Communication. Community. Commerce. These words share ancient Latin linguistic roots, and they all indicate some sort of coming together. War has been described variously as a breakdown of one or all of them. The mainstream media typically portray the Middle East as a desert of war, but scattered here and there is an oasis that defies that portrayal.
The Sinai Peninsula, where the Hebrews fled from Pharaoh and where Bedouin tribes have herded goat for millennia, is one of these oases.
After his encounter with the monks here, he issued an oath of protection for “the Monks of Mount Sinai, and … Christians in general,” a handwritten copy of which [is kept] in the ancient library. Muhammad decreed that “whenever any one of the monks in his travels shall happen to settle upon any mountain, hill, village, or other habitable place, on the sea, or in deserts, or in any convent, church, or house of prayer, I shall be in the midst of them.” (Read the complete article from National Geographic)
Bringing together Christian, Muslim, Jew and Bedouin, the Sinai offers an example of building peace through commerce. It is not perfect. Tensions exist between factions and acts of violence still happen; but here violence is not the rule, it is the exception.
By attracting tourists with its prime location, beaches, and sacred sites, the Sinai’s burgeoning market economy has given each of the rival factions a stake in the future of the area. Improving democratic governance will also help solidify each faction’s stake. Open and lawful markets for goods and for power are the best antidotes for violence because they require people to work together, making allies out of enemies, even in the immediate aftermath of a recent hotel bombing on the peninsula:
The Egyptian guards at the border crossing stood with their automatic weapons, ready to fire. From their perspective, it seemed the whole world had turned inside out. The nearby hotel lay in ruins, wailing masses of people were converging on their position, and now a battery of enormous trucks had arrived, piloted by their age-old enemies. After a brief hesitation—questions and answers shouted across that invisible line—the Egyptian soldiers made a momentous decision: Suspending their country’s sovereignty, they withdrew their weapons and stepped aside so the fire trucks could enter.
….Every act of trust in the Middle East is relative. But like the monks and the Bedouin on Mount Sinai, the people had common interests—if only dancing in a hotel disco—and so made themselves some measure less vulnerable to the dividing power of terrorism.
That was why firefighter Shachar Zaid crossed one of history’s most disputed borders to work alongside Egyptian counterparts. “That was our way to tell the terrorists, You did not succeed,” he said. “And they did not succeed.”
Published Date: March 11, 2009