Last spring, Gazi Hamad, the spokesman for the then Palestinian Prime Minsiter Ismail Haniyeh, wrote a very courageous article in the local Palestinian daily Al Quds. In the article, Hamad criticized a phenomenon he felt was prevailing among Gazan Palestinians. He said that people are trying to solve every conflict, small or big, political or social, by using violence. He complained that people no longer consider civil forms of dealing with conflict, as everyone tries to find a shortcut to solve their problems. Hamad didn't know at the time that hard-line branches of his own Hamas movement would in a few months do just that: try to resolve a conflict with the Fatah security personnel by means of brute force.
Furthermore, the crises at the Red Mosque in Pakistan and in Lebanon's Nahr Al Bared speak volumes about how individuals, movements and governments are impatient with spending the time and effort needed to resolve conflicts, and are rather choosing the shortcuts of force. In Gaza, force led Hamas to temporary victory (although at the cost of destroying national unity); in Pakistan militants fought to the death with little attempt at finding solutions, and the Musharraf military similarly attacked the Islamic radicals without the patience and finesse one would expect of a sovereign power.
It is easy to put all of the blame on those choosing martyrdom, but the other side is also guilty of years of apathy, ignoring people's demands and pushing them into such a corner. The idea of a zero-sum game in which one side crushes the other side or is "martyred" is a sad situation.
Part of resorting to such extreme acts of violence (on both sides) is the lack of faith in the democratic process. Today's globalization has created a situation where world powers tens of thousands of miles away can cut off trade to a small region, destroy the economy of any country they choose and if need be carry out military occupation for the flimsiest of reasons.
Civility and nonviolent conflict resolution have been thrown out the window and a winner-takes-all battle cry has replaced dialogue. Unfortunately it takes much more time to build than to destroy. We are cursed with many more years of this madness before we can rebuild trust and return to a more sane way of solving our problems.
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