Defining Moments

When looking at world politics, I could come up with an innumerable amount of defining moments. In fact, in just the past year there was an abundance of events that were significant to varying degrees. The term "defining moment" is a very subjective one, which makes finding one particular incident even more difficult. Ask a historian, a politician, a doctor and a writer what the most important defining moment in the past ten years has been, and you'd be sure to get a variety of answers that have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

History will teach us if moments that we find defining now are still that in the future. Though it happened only a few short months ago, I believe that the death of the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was a very important defining moment for both the Middle East and the world at large.

Three years ago a friend of mine wrote a short story about the conflict that has plagued Israel and Palestine for as long as I or anyone else can remember. In the story, my friend visited a catastrophic earthquake upon the region, leaving it a mess of debris where people turned ghost-like because of the severity of the events.

People who had been fighting each other for centuries had a sudden awareness that all the war had actually harmed them and their fellow humans. Deep down they realized that they were the forces that could initiate peace. With that wonderful literary principal of show-don't-tell, my friend created peace in one of the most conflicted regions in the world in the region in less than 2000 words.

Her story--although not quite as fantastic as The Lord of the Rings--made quite an impression on me. Though I loved the outcome, I remember I criticized her for being such an optimist.

"There is a lot of wishful thinking in your story and you can be sure of one thing--there will never be peace," I told her. "The region is stuck and nothing will change that during our lifetime."

"We'll wait and see," my friend said with a smile.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a very complex one that has led to much rhetoric and fighting. Some claim the problem is purely a religious conflict, others say land is the issue, and others still believe with all their hearts that the conflict boils down to a conspiracy of Zionists intent on taking over the world. The latter view is particularly popular in the Arabic-speaking countries, although I have heard a Dutch, atheist male defend the idea with just as much zest as I exhibit when I argue that the world is round.

If you look at the conflict from the most basic and simplistic level, you see a conflict of human making that is leaving people dead in the street. Taking sides is not the issue; human lives are the issue. The death of one human being, whether it is somebody with the Israeli nationality or somebody with the Palestinian nationality, is one too many. What they believe is not important to me. I care only that they are alive and well and fit to live out their lives to the best of their abilities.

Since Yasser Arafat's death on November 11, 2004, everybody, including skeptics like me, seems to be talking of peace in the area. The words are being spoken with sincerity. We really believe it is possible. I can't exactly put my finger on why things seem more optimistic now so I put my finger on the spot which makes the most sense to me.

Last week my friend, the writer of the fictitious piece of optimism, called to discuss recent political developments concerning Arafat's successor. The man actually shook hands with Ariel Sharon. She reminded me of my past pessimism, and noted that things can take a drastic turn for the better in an extremely short amount of time.

I laughed and said that somebody's death might be a defining moment like the cataclysmic events in her story now, but that the future will tell if her story was truly prophetic or only a lovely dream.