Radio Australia Today Editorial

Hamas, Israel and oil. The problem or the solution?

24 February 2009

There is a view in Buddhism that says that problems and obstacles are good things. They help us to learn and understand ourselves a little better.

There is nothing to suggest that this applies only to personal issues or stubbed toes. If we were to extrapolate to major international issues, perhaps we would not be thinking of unrest as quagmires or wars as unending.

The former Australian ambassador to Israel, Peter Rodgers came in the Breakfast Club yesterday to discuss the middle east (which of late has also been seen as a quagmire, given the diffuclties in Israel, the Palestinean territories, Iraq, Iran and oil).

Rodgers says that the Hamas-Israel conflict is the centre of the problems in the region. It has been a running sore since 1948, when the artificial boundaries set by the UN demarcated the Palestianeans and the Israelis. Even after the Israeli occupation of these Palestinean territories in the early 1970′s, both communities lived together with the tolerance that they had shown, mostly, for thousands of years. But in the last decade or so tempers exploded. Palestineans sent rockets into Israel.  Israel retaliated. Whole families have been killed, innocents have died. You don’t need to be a genius to see that the anger has not been salved by this action. Instead the anger has built on itself.

This single issue has heightened an unsavoury muslim versus jew attitude, and according to Rodgers, it dates back to 1948.

Add oil to these troubled waters and the ill-will expands. Rodgers says that the west is sure to become more and more dependent on oil. Back in 1977, the then-U.S. president Jimmy Carter promised to halve America’s consumption of foreign oil. Barack Obama has just made a similar promise. But as Rodgers so succinctly puts it, “we are all oil junkies”, so the the fine promises of mice and presidents mean little when the needs of the people are the opposite.

Perhaps Buddhists see a good side to this oil dependency. Oil may become the enforcer, stopping the world splitting into two. Without oil, the U.S. may just shut up shop and ignore the implositions in the middle east (some of which it has had a hand in). Instead, the oil forces trade between east and west. It makes the middle east one of the few places that the U.S. depends on for prosperity.

Rodgers, from his position as a former diplomat, says that a sensible U.S. government should be making friendly approaches to Iran, not demonising it. In this world where oil is the glue, it could also be the grease that lubricates what has been for the last few years a rusty pipeline.

As for Israel and the Palestinean Hamas, Peter Rodgers doesn’t know how to fix it. he says there could be a possibly of breaking down the borders and making a single country with Israelis and Palestineans living side by side. Or it could be a case of changing the borders a little to the pre-1967 days. He doesn’t know. But he does know that the problem will be fixed eventually. Oil is making sure the conflict just can’t go on. The question is how much pain is going to be felt before it is fixed. Going hardline is not going to do it. We have already seen that. As the Buddhists might suggest, opening arms and hearts, with the support of the world, might just.

                                  – Phil