"Peace is a Question of Will"
Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, Finnish diplomat Martti Ahtisaari urged the Obama Administration to push hard on Palestinians and Israelis to "make peace," while carefully avoiding blaming either party. "The international community and those in power," he said, "are sitting there letting them destroy each other. They are allowing both parties to make their lives in the future even more complicated and difficult than it is today."
If you blame the nebulous "international community," you blame no one, which was probably the point.
Ahtisaari continued, "Peace is a question of will. All conflicts can be settled and there are no excuses for allowing them to become eternal." If you suggest a solution that contains no mechanism for its implementation, no one can be blamed for not implementing it - which was probably the other point.
Mushy thinking is the hallmark of the Nobel Committee and those upon whom the Committee bestows the award. But it is reasonable to consider both of Ahtisaari's points - that no conflict should be considered eternal, and that "will" can bring peace to a troubled spot.
Conflicts do not have to be eternal. Britain, France and Germany fought many vicious wars; Germans killed six million Jews and uncounted others; more than 58,000 Americans and more than one million Vietnamese died in the Vietnam War(s, including the French war); an estimated 580,000 Japanese civilians were killed by the Allies in WWII. The amount of suffering that people endure during a war is not the determinant of whether civilized relations or even warm ones can ensue after it ends.
But there must be a mechanism to settle the conflict to produce the peace - "will" is not sufficient. Machiavelli defined "peace" as the conditions imposed by the winner on the loser of the last war. It is the quality of those conditions that determines whether the ensuing "peace" is temporary, cold, warm or, perhaps, the peace of the dead. The peace imposed by the victors of World War I contained the seeds of World War II. The peace imposed after World War II worked well enough for the former Axis countries, but condemned Central Europe to another half century of despotism.
It is offensive to think that Ahtisaari believes the Israeli people don't "want" peace enough. That if they "willed" it sufficiently, their children wouldn't have been blown up in Jerusalem buses and pizza parlors. Or perhaps President-elect Obama has to will it. Could he similarly will relief for Darfur and Zimbabwe? The "international community" has done little but "will" Africa's misery to end, and clearly that is insufficient.
There is nothing inevitable or eternal about the problem of Palestinians and Israelis - but at this moment the two sides are not "willing" the same thing. Israel is under attack daily from the Palestinians, and Iran is calling for genocide.
Until that circumstance changes, all the "will" of the "international community" to "solve the problem" will more likely exacerbate the problem than resolve it.
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