The Road Map to Peace in the Middle East is too small. It needs to be enlarged to include the entire Islamic world surrounding the State of Israel. The major obstacle to peace between Israelis and Palestinians is the Islamic world’s rejection of Israel as a Jewish state. The 55-year-old State of Israel still does not exist on maps produced in Islamic countries.
President Bush’s attempt at peace-making at Sharm e-Sheikh was rejected by Arab leaders who refused to accept Israel’s right to exist. The next day in Aqaba, these leaders were incensed when Bush publicly declared America’s commitment to Israel as “a vibrant Jewish state.”
The Arab leaders’ anti-Semitic incitement of the Arab street was confirmed by the Pew Global Attitudes Project released the same day as the Aqaba summit where no Israeli flag was allowed to fly. The Pew research found that the large majority of Arabs agreed with the statement: “The rights and needs of the Palestinian people cannot be taken care of as long as the State of Israel exists.” According to the survey, 80 percent of Palestinians and 90 percent of Moroccans support the extermination of the Jewish state.
All road maps to peace in the Middle East will come to a dead end until the sovereign State of Israel is included on Arab world maps. This obstacle to peace can be overcome, however, by drawing a new Islamic map derived from Islamic art and thought. The Arab conflict with Israel is an aesthetic problem that calls for a shift in perception. Elisabeth Siddiqui, a historian of Islamic art, writes in the Arabic Al-Madrashah Al-Ula that art is the mirror of a culture and its worldview. She emphasizes that there is no case to which this statement more directly applies than to the art of the Islamic world:
“Not only does its art reflect its cultural values, but even more importantly, the way in which its adherents, the Muslims, view the spiritual realm, the universe, life, and the relationships of the parts to the whole.”
Islamic art teaches Arabs to see their world as a continuous geometric pattern that extends across North Africa and the Middle East. They see Israel as a blemish that disrupts the pattern. It is viewed as an alien presence that they have continually tried to eliminate through war, terrorism, and political action. Palestinian Authority television labels Israel a “cancer in the body of the Arab nation.” Its emblems, publications, and websites show the map of Israel labeled Palestine. Israel does not exist. Former Iranian president Rafsanjani expressed his longing for a day when an Islamic nuclear weapon could remove the “extraneous matter” called Israel from the midst of the Islamic world.
A perceptual shift that can lead to a genuine peace can be found in Islamic art and thought. In Islamic art, a uniform geometric pattern is purposely disrupted by the introduction of a counter-pattern that demonstrates that human creation is less than perfect. Only Allah creates perfection. Rug weavers from Islamic lands intentionally weave a patch of dissimilar pattern to break the symmetry of their rugs.
Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi, Iman of the Italian Muslim community who holds a Ph.D. in Islamic Sciences by decree of the Saudi Grand Mufti, writes, “The idea of underlying the Divine infinitude and the human fallacy by including some ‘voluntary defects’ in works of art is common in Islamic art, and extends to tapestry, painting, music, architecture, etc.”
Israel can be drawn on Islamic maps as a small patch of blue and white on a large green rug running from the Atlantic Ocean to the borders of India. If the contiguous Islamic world from Morocco to Pakistan were the size of a football field, Israel would be a football placed in the middle of the field.
Sheikh Palazzi quotes from the Koran, Sura 5:22-23, to support the Arab world’s need to switch its viewpoint to recognize the sovereign right of the Jews over the Land of Israel as the will of Allah: “Remember when Moses said to his people: ‘O my people, call in remembrance the favor of G-d unto you, when he produced prophets among you, made you kings, and gave to you what He had not given to any other among the people. O my people, enter the Holy Land which G-d has assigned unto you, and then turn not back ignominiously, for then will ye be overthrown, to your own ruin.’ “
Islam’s holiest book confirms what every Jew and Christian who honors the Bible knows: The Land of Israel was divinely deeded to the People of Israel alone.
Peace will come from a fresh metaphor in which the Arabs see Israel’s existence as Allah’s will. A shift in viewpoint where Israel is perceived as the necessary counter-pattern in the overall pattern of the Islamic world will usher in an era of peace. The Islamic world needs to recognize Israel as the realization of its own values. Only after it draws new maps that include Israel can peace be achieved.
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