Thoughts on Achieving a Lasting and Honorable Peace in the Middle East
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unlikely that the world community (and especially the United States) will allow Iran to proceed far enough along the path of nuclear weapons technology development to obtain a nuclear arsenal. Secondly, we think that Iran, which is the descendant of a Persian Empire that once protected Jews and ended their Babylonian Exile, is just going through a temporary stage of reactionary fervor resembling what the Vatican went through during the Middle Ages, and is likely to return to normal in a few decades as a result of the combined effects of internal aspirations for greater freedom and international pressures.
Another scenario, especially popular among conspiracy theorists, where a putative Greater Kurdistan Project that would supposedly be realized with the support of the United States and Israel is perceived as the opening of Pandora’s box, presents the risk that wars that are initially regional may spread throughout the world.
We believe, and hope, that a more optimistic scenario may come to pass as a result of a change in mindset among Jews and Arabs, two closely related peoples that each enjoys the benefit of thousands of years of accumulation of experience and civilization. As a starting point, we hope that the peace negotiations that have started again between Israel and the Palestinian Authority will lead to a lasting and honorable peace. Furthermore, we hope that such a peace will be the first step towards the creation of a supranational entity for economic and political cooperation that resembles the European Union and encompasses all countries of the Middle East. The formation of such a supranational entity could be a major step towards the creation of a peaceful and prosperous Middle Eastern civilization.
The fact that a peace-loving and experienced statesman such as Shimon Peres is currently the President of Israel makes this an especially opportune time to start taking steps towards creating such a bright future for the Middle East from its pitiful current situation.
Whether the Middle East will have a happy or a miserable future depends, above all else, on the peoples of the region. It is important to reach the hearts and minds of not only their political leaders and intellectuals, but also their entire populations. The greatest obstacles to the establishment of a lasting and honorable peace in the Middle East are persistent psychological barriers and unfair proposed solutions to the region’s problems. Many people are prejudiced against one another along religious and ethnic lines. The conflicts between Sunnis and Shiites, Jews and Arabs, Turks and Kurds, and Christians and Muslims are all results of divisions and hostilities between the diverse peoples of the Middle East. But, the mindset seems to be slowly changing, especially amongst the youth. It was the youth that drove the forces of democracy during the Arab Spring, for example. The young people of this generation are also more educated and more receptive to contemporary (Westernized) outlooks, making us all more alike as well as more knowledgeable about one another than ever before. Furthermore, globalization has certainly caused our similarities to become more important than our differences by making it necessary to work with one another.
Finally, the formation of a joint commission of peace-oriented Arab and Jewish intellectuals who would collaborate on formulating such a vision of a lasting and honorable peace in detail and then introduce it with some credibility to Arab and Jewish peoples to seek to educate them and gain their support may enhance the probability of success of such an ambitious endeavor to transform the destiny of the Middle East.
We are hopeful that this changing mindset will transform the destiny of the Middle East. We have faith that the traditions of wisdom and spirituality that are ingrained in the peoples of the Middle East will win in the end. In the name of humanity, we salute those who, under today’s seemingly discouraging circumstances, are laying the foundations for peace and the establishment of a bright new civilization in the Middle East.
About the Authors
Dr. Gaffar Yakın (M.D., Istanbul University) was raised in Turkey as a fundamentalist Muslim and as a political ultraconservative. He gradually adopted a devout but Sufi interpretation of Islam with an all-embracing universalist perspective after his university years. He has been progressing along that path during the last three decades of his religious journey, as well as championing liberal and social democratic public policies. He is a radiologist who once provided medical services in Saudi Arabia (Mecca and Medina) for five years. He has spent much of his adult life as an active politician. He served for many years as a Representative in the Turkish Parliament. He is a writer who has authored (thus far) three books analyzing and proposing specific solutions to major political issues of Turkey.
Dr. Jozef Bicerano (Ph.D., Harvard University) was raised in Turkey as a non-religious Sephardic Jew. He used to categorize his political views as those of a European-style social democrat when he lived in Turkey. He describes himself as a moderate and a progressive in the American political context. He has been a Unitarian Universalist for the last three decades. He is a materials scientist who has been working in industrial research and development throughout his career, first in a corporate setting and now in running his own consulting and contract research firm. While never having been a professional politician, he has always maintained a strong interest in important social and political issues.
Holly Bicerano (Dr. Jozef Bicerano's daughter) is pursuing a B.A. degree at Boston University with a double concentration in Economics/Mathematics and Middle Eastern Studies. Her foreign language studies include both Arabic and Hebrew. She has traveled extensively throughout the Middle East and North Africa, including Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Turkey. She is currently leading an effort to establish a branch of the nonprofit peace advocacy group J Street at Boston University. Her long-term goals include working on socioeconomic development in the Middle East.
Dr. Gaffar Yakın and Dr. Jozef Bicerano have known each other since they were classmates from 1968 to 1971 at the oldest continually-running American high school founded outside the USA, Robert College https://webportal.robcol.k12.tr/Pages/default.aspx, in Istanbul. Their views on the Middle East were diametrically opposed and their interactions with each other were also very uncomfortable at a personal level at that time, but they have become very good friends since then. As can be seen from this article, they have also converged to exactly the same viewpoint on how to bring peace to the Middle East. They feel that, if they were able to reach where they are today from where they started in 1968, then there is also hope that the long-standing problems of the Middle East can eventually be resolved.