Common ground: diplomacy and the human givens

John Bell suggests that only a radically different, innate needs-based approach to conflict resolution can bring a possibility of peace to the Middle East.

DIPLOMATIC intervention seems, in this day and age, to be less and less effective as an instrument of managing frictions and conflicts between states. This is particularly so in the Middle East, where venture after diplomatic venture has failed; indeed, they have possibly even exacerbated the troubles there.

At its core, the Middle East conflict speaks to the ancient human need to protect against outside threat. The irony is that the methods the region has developed to do so now propagate those threats by blurring the need for security with other unidentified essential needs, no longer meeting any of them clearly and, as a result, exacerbating problems with outsiders. If diplomacy is to offer any useful answers, it needs a fresh approach and a clear understanding of human needs, how they manifest and how to meet them.

Classic diplomacy is fundamentally based on the notion of state interest. It is a tradition that arose and thrived, from Metternich to Kissinger, as European nation states developed and solidified: professional statesmen were mandated with the mission of managing their nation's interest through dialogue, negotiation and treaty. The premise behind it is that state interests are consciously rational. That is, 'professionals' or elites could determine what was beneficial for their state, pursue this through rational means and so achieve equilibrium states with other nations, often called 'peace'. This approach matured during the European Enlightenment, a period marked by its appeal to 'reason' as the saving grace of humanity. A few 'wise men' full of reason, fundamentally disconnected from their fellow citizens, decided the fates of millions. This was successful in some periods, such as the Congress of Vienna in the 19th century, and unsuccessful in others, the First World War being a case in point. Conflict resolution and 'diplomacy' remain to this day the realm of 'the few' operating under the premise that reasoned argument and negotiation among 'the few' can lead nation-states to greener pastures and end war and disputes.

It may be, however, that the problems between nations today are so complex, and so misunderstood, that such 'rational' procedures don't have a chance to resolve longstanding or deeply rooted conflicts. We are in an age where unknown factors and the apparently 'irrational' may be playing into decision making at the international political level more than is accepted or recognised. Much money is thrown at diplomatic efforts and much authority vested in individuals, often with little result. Indeed diplomats, and professionals in conflict resolution, of whom I am one, may be at risk of being charged with professional incompetence and social irresponsibility.

My own experience as both a UN and Canadian diplomat and now the Middle East director of a global conflict resolution organisation, called Search for Common Ground, is that new 'starting points' are necessary in order for this field to deliver the goods and bring peace and stability
to long-suffering peoples. The area of my knowledge, the Middle East, is simultaneously the most intractable of conflict, yet also the most telling of how wrong humans can go. Its excesses speak loudest to our failures and to a 'missing piece' in the equation.

A few years ago, along with some former colleagues in the Canadian Foreign Service, I began a project on the lodestone of the Middle East problem, the Old City of Jerusalem. This is where the Temple Mount, or the Haram Al-Sharif, is found, a space holy to both Jews and Muslims,
as well as Christianity's Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In 2000, the Camp David talks failed partly because of a focus on the sovereignty of the space (what belongs to whom). As a result, we decided to pursue a new 'needs-based approach' to the problem: identifying the needs of all parties interested in the Old City and how they could be met. At the very time the Old City project began, a close friend directed me to a book called Human Givens: a new approach to emotional health and clear thinking. The similarities between the practical approach we had set upon and the paradigm in this book were obvious; the parallel between the individual and the collective level clear: if humans did not have their innate needs met in a society, conflict would inevitably ensue, just as mental illness would ensue, in an individual.

In the Middle East, needs are not being met because decision-making systems do not address or even recognise them, and often intentionally and wilfully ignore them. This certainly leads to poor decisions, because a possible set of answers are not factored in. The inherited systems of organisation, such as tribe, nation, religious identity, even centralised government or ideology, that bind groups and motivate behaviours limit responses and conflate needs into a blur that is not easily disentangled.
Human needs in the Middle East are so confused, through the admixture of religion, traditional politics and belonging, that no one can distinguish what their needs actually are — or the way forward. Furthermore, collective un-
recognised and unmet needs, whether for security, autonomy, or meaning, can lead to things going very awry.

In the Middle East region, religious heritage plays an especial role: it provides simultaneously a reason for pride, an instrument to bond the group for the purpose of survival, as well as, theoretically, a mechanism for pursuing greater meaning and purpose in life. The result is intermingled needs which, together with archaic instruments for managing modern problems, create a sure-fire recipe for conflict. So, in the Middle East, we have people clinging to land that others have, rationalising behaviour through ancient scripture, and sticking to political answers that have no evidence of efficacy. Attempts at new solutions or understanding matters anew often result in outright disbelief by adherents or the risk of attack or censure.

Disaggregating needs

Over millennia, the people of the Middle East have learned to rely, for their identity, on belonging, particularly to a religious community, thus enabling them also to pursue meaning (especially through the collective pursuit of the 'divine' and meet needs for survival and security (as in "I live or die by my group"). In actual fact, these dimensions need to be disaggregated and understood as separate, in order for needs to be met practically, in this day and age.

It is because of this deep conflation of needs that the Middle East 'feels' existential to any one who works intimately with it. The parties appear to be uncompromising and will apparently throw away seemingly sensible deals, or roads leading to them, such as at Camp David in 2000, because, in the end, the sacrifices involved threaten these essential needs all at once or at least appear to. Arab Muslims today feel they cannot compromise because their heritage and survival is threatened and at stake. Jews, too, hold on dearly to all they have nurtured through the millennia as life-vests of the spirit and body.

Testing each side's readiness to compromise is volatile exactly because any step touches on the most basic and existential parts of each group's identity. Conflict is certain and conflict resolution almost impossible because the society does not believe it can violate what it holds most dear in the name of compromise. Belonging and its fruits matter too much.

This 'existential' attitude towards heritage and identity can be recognised in extremis in the almost suicidal tendency, on both sides, to fight. Within the space of one week in Jerusalem, I was told by an Israeli and a Palestinian that they were ready to let their children die and their futures disappear because they 'had nothing to lose' and all about them was threat. The Middle East has a track record of radical suicidal behaviour, from the siege of the fortress at Masada in AD72, when nearly 1000 Jews sacrificed themselves rather than submit to the Romans, through the revolt in the 2nd century ad against the Romans by Jewish rebel bar Kochba and his followers, also ending in mass suicide in the same fortress, to the suicide bomb attacks of Palestinians of recent years. This latent tendency, currently exhibited by a few radicals, may be more intrinsic to the region's habits than may first meet the eye. It is also demonstrated in the regular failure of negotiations on core issues because they are 'core' to the very existence of the peoples of the region: rather go to the wall and fail than compromise.

Indeed, for thousands of years, the organising principles of tight belonging to family, tribe and religion made sense. The Middle East is the grand pathway of invasion: Europe, Africa and Asia meet here and many a bold conqueror swept through the Fertile Crescent, annihilating locals in his path. From Alexander the Great, to Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar to British General Allenby, the path of conquest between Cairo and Antioch has been well trodden. 'Tight belonging' was essential under such conditions; there was simply no other way to survive.

What the people of the Middle East seem to have discovered, however, is that combining this need for belonging and survival with religious beliefs and ideals cemented the group more firmly. The identity becomes 'jetfuelled' by faith, uncompromising, idealised, full of the glory of meaning, while simultaneously assuaging the anxiety of survival. It is a cultural emotional cocktail that is not easy to give up. Indeed, sometimes it produces a strength of purpose and will that takes a defensive principle belonging and transforms it into successful offence: thus the Arab Muslim expansion of the 7th and 8th centuries or the Zionist success in establishing a state in the 20th century.

This may even seem a relatively efficient way to achieve societal goals. In actual fact, it is dangerous because of the basic attitude it engenders: exclusivity to the group becomes essential for survival. The very principle that provides life and meaning excludes, and harshly so, for the group's integrity cannot be threatened. This intermingling of the needs for survival, meaning and belonging leads naturally to conflict, both because of the aggressive exclusion and because, in the end, the conflation is not an efficient means to meet those needs. Exclusivity spontaneously generates conflict because it often denies the needs of others and survival is threatened by the very mechanism that is supposed to maintain it; the pursuit of 'greater meaning' is confused with other needs such as the need for survival and identity and thus is largely unachieved; and, while belonging is indeed achieved, at what cost does it come and could it not be achieved in a less risky way?

An example of this dynamic in today's Middle East politics is the Israeli settlement enterprise in the West Bank and Gaza, which derives out
of a scriptural reference to land that ancient Jews were divinely granted and which is now 'settled' by modern Jews. The land is needed for both survival of the Jewish people (an extension of the idea of Israel as a haven) and the pursuit of meaning in the sense of fulfilling a divine mission. Until relatively recently, few Israelis questioned the settlement enterprise even though it was built on the land of an existing population group, the Palestinians. For various reasons, that activity has now been diminished in the name of a more important definition of 'belonging': the maintenance of the cohesion of Israel as a Jewish state. The effects of this enterprise nevertheless remain consequential: in its current plans, Israel will still keep ownership
of the large settlement blocs, and compromises made to settlers who are removed may include the dangerous step of holding on to disputed core parts of Jerusalem.

State-level intervention and 'classic' diplomacy cannot fight against such embedded and misunderstood needs. The 'old school' will inevitably lose because it cannot see the 'ghost' it is battling with. As long as needs are left unattended and unidentified and are not disaggregated into modules that can be looked at individually, negotiations will not be able to resolve these problems. The old diplomat is simply blind in the face of such complexities and entanglements it is no wonder that failure repeats itself in the attempts to find peace. The Middle East needs new organising ideas in order to shake this unholy plague of traditional forms of belonging, and new mechanisms to meet its difficult realities head on.

Forward thinking

The Old City of Jerusalem encompasses many of the complexities of the Middle East conflict security, religious needs and symbolism, and demographic and property interests in one square kilometre. The Old City project is attempting to find new answers to this old conflict by disaggregating needs, and presenting new concepts of governance based on meeting the needs of all parties within this small but volatile space.

The project set about identifying and explaining needs, from 'sewage to symbolism'. The city's history adds to its richness and its problems are many. Belonging, survival and security are interwoven in its daily fabric, in the practices of its residents, the claims of nations and the symbolic and emotive perceptions of billions around the globe. Property registries have not been kept since Ottoman times and even then in a haphazard manner; attacks on the holy sites by extremists represent a constant threat; millions of Christian, Muslim and Jewish tourists and pilgrims come every year to visit and enjoy

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This article first appeared in Volume 13, No, 2 (2006) of the Human Givens journal.

JOHN BELL is the Middle East Director for Search for Common Ground, a global conflict resolution organisation. He is also a former Canadian and United Nations diplomat who has worked extensively in the Middle East in Cairo, Gaza, Beirut and Jerusalem on issues ranging from Islamic fundamentalism to the peace process. He has been a member of Canada's delegation to the Refugee Working Group in the peace process, political adviser to the personal representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for southern Lebanon, adviser to the Canadian Government during the Iraq crisis in 2002/3 and consultant to the International Crisis Group on recent developments in Jerusalem. He is a founding member of the Jerusalem Old City Initiative (Universities of Toronto and Windsor), an effort to find creative options for this contentious issue. John Bell has written extensively on Middle East issues in magazines and newspapers across the globe. He is originally from the region and a living example of its shared and mixed heritage.