Page:The Levant - Zone of Culture or Conflict.pdf/2

El-Youssef / The Levantine Review Volume 1 Number 2 (Fall 2012) Larkin’s poems are good, and like all good art they have the ability to make the audience forget the repugnant views of the artist and bypass his personality too. Reading Larkin poems, just like listening to Wagner music, one temporarily forgets what such artists might have said, in either the private or public spheres. The ability of art to induce temporary forgetfulness is what I would like to make use of in answering the question that is the title of this essay: “Is the Levant a zone of conflict or culture?”

When talking about the Levant, there are two important and closely connected issues one must keep in mind: memory and the attitude of each of the Levant’s communities towards the “other.”

Jews, Palestinians, Kurds and many other nations and minorities in the Middle East have had a past of grief and a history of suffering, and therefore memory is a very important and popular term in many Middle Eastern quarters. Indeed memory is so important that it seemed to be the major source of informing and goading a given community’s political attitude towards the “other,” and sometimes towards the “self.” The trauma of the dark past is generated in deep fear and suspicion verging on paranoia. Accordingly the “other” is seen as someone who has no other wish and intention but that of defeating us, destroying us. Whatever statement and move the “other” makes is often seen as part of a wider, sophisticated, devious plot; an endless conspiracy within which whatever is prefigured years earlier is bound to take place. The “other’s” group, the opposite group, is usually given too much credibility, suspected of being always cunning, skilfully organised and highly co-­ordinated, or at least having the benefit of unshakable determination to keep on fighting to the end. Willingness to negotiate and reach a peace agreement is often viewed with suspicion that even those who participate seem to be expecting little besides their suspicions being confirmed and justified.

The protracted and farcical Palestinian-­Israeli peace process is a good example of how such two aspects manifest themselves. In this context, any concession made, no matter how small and insignificant, is often considered the first of many other greater concessions to follow, leading eventually to the destruction of those surrendering to compromise. Indeed there were times when Palestinian and Israeli peace negotiators seemed to be waiting to see who is going to flinch first, who is going to fail to keep their part of the bargain. The desire to play the role of the tragic hero must have haunted the mind of those peace-makers and was ready to be animated on the world stage: “Look, we have tried everything to reach an agreement; we stretched out our hand to them but they turned it down!” I am sure that such attitudes and such discourse were rehearsed numerous times.

With such paranoia left unchallenged, no wonder peace remains illusive and very difficult, not to say impossible, to achieve. Reconciliation is doomed to remain a distant hope, so long as the “other” continues to be viewed with distrust. And so, ISSN: 2164-6678