The situation, despite what the dispassionate observer might think, is according to the Israeli president very complicated. He affirms that Israel wants peace above all and the faults always lie with the Palestinians.
Yet some self important clown from The Washington Post will not let the Turkist PM from rebutting what Simone Peres has alleged to be the facts because the assembled group of people must get to dinner.
You can watch the discussion unwind here (via War in Context):
Paul Woodward notes:
To fully understand what happened, watch the one-hour eight-minute discussion. (For readers who want to fast forward to the part where Shimon Peres starts venting his rage, drag the play marker across to 45 minutes 50 seconds.)
“Why did they fire at us? What did they want? We didn’t occupy. There was never a day of starvation in Gaza. By the way, Israel is the supplier of water daily to Gaza. Israel is the supplier of fuel to Gaza.”
Did the people who arranged this meeting not envisage that there would be a process of claim and rebuttal, and perhaps emotion, and if not why not? Far better to have emotional debates, which admittedly are uncomfortable, but still work through them and have the issue decided ultimately on the evidence than it is to have further military actions and murder.
Let the Israeli Government make it case, and give it a fair hearing. Let there be rebuttal. Who cares how long it takes. Once you have got people talking, keep them talking. Perhaps Davros is not the forum, but it was an opportunity lost. It is a pity that George Mitchell was not there. To be a moderator to such a discussion requires very subtle skills, but there are people who could do it.
What I understand about conflict is that often the sides have different perceptions of what happens, including the actions of the other side, and one purpose of discussion is to develop some mutual understanding and respect. Discussion is not dialogue. It is a contest, somewhat like the adversary system of the law. There are those, somewhere who know how the conditions can be set to move from discussion to dialogue. The technologies of peace are more important than those of war.
POSTSCRIPT:
The Turkish PM is at the very least an interesting person.
ELSEWHERE:
Now you have seen for yourself what actually occurred you can take the lurid journalese, with a grain of salt – or chaff, or whatever. For example, Daniel Steinvorth at Spiegel Online gets colorful.
Professor Michael Nagler in his post “Mindless in Gaza” sums up the situation succinctly, at the Metta Blog (follow the link on the Blogroll):
In the final analysis, we need to reject war as an instrument of peace.