A New Road Map For Peace:
Looking up to the sky

by Rabbi Dov Greenberg
June 2005

We've been reading about the "road map" to peace in the Middle East
for many years. Anyone can see it hasn't taken us very  far. It's been 
like trying to get to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco using 
a map of Lower Manhattan. You can try harder, pray harder, and 
double your speed. But your efforts only succeed in getting you to
the wrong place  faster. The fundamental problem has nothing to do 
with traffic jams,  diversions or delays; it has everything to do with 
using the wrong map.

For over a decade, Israel has navigated tirelessly to achieve peace
using the Oslo map, which was built on this premise: Assuage the 
other side's grievances -- end the occupation; give the Palestinians 
land, armed forces,  their own state -- and peace will follow. 
Hence in 1993, Israel brought the P.L.O. out of exile and gave it 
recognition, international legitimacy, governmental autonomy and 
authority over 98% of the Palestinian  population.

Where has this map brought us? In the past decade, terrorism has
increased dramatically. Eleven years ago, Yitzhak Rabin in his 
historic speech on the White House lawn, spoke of a future in 
which mothers no longer wept for sons lost in battle. But the 
weeping has not ended; it's reached a  deafening crescendo. 
Terrorists have killed more Israelis in the eleven  years since
Oslo began in 1993 than in the 45 years of Israel's existence 
before that.

Obviously we've been using the wrong map to move us toward peace.  
Is there an alternative?

Ludwig Wittgenstein once said that his aim as a  philosopher was 
to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle. "The fly keeps banging 
its head against the glass in a vain attempt to get out. The more 
it tries, the more it fails, until it drops from exhaustion. The one 
thing it forgets to do is look to the sky." Like the frustrated fly, 
the one thing Israel has forgotten to do is look to the sky.

If Israelis were to look  up, they would see an alternative map to 
peace, provided by El Al, Israel's renowned airline.

El Al is the gold standard in aviation security. There is a security,
safety and comfort on El Al planes felt by all of its passengers - 
Jews, Christians and Moslems alike - that one does not feel on 
any other aircraft. This is an astounding achievement, since 
El Al is the world's most coveted terrorist target in the sky.

Now, imagine if El Al decided that because it has been despised 
for decades, it is time to change its policy and methods of security. 
First, El Al would invite people who in the past wished to hijack 
and blow up its planes and passengers and give them "autonomy" 
on one  section aboard El Al aircraft. In these sections, former 
hijackers could move about freely without scrutiny or supervision. 
Next, El Al would make these  "reformed militants" responsible for 
the security of passengers seated in their area of the aircraft. 
This overture of peace would certainly demonstrate to the  
international community that El Al is truly committed to coexistence 
and liberal values. It would help put an end to the animosity felt
by many toward El Al.

Some would propose that El Al show more "flexibility" and relinquish  
its control of the cockpit to the former terrorists. Some would 
advocate that El Al construct a wall to enclose the autonomous 
aisles or to unilaterally withdraw from several seats that are in 
close proximity to those aisles.

All of these strategies, of course, would be suicidal for El Al.  
All of them miss the fundamental point. Compromising on security 
or granting autonomy on a single seat would spell cataclysmic 
disaster for the entire airline. The life of every passenger, Muslim, 
Jew and Christian, would be placed in mortal danger. Travelers 
would before long bid farewell to El  Al. That would spell the end 
of the airline.

The only way for El Al  to eradicate terror from its airplanes is not
through concessions or autonomy, but rather by destroying any 
hope the terrorists have of achieving their objectives.  El Al has 
adopted an uncompromising stance against terrorism, and they 
make no apologies. The world stands in admiration of what El Al  
has accomplished. The El Al road map goes by the name 
"peace through strength."

This is the right road map to peace in Israel.

If the last decade of the Oslo process has taught anything, it is 
that no responsible government can give in to terror. Such behavior 
does not end terror, but invites it yet more.

The Arab terror war against Israel is no more a territorial conflict 
than was al Qaeda's strike against America, and it can no more 
be resolved by the current "road map" than anti-Americanism 
could be appeased by yielding New Jersey to Osama bin Laden.

Hence, Israel's intent to withdraw from Gaza is profoundly misdirected.
The Palestinian goal over the last decade has been to demoralize 
the Israeli people through terrorism and  force a unilateral Israeli 
withdrawal from the territories. If they succeed, the relentless war 
against Israel will be launched far more advantageously from 
their newly acquired territory.

At the end of World  War II, Winston Churchill quipped, "You can 
rely on America to do the right thing, once it has exhausted the 
alternatives." Israel, which has far fewer alternatives than the U.S., 
has long ago exhausted them all. How much more  innocent blood 
needs to be spilled before we abandon the failed maps of the  past? 
How many more children have to be blown up by suicide bombers 
before we  pursue the course El Al has bravely charted?
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Rabbi Dov Greenberg is executive director of Chabad at  
Stanford University and a popular lecturer on Judaism. 
You can Email him at: Info@chabadstanford.org