| Chapter 1: | The Price of Failure |
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I propose an additional outside-of-the-box solution that flies in a counterintuitive direction––I suggest using fear as an instrument for overcoming suspicion. Let me explain how this works. People today are afraid to let go of what is palpably a strained existence because they are even more afraid of an uncertain future. This subscribes to the old adage “better the devil you know than the one you don't.” Given this understandable preference to deal with the familiar (as opposed to the unknown), how can we bring both sides to the point where they perceive that today's situation is so insufferable that they are willing to accept the lack of certainty in a two-state solution? In other words, how do we make the familiar so unbearable that they are willing to risk the unknown? This was key, indeed absolutely critical, in turning the situation around in South Africa at the end of the 1980s and the early 1990s. The price of maintaining the status quo was so unbearably high that people were willing to take a calculated risk on the future.
The combination of sharing a vision of a better future and reinforcing the dire consequences of the status quo should motivate large segments of the population to become more inclined to take some risks to improve their lot in life. This approach has the advantage of breaking the mindset. In summary, these are the two immediate obstacles, each with responses that are familiar, and others less familiar.
The second set of obstacles is of a basic variety. One type relates to increasing political disfunctionality. Political disfunctionality for non-political scientists means that there are two weak governments in Israel and Palestine with the implications being that even if they had the desire to strike an agreement, they do not have the capacity to carry it out. Some say that this is a crisis of leadership. If this is the case, then there has been a crisis of leadership for almost sixty years in Israel.
But I believe the problem of governance goes further than just a crisis of leadership. Political disfunctionality means that the present Netanyahu government is as saddled with problems as its immediate predecessors. Recently, the Olmert administration spent the best of its working hours maintaining the fragile coalition in which Shas got everything it wanted; in which Ehud Barak, who was supposed to be the leader of the peace camp, emerged as a force who made Ariel Sharon look like the