Peace agreements promise hope

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Daily Wildcat Glenda Buya-ao Claborne

"Sometimes, the hardest thing is to dare to hope," wrote Mary Holland for The Irish Times. But she went on to write about the negotiations to end the conflict in Northern Ireland as "politics practiced as an art, which can rescue a society from savagery and fear - the conduct of war by other means."

Peace as brittle hope was the violence that welcomed Benjamin Netanyahu and Yasser Arafat back in the Middle East barely a week after they signed the Wye Memorandum Oct. 23.

Terrorists believed to be Hamas activists attempted to bomb a busload of Israeli schoolchildren. The children escaped harm but an Israeli soldier was killed.

Peace as the conduct of war by other means was Netanyahu promptly calling Arafat to wage an all-out war against terrorism or the planned redeployment of some Israeli-controlled land to Palestinian authority would not go as scheduled by the Wye Memorandum.

Peace as politics practiced as an art was Arafat quickly responding by meeting with his security officers and ordering the arrests of Hamas activists, particularly putting the Hamas spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin under house arrest.

Such is the art of peace and war. Stages and schedules towards peace are outlined in pieces of paper, but sabotage and suffering are also etched in pieces of land.

So leaders keep talking, negotiating and renegotiating peace agreements because the pieces of paper represent something bigger than steps towards the reduction of a police force, the amendment of a covenant, the release of prisoners, the opening of an airport or a seaport, the transfer of land and even statehood itself. Peace agreements hammered out by multi-lateral parties represent the hopes not only of the two nations involved but the hopes of all nations for a safer and better world to live in.

It is true that one almost expects "broken" and "derailed" to follow "signed" and "sealed" when it comes to peace agreements but grandiose symbolic acts of peace such as the signing of a peace agreement is a monumental symbol for what individuals and small groups cannot accomplish on their own.

When the nationalists, the unionists and Sinn Fein signed the Good Friday agreement in April this year, to end the 30-year conflict in Northern Ireland, the agreement represented the common aspiration among both Catholics and Protestants to break out from the stranglehold of religious hatred.

Yes, the Omagh massacre of 28 innocent people happened in August, a tragedy enough to have broken a people's hope for any peace. But Northern Ireland strives to move on with the peace agreement.

Peace comes slowly.

In 1976, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to two Northern Irish women, Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams, for leading the Northern Ireland peace movement. Twenty-two years of bloody conflict followed. This year, the Nobel Peace prize went to two of the major players in the April peace agreement in Northern Ireland, David Trimble and John Hume.

Who can tell how many more years of conflict lay ahead?

Peace is a process.

Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin started the Middle East peace process in 1978. Many things have changed since then. Arafat was one of the Arab leaders who condemned Sadat for selling out to Israel and to the West and now he is a major player in the peace process. Despite extreme difficulties, Israel and the PLO has recognized each other's right to peace and security starting from the 1993 Oslo agreement.

Peace needs mediators.

U.S. Senator George Mitchell was involved in hammering out the Northern Ireland agreement. President Clinton played a key role in bringing a speedy agreement to the Wye Memorandum. Jordan's King Hussein took a break from his cancer treatments at a Mayo clinic to go to Maryland and helped his Middle Eastern neighbors to get the Wye negotiations to an agreement. President Carter was instrumental in the Camp David negotiations.

Yes, peace claims its leaders by the extremism of some of the leader's own people.

Sadat was killed by Arab fundamentalist assassins during a military review celebrating the Suez crossing in 1973. Yitzhak Rabin was killed by a young Israeli right-wing extremist during a peace rally in 1995.

But even as Israelis commemorate the third anniversary of the death of Rabin this week, the candles they burn must remind the world that hope for peace must burn in people's hearts.

Glenda Buya-ao Claborne is an undeclared graduate student. Her column, Sitting on the Fulcrum, appears every Monday and she can be reached via e-mail at Glenda.Buya-ao.Claborne@wildcat.arizona.edu.