PEACE FOR PALESTINE

THE PLAN OF THE PEACE VILLAGES.

The Middle East is about more than the fate of two peoples. If peace is achievable here then something new will have been achieved for human kind. In this war the potential conflict between all of humanity is revealed. Peace in the Middle East is not only of regional importance but also of planetary significance. In the following text I want to highlight a number of aspects and bring a call for active support.

In Israel a new peace movement is being born. In spite of severe sanctions, a growing number of soldiers object to military service or the murderous orders in the Occupied Territories. In a public declaration they state: “We will not go on fighting beyond the ‘green line’ for the purposes of domination, expulsion, starvation and humiliation of an entire people”. Hundreds of soldiers signed this declaration. Their courage deserves our gratitude. A sign of hope is apparent. May it be followed by many more.

No longer can the violations of international law committed by the Israelis against their neighbours be inactively observed. Israel treats the Palestinians as the Americans treated the Native Indians when conquering their continent. It can be difficult to not offer such a one-sided judgment but in this case it is necessary, if truth and humaneness are to be given an opportunity at all. Many Israelis know little truth about the situation as true information is rarely accessible. The Palestinian Intifada is not the cause but the consequence of an endless series of human rights violations by the Israelis. Draining fresh water resources, cutting down the olive groves, destroying Palestinian homes with bulldozers are all examples, are all stains in a cruel line of humiliation and violence. These things must be known to understand the uncontrollable hate of the Palestinian people. The extreme measures taken by the Israelis reflect the fatal self-consciousness of a “master race”. It appears as if a section of the Jewish people now do to others as has been done to them for centuries. The terrifying logic of history, assuming its rule until true powers of peace enter the path of new solutions and reconciliation.
The Palestinians also have to contribute to this solution. There is no sense in defending honour with violence. The spiral of violence will not be stopped through violence, suicides are heroic but no means to peace. In order to attain peace direct, visible and humane reconciliation on both sides is needed. The youth on both sides needs new songs, new ways and concepts of meeting and living together. The thought of peace villages has to be seen within this context.

Israel has a cruel history. Jerusalem has been a crucial point for religious and political events for 3000 years. The Jewish people were bound to their God and country in a very special way. The spiritual background of the Zionist movement cannot be ignored. For the Jewish people to find a new home after centuries of persecution and Diaspora left its mark. The founding history of the State of Israel was necessarily a history of pain on both sides.
However the current events are not just the consequence of this pain. Both military and financial superiority has been adopted to destroy an entire people step by step and encage them into the Ghettos. This is not said out from a place of hate as we do not hate the Jewish people. But things must be clearly defined in order for the Palestinian people to reclaim a voice in the world. Otherwise more desperate actions will be unavoidable. These words are also there to give support to Israeli peace workers who are as stunned by the daily injustice as we are. But paramount is the wish to search for a solution together.

Israel against Palestine: this is not only one people fighting another people, not only one religion fighting another religion but an imperialistic system of power fighting an almost helpless people. Israel is not fighting alone. As an important stronghold for the American “world order” it is supported by the US with weapons and money. Recently, Hillary Clinton publicly sympathised with Ariel Sharon. Veiled behind this conflict is an international power cartel that recognizes Israel as an important strategic point for globalisation.
Human rights violations occurring in Palestine are, right now, occurring all over the world. The entire globe is dominated by the suppression of imperialistic economic powers against helpless peoples. There is hardly a farming family freely running their own land, hardly a village not threatened by the relentless methods of worldwide exploitation. Global terror is not the desperate actions of individual rebels, but the power strategies of international finance and their representatives all over the world. The same structures of violence are reflected by this system globally. The same structures of pain are left in its wake everywhere. The tears of a Palestinian mother mourning for her dead child are the same tears as a mother in Israel, in Chechnya, in Sierra Leone or in Nicaragua, the same in Manhattan and in Afghanistan. The sorrow for a lost husband or lover, the pain of a destroyed home, the freezing of refugees on their endless trails, the hate towards the cynical suppressors, the unavoidable desire for revenge, mourning on one side and jubilation on the other. Everywhere are the same structures of a deeply split human race.

The causes of global violence lay not only in the power politics of corporate companies, banks, the military and secret services. They also lay in the misguided orientation of the entire human civilization. Humanity has lost its anchor. The anchor lays in the unity and holiness of life and the interconnectedness of all beings. The human world has to reconnect with the higher orders of life and creation. Peace, healing and a true home on earth can only be found when it is shared with all other beings. The earth belongs to all of us; humans, animals, plants, rivers, and mountains. All of us are part of the big unity of life we must return in order to build a new planetary culture of peace.

Healing is sacredness. If peace is wanted then it is necessary to build a society in where human life is re-embedded into the holy matrix, the basis of all life. We need peace villages that have the strength to develop such models and we need people with the strength to build such peace villages. A single fully functioning peace village, the size of a few hundred people, could trigger an iterative process throughout the entire earth comparable to the “butterfly effect” in chaos research. If a few such peace villages were built successfully in different places, a global healing process would already be active.

The thought of peace villages is not unfamiliar to the Jewish tradition. It was religious Jews who set up the Chassidic communities around their founder Baalschem during the 18th century. It was the Jewish representatives of a humane socialism who laid the foundations for the Kibbutz movement a hundred years ago. The Zionist movement, widely linked today with the international power cartel had, initially, a very spiritual background. They wanted to renew the covenant that their ancestors had made with their god 3000 years ago. They wanted to reunite their people on the basis of this covenant. For a faithful Jew this was not an imperialistic thought but a deeply religious one. The move from the Diaspora into the Holy Land was the beginning of a new life for many Jews. It is similar to many of us today who experience the move from industrial mega-societies into new forms of living as the beginning of a new life.

Palestine/Israel is located in a special place on this earth. In Palestine, the town of Jericho was founded 10,000 years ago, one of the oldest towns in human history. The old capital Jerusalem is a political and religious centre point of history for 3000 years now. The temple of Salomon (built 3000 years ago) held enough secrets to trigger the movement of the Templars in the medieval times (under the guidance of Bernard of Clairvaux, the most powerful catholic bishop at that time). Today “The Dome of Rock”, built by Muslims, crowns the same place, beneath several stages of earlier history. Much was struggled for here, much attempted, much hoped for and much destroyed. Jerusalem, Israel, Palestine: these are not only political definitions, they are also symbols of a highly committed search of human kind. Israel/Palestine is an acupuncture point in the spiritual energy system of the earth. If the implantation of a peace information through the method of a real peace village would succeed here, it would have the effect of a signal to the world.

Already human processes are experienced in Israel and Palestine that move the question of peace to our hearts core in a new way. On both sides there are women and men who do not preach hate and revenge any longer, for they have suffered too much. There are peace workers who understood, by their own suffering, the suffering of their supposed enemies, forever. Is it not possible to build up a huge model of reconciliation, forever?
The day will come when we will realize, through tears, what we have done to those considered enemies. The day will come when we will realize, through tears, what we have done to all the animals. And the day will come when the two halves of humanity – men and women – will realize what they have done to each other. Reconciliation is the central motive of the peace villages. We need places on earth where wounds can heal.

Finally, a few words regarding the possibility of realising a better world. In theory it is hardly a problem. The question is only whether there will be enough people who think and act accordingly. I reasoned the theoretical possibility for global peace in my book “The Holy Matrix”. The world is a ‘holon’, a living unity. If it is possible to build up new structures and information in one part, it will affect the whole. There is an effect on the whole as a medicament has an effect on the whole organism. If developing a peace information with enough depth and complexity is achievable in any location, it is fed into the informational body of the earth (Noosphere) and becomes accessible in any location. Consequently the ‘holon’ is in a ‘stimulated state’; the probability that similar structures develop in other places on earth increases. Here, as in any other ‘holon’ the law of morphogenetic field building holds true.

We still talk in a subjunctive mode but want to state that, already, work on the concrete preparations of peace villages has been going for a few years. The “Institute for Global Peace Work” in Portugal was founded for this purpose and now enters the public domain to invite dedicated people to join in co-operation and support. It is desirable that many committed people take in these ideas and disseminate them into a worldwide ring of peace. This year (August 2002) we will hold a summer camp where we expect about 40 participants from Israel and Palestine. We urgently ask for financial support.

For the hope of all who love.
For new models for live in Israel and Palestine.

Salaam! Shalom!

Dieter Duhm