Mr. Bush, Rebuild this Wall!

The Israel-Palestinian truce is dead. Which is to say, the jive about it, the spin, the buzz, the obvious-to-everyone-from-the-beginning deception is over. Sharon, as usual, was right to stay tough. To continue doing the only thing that will have any practical effect. Namely, to build walls. Even Hamas and Co. were right. They are fighting for a piece of the pie they believe, with some justification, is due them.

Everybody is right because such struggles are never about what the other side thinks is fair. This sort of conflict, however horribly bloody, is ultimately and always, all about reaching a deal. Making a peace all can and will live with.

That said, here is what is plain. This is clearly not a time for bridges in the Middle East. To have bridges between people with profound differences you have to have respect. And there is only respect for power and cleverness now. There is no respect for peacefulness…or each other. Not right now.

We can argue endlessly about who was wronged first. But there is a reality on the ground, a geography that is still being sorted out with bloody precision. That has to happen first and it should surprise no one. For the world’s conflicts are always sad and simple matters of real estate.

Good fences, like they say, make good neighbors. Is that a terrible and tragic thing to say? Only if you believe that people, through time, evolve morally. That as a species we have become better with each passing century, more compassionate, less bellicose, more caring.

I do not believe this. I believe that human nature is basically just what it has always been. That such moral and ethical evolution comes little if at all. I am an optimist, however, so I wait and hope for a change in who we are. But in the meanwhile I construct solid fences, some real and some metaphors for clear and ironclad agreements. I make, in my personal life, deals.

In that sense, lawyers are the best hope for the Middle East. For the Israelis and the Palestinians. There will come a time when these armed populations will send their lawyers, or diplomats, to hammer out the ironclad agreements that will keep the peace, establish the fence lines. They will build those fences then, and behind them stand watch, armed and guarding their rights.

In some spots this will be hard. Jerusalem’s geography is messy and will take years to iron out. Some places the fence construction is going along rapidly. In the end, fences will divide and protect. We should get behind it now as the key to the “peace process.” That is how this whole recent crisis will end anyway, regardless of debate or desire for something else.

It is simply that there are limitations built into human nature. We only get along when boundaries are clear. Each of us needs a place of our own. This is not a moral or ethical opinion or belief, but the territorial imperative at work.

So the time has come to act. We can choose to prolong the agony or redraw the lines, build the fences and have each cohesive group hiding in relative safety behind these lines.

In a gentler form we see this in our strange and wonderful democracy each time one of us leases or buys an apartment or house or a piece of land. Once, less than 200 years ago in many places, people shouted and shot at each other over whose land was whose. Finally bankers and lawyers worked out the deeds and contracts and the violence died down.

Build the stout walls now. Divide those who cannot, for many reasons, make peace at present. It worked in the Cold War. Time healed that wound.

The physical separation of a Middle East wall is what is needed now to bring a temporary peace that will be a preamble to something more lasting. Walls to keep people divided will buy precious time, the next best thing to real peace and harmony.

In other words, we can gain a respite in which some progress can be made. For democracy does not mean we all like each other.

It means we have good fences. We have replaced armed conflict with contracts and deeds…and laws. And in this world of moral and ethical relativity, the pen that draws up legal papers is indeed mightier than the sword. ¶ 8:07 AM