece can be read here<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend Eboo Patel, the executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core, wrote a great piece on the On Faith blog at the Washington Post. \u00a0He has three status quo approaches that continue the cycle of violence and then contrasts them with four solution approaches that he proposes to break through the deadlock. \u00a0I wonder…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-relations"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Gaza Conflict: From Status Quo to Solutions - Progressive Revival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/01\/from-status-quo-to-solutions.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Gaza Conflict: From Status Quo to Solutions - 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Paul B. Raushenbush is the moderator of the Progressive Revival blog and the Associate Dean of Religious Life at Princeton University. .An ordained American Baptist minister, Rev. Raushenbush speaks and preaches at colleges, churches and institutes around the country including the College of Preachers at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., The Chautauqua Institute in upstate New York, and the New America Foundation. Rev. Raushenbush has served at Seattle First Baptist Church, the Presbyterian Chaplaincy at Columbia University and as College and Young Adult Minister at The Riverside Church in New York City. He has appeared on ABC World News Tonight and is a repeated guest on CNN. He has been quoted in The New York Times and The Washington Post and is a contributing editor for Beliefnet.com. His first book, Teen Spirit: One World, Many Faiths (HCI) was released in the Fall of 2004. He is the editor of the 100th Anniversary edition of Walter Rauschenbusch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book Christianity and the Social Crisis \u00e2\u20ac\u201c In the 21st Century (HarperOne). His work at Princeton includes strengthening the interfaith community on campus. He is the Co-Director of the Program on Religion, Diplomacy and International Relations at The Liechtenstein Institute on Self Determination at Princeton University. Rev. Raushenbush studied religion at Macalester College before attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City where he graduated with distinction.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/praushenbush"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}