Shoving for Peace?

Quote of the day:
“It is possible to own too much. A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure.”
--Lee Segall

Annoying news lead of the day:
“President Bush announced an initiative yesterday to shore up the Palestinian president and to begin building a Palestinian state, signaling that his administration will use its remaining time for a major push for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”
--Helene Cooper in the New York Times.

I am grateful for any effort toward peace, but this effort is annoying for two reasons.

First, “pushing” for peace points to an arrogant we-know-better-than-you-what’s-good-for-you attitude. Attempts to “push” peace don’t work, except in the short term.

Long-term peace requires a very high level of trust, which takes time and patient skill to nurture, especially in this situation.

Which brings me to my second annoyance. It is truly incredible that Bush is now pushing peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Just after he took office in 2001 he literally and summarily abandoned the long-standing peace process in the Middle East.

Hundreds of people on all sides had built trust and committed thousands of hours to ongoing, painstaking negotiations. Most of those people were non-partisan career diplomats. It is insulting, demeaning and arrogant--not to mention tragic--to simply toss their work aside.

And now, more than six years later, a big announcement comes that we are going to “push for peace.” I wish someone would tell President Bush that he can’t just switch this off and on when he decides decisions.