From Israel and Palestine to New Canaan

From Israel and Palestine to New Canaan

"The union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion."

S. C. Just. Hugo Black - 1962

Since the end of the Cold War, no international policy dispute has vexed the world in general and the United States in particular more than the conflict between Israel and Palestine, and the nationalistic and religious terrorism it has engendered. Both sides in the conflict have legitimate moral and legal claims to the disputed territory. Both have been the aggressor and the victim of aggression alternatively. Both have employed virtually every conceivable method to achieve a lasting peace either through conciliation and compromise on the one hand, or through intimidation and brutality on the other. Yet, a permanent peace seems as improbable as ever.

One of the most subjugated lands in history of the world, the modern story of Palestine begins with the Ottoman Turks who conquered the territory in 1516 and controlled it officially for four hundred years. Unfortunately for the Turks, they allied themselves with the Germans and the Austro-Hungarians during the First World War, and the subsequent Treaty of Versailles stripped them of all of their colonial possessions. The treaty granted the control of Palestine to the British who thought it might be a useful pawn in their duplicitous imperial games with the French and the Arabs in the Middle East. Just to muddy the already opaque international waters further, the British had also issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917, three years before they had gained control of the territory formally. This one page letter indicated that they would support the creation of "a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine and, in so doing, raised the hopes of Zionists throughout the world.¹ The British controlled Palestine (and Transjordan) as a mandate from the League of Nations, meaning that the territory was neither a colony nor an independent country. Rather, it was being held as sort of a trust, administered by Britain until it determined unilaterally that the indigenous population was capable of independent self-government. Of course, encouraging ostensibly illegal Zionist immigration exacerbated Palestine's domestic chaos and political instability, thereby precluding any realistic possibility of imminent self-rule.

By the time Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, the British had more pressing international concerns than this contentious Middle Eastern backwater, and Palestine lingered on as a mandate with the vague and ultimately disingenuous promise of eventual independence through the end of the Second World War. After the war, tens of thousands of displaced European Jewish survivors of the Holocaust began pouring into the region. After numerous acts of Zionist assassination, agitation and terrorism by the Irgun Zeva'i Le'umi and the Stern Gang against both the British and the Palestinians, the United Kingdom withdrew from Palestine and dropped the mess into the lap of the nascent United Nations. Led by the United States, the UN permitted the partition of Palestine into predominantly Jewish and Moslem territories apparently believing, unlike Solomon, that severing the baby in half would satisfy both professed mothers. The Islamic nations in the region opposed the partition of Palestine vehemently, and when the Zionists issued a Declaration of Establishment announcing the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, they invaded. Surprisingly, Israel won its War of Independence with the help of four B-17 bombers that it had purchased and smuggled illegally out of the United States.² Many Palestinians fled the war and the Jewish State of Israel voluntarily, settling into makeshift refugee camps, while the victorious Israelis evicted others from their ancestral homes forcibly.³ After more than sixty-five years, two major wars, countless acts of ruthless terrorism, savage counter-terrorism, attacks and reprisals, as well as dozens of treaties, truces, resolutions, accords and declarations later, they're still at each other's throats trying to square the circle.

Achieving permanent peace in Israel has been and will continue to be impossible because the premise upon which the process itself is based is inherently and fatally flawed. If nearly a century of conflict between Jewish Israelis and Moslem Palestinians has proven anything, it has proven that a partitioned Palestine is ultimately untenable, regardless of the specific nature of the partition. Neither side has, nor will have, a sufficient degree of trust in the beneficent intentions of the other to allow one another to co-exist peacefully as fully sovereign nations within the near future. Israeli zealots believe that an Islamic Palestine would quickly become a dagger pointed at the heart of Israel, while their Palestinian counterparts reject the very legitimacy of the Jewish state and perceive it as a rapacious carnivore intent on devouring Palestine in its entirety. Nevertheless, in its efforts to realize a practicable compromise, the United States has advocated the implementation of a peace process that has become known as the "two-state solution" recently. Nothing more than a cosmetic alteration of the infeasible Oslo Accords of 1993, this endeavor has met the same fate as every other peace initiative since the creation of Israel: talks collapse and each side blames the other for negotiating in bad faith acrimoniously. The responsible leaders become polarized, radical extremists are vindicated, violence erupts, and both combatants and civilians alike suffer death, injury and destruction. Finally, each side reviles the other as a bloodthirsty butcher in their mutually devious pursuit of the moral authority and sympathy conferred by victimization within the international community. If the definition of insanity is the constant repetition of the same action with the expectation of a different result, the Middle East peace process has become the archetype of diplomatic lunacy.

Ironically, geography itself reveals the absurdity of the " two-state solution." A bifurcated Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank is as patently absurd and intrinsically contentious as was the separation of East Prussia from Germany through the city of Danzig, now known as Gdansk, by the Polish Corridor in 1919. If the Treaty of Versailles laid the tinder for the conflagration of the Second World War, the Polish Corridor kindled it when Hitler demanded the return of Danzig to Germany and invaded Poland when he was refused. Even if the Palestinian and Israeli extremists were to assent to such a partition miraculously, a two state solution is inherently unworkable because it is based upon a physical impossibility: two different nations cannot occupy the same geographic territory simultaneously. The disputants and their putative mediators should recognize that the responsibility for the perpetual failure to achieve peace in the region does not lie with any particular individual or organization. Rather, it is based upon the fundamental paradox contained within the premise of the peace process itself. Having recognized this, they should then conclude that only two alternative solutions remain: conquest or amalgamation.

Adept though we are at achieving consensus through compromise, Americans can examine our own history to discover a controversy so profoundly divisive as to preclude a negotiated settlement. From the ratification of the Constitution through the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, no issue was more contentious than the existence of human slavery within the United States and its expansion across the continent. As Abraham Lincoln recognized in 1858, these ineffectual endeavors to perpetuate "a house divided against itself" were doomed to failure, and the issue was resolved ultimately within the bloody crucible of an appalling civil war. Certainly, Webster, Clay, Calhoun and Douglas were no less intellectually adept than Arafat, Rabin, Sadat and Clinton, yet they all failed to resolve the irresolvable, as well. Tenable resolution is impossible to achieve through mutual concessions on the fundamental principles that define the very nature of a polity, such as the existence of human slavery in Nineteenth Century America or the perpetuation of theocracies in contemporary Palestine.

Despising the wanton carnage and anachronistic mores upon which religious wars are predicated, and adhering to the principle that only one form of government is ethically legitimate, the United States could endeavor to cut the Gordian knot of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians by impelling amalgamation. America could use its influence in the region to establish the only truly viable solution: a secular and pluralistic democracy that incorporates both Israelis and Palestinians jointly into one indivisible nation. The United States was founded upon the historical imperative of limited secular democracy, and it established the cultural imperative of pluralistic diversity that broadened slowly but inexorably. Because our Declaration of Independence espouses the universal nature of the individual human rights upon which this pluralism is based, America should fulfill its obligation to extend the cultural dynamic of secular democracy throughout all of the nations of the world, especially within the Middle East. If Americans are willing to exercise our military power to obtrude our societal paradigm upon our enemies, such as the Iraqi Baathists and the Afghani Taliban, we should be willing to employ our moral authority to induce it among our Israeli and Palestinian friends, as well.

To support a government that embraces any particular religious canon as preferential to any other canon is anathema to the very idea of America and should be made invidious within the United States and throughout the secular democracies of the world. The phrase "Jewish and democratic state" should become as oxymoronic as the phrases "Islamic and democratic state," "Christian and democratic state," "Hindu and democratic state" or "Buddhist and democratic state." Even Italy, the home of the Roman Catholic Church, revised its Concordat in 1984 and "formalized the principle of the secular state."⁴ No nation can be a theocratic democracy because it is compelled to choose between divine and popular sovereignty for its raison d'etre.

The Israeli Declaration of Establishment was issued in 1948 and proclaimed "the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State."⁵ Yet, unlike most other nations in the Twenty-first Century, Israel perpetuates an exclusive rather than inclusive form of government. The dysfunctional nature of the conflicting principles upon which the State of Israel is predicated can be established by comparing its 1948 Declaration to its 1992 Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty. Although the nation was founded upon the principle that it "will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion,"⁶ the subsequent actions of its government belie that claim by affirming "the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state."⁷

Further, the preservation of a Judaic theocracy in Israel has demonstrated the cultural hazards concomitant with the maintenance of any official state religion quite evidently. For example, United States Department of State analyzed the condition of human rights in Israel, excluding the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza. This 2013 Human Rights Report discovered that a profound religious and ethnic prejudice pervaded the nation and that this bias was directed against non-Orthodox Jews as well as gentiles:

"The Basic Law prohibits the candidacy of any party or individual that denies the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people....

"The most significant human rights problems were ... institutional and societal discrimination against Arab citizens of Israel, many of whom self-identify as Palestinian, including the Bedouin, in particular in access to equal education and employment opportunities....

"Many Jewish citizens objected to exclusive Orthodox control over aspects of their personal lives. For example, the Orthodox Rabbinate did not consider to be Jewish approximately 322,000 citizens who considered themselves Jewish and who immigrated either as Jews or as family members of Jews; therefore, they may not be married, divorced, or buried in Jewish cemeteries in the country.

"Price tag" attacks (property crimes and violent acts by extremist Jewish individuals and groups) continued throughout the country, targeting Arab and some Jewish institutions, but were most pronounced in areas where Jews and Arabs cooperated commercially.

"An estimated population of 130,000 Ethiopian Jews faced persistent societal discrimination....

"Arab communities in the country generally faced economic difficulties, and the Bedouin segment of the Arab population continued to be the most disadvantaged.

"Continued reports of discrimination by Ashkenazi Jews of European descent against Sephardic (Mizrachi) Jews of Middle Eastern descent fueled a national debate on this topic."

Perhaps the most egregious example of legal religious discrimination within Israel, however, is found in its 1950 Law of Return under which "Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh [a Jew immigrating into Israel]," regardless of nationality.⁸ No ostensible democracy can predicate the conferral of secular civil rights upon personal religious beliefs, especially the right of citizenship, unless it predicates its own sovereignty upon the exercise of divine right. In a democracy, citizenship is the repository of the nation's sovereignty. Thus, any nation that defines citizenship religiously must base its sovereignty and its exercise of secular power upon theocratic principles. The United States should not condone any nation that bestows or denies any human or civil rights, especially those rights implicit in democratic citizenship, upon the bases of race, gender, ethnicity or religion. Doing so becomes profoundly hypocritical, thereby belying any American claims of moral ascendancy in our efforts to mediate the conflict. Moreover, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, immigration to Israel has diminished appreciably, which enhances the anachronistic nature of this law. From nearly 200,000 immigrants in 1990 and more than 175,000 in 1991, the number of immigrants to Israel has fallen steadily to average less than seventeen thousand per year since 2006:⁹

Nazism has been eradicated and Germany has been reunited. The Cold War is over and Theodor Herzl's dream of living "at last as free men on our own soil" has been realized.¹⁰ Of the nearly fourteen million Jews in the world, more than 93% live in Israel, the United States, Canada, France and the United Kingdom.¹¹ The possibility of another anti-Semitic holocaust is infinitesimally small and the Jewish Diaspora has ended, but the use of these two historical abominations to justify the Law of Return persists as an antiquated relic of an erstwhile era. Today, Jews no longer deserve any special right to immigrate to Israel any more than Hindus deserve a special right to immigrate to India, Buddhists to Thailand, Catholics to Italy, Lutherans to Germany or Moslems to Saudi Arabia. It should be presumed that, after more than sixty years of open immigration, the vast majority of Jews who wish to live in Israel do so. If not, perhaps the announcement of a termination date for this antiquated policy might induce any ambivalent procrastinators to act. Hence, the archaic and inherently discriminatory Law of Return should be rescinded immediately if Israel wishes to be perceived as a modern democracy and continue to receive American diplomatic approbation.

Much like the United States in 1776, in 1948 the founders of Israel, led by David Ben-Gurion, issued an enabling document that they entitled "A Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel." As did the American Declaration of Independence, it proclaimed the nascent nation's raison d'etre and enunciated the fundamental philosophical principles upon which it would been founded. Further, it announced the creation of a provisional government that would be authorized to conduct governmental affairs:

"...until the establishment of the elected, regular authorities of the State in accordance with the Constitution which shall be adopted by the Elected Constituent Assembly not later than the 1st October 1948...."¹²

Yet, wide differences of opinion pertaining to the nature of the new state existed within the incipient Israeli government. Among those differences was the question of whether or not a written temporal document could supplant the rabbinistical authority of ancient Jewish law (Halakha) written in the Talmud as the supreme law of the land. Hence, the first Constituent Assembly (Knesset) ignored the Declaration's mandate, the issue was dropped, and nearly seventy years later Israel still does not possess a formal constitution. Instead, it has a number of "Basic Laws" that act as the nation's de facto, informal constitution. For an informal constitution to contain a sufficient degree of cultural authority so that it empowers the legitimate operation of a democratic government, as it does in the United Kingdom, a long history of precedence and tradition must create universal and pervasive secular customs and mores among the citizenry. In this way, a written document becomes superfluous. Because Israel is a nation of immigrants, no such collective societal conventions exist, except for the archaic scriptural interpretations that constitute the Halakha. These Basic Laws, adopted piecemeal by a perpetually provisional government, do not represent the direct expression of the popular will of the entire body politic. Hence, they lack the sovereignty necessary to legitimize the governance of a contemporary democracy.

What Can We Do?

Israel could convene a Constitutional Convention at the earliest possible opportunity, thereby honoring the ancestral pledge made by its founders in 1948. This Convention might draft and adopt a written document that could provide the people with an ideological and systemic foundation for the creation of permanent governmental institutions, delineate the rights of residency and citizenship, and establish the mechanisms for the legitimate exercise of political power within the nation explicitly.

In 1948, the United States recognized the provisional government of Israel as its "de facto authority."¹³ This recognition was predicated upon its Declaration of Establishment, which in turn guaranteed the adoption of a constitution by the Constituent Assembly. Hence, America's formal diplomatic recognition of Israel was conditional, and the de jure recognition of the nascent nation by the Truman Administration in 1949 was premature. If Israel should choose to renege on its promise to adopt a written constitution permanently and persist in its maintenance of a perpetually provisional government, the United States might consider rescinding its diplomatic recognition of this temporary and hence illegitimate government. Conversely, if Israel chooses to adhere to the terms of its own Declaration of Establishment, albeit belatedly, by adopting a constitution that codifies its fundamental laws and, in so doing, guarantees the primacy of secular pluralism, America could consider extending its unconditional support and wholehearted approbation.

Most importantly, however, this Constitutional Convention could be organized on the basis of citizenship as defined by the Israeli Declaration of Establishment. Thus, it should be comprised of delegates elected by every eligible voter in those territories controlled by its provisional government, including Gaza and the West Bank, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or religion. Partitioning Palestine into predominantly Jewish and Moslem theocracies, regardless of the specific geographic nature of the partition, was, is, and probably always will be inherently untenable. The most plausible permanent solution to the conflict might be the creation of a unified nation of all three entities, Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel, perhaps named New Canaan, which could be governed by the principle of secular pluralism and based upon universal suffrage. In the words of its Declaration of Establishment, Israel's current provisional government could organize a Constitutional Convention and:

"... APPEAL - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to... participate in the upbuilding [sic] of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its ... permanent institutions."¹⁴

In this way, the 6.4 million Jewish citizens of New Canaan could decide whether their country will remain a theocracy or become a democracy; because of their mutual exclusivity, it cannot be and never has been both.¹⁵ Additionally, the 6.1 million Moslem citizens of New Canaan could decide whether they wish to live as a discriminated minority in Israel and the exiled inhabitants of a bifurcated and destitute theocratic Palestine, or as "full and equal" citizens in a prosperous and democratic nation.¹⁶ Most importantly, the Moslems, Jews and Christians of New Canaan could separate the mosque, the synagogue and the church from the state. The Koran, the Torah and the Bible are certainly wonderful and significant literary works of tradition and philosophy, and one or all of them may even be the revealed Word of God. Nevertheless, none of them are legally binding documents, much less deeds to any specific piece of property. Even if any of these books contains the revealed Word of God, which of course cannot be proven incontrovertibly until God testifies in a court of law, compliance to their dictates may be morally and ethically obligatory for their adherents, but they should not be legally requisite for the citizens of a democracy. A hog farmer or lobster salesman might not enrich himself in New Canaan, but the national government should not preclude him from undertaking the endeavor legally.

The current Israeli flag is a symbolic example of the nation's inherent paradox. Although democracy is inclusive, religions are exclusive, and adherence to a flag adorned with an insignia of religious significance implies an affiliation with an exclusive divine paradigm rather than with an inclusive temporal community. Imagine the response of non-Christian Americans if the flag of the United States contained fifty white crucifixes on a field of blue instead of stars. Religious symbols, such as the central emblem of the Iranian flag, are as inappropriate on the physical representation of a secular democracy as are religious laws on its statute books. The Jews, Moslems and Christians of New Canaan could adopt a non-sectarian purple flag and realize that any law that discriminates in favor of any one tribe, race, religion or gender discriminates against every other tribe, race, religion, or gender intrinsically. If a government rewards believers by granting them special privileges that are predicated upon their adherence to a spiritual theology, such as including their religious symbols on its flag or granting them a preferential right of citizenship, then it necessarily punishes the infidels merely by excluding them from similar rewards. The degree to which a putative democracy either bestows or denies any civil rights upon the bases of racial, sexual, ethnic or religious criteria, especially the right of citizenship, is the degree to which that society is inherently discriminatory and anti-democratic.

American countenance for any nation that contravenes our cultural imperative that all people are created equal so egregiously is profoundly hypocritical. As an essential prerequisite for American support, the United States could urge the creation and adoption of a formal constitution in New Canaan that ensures that fundamental human and civil rights are specified and protected throughout society equitably and universally. In short, every citizen and refugee within Israel and territories it occupies could be incorporated into the body politic regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or religious affiliation. The best hope for an enduring solution to the conflict between the Jews and Moslems of New Canaan is the creation of a secular and pluralistic democracy that is founded upon a written constitution that treats all human beings equally and separates public governmental institutions from private religious dogmas.

Therefore, in addition to organizing the state and creating a legitimate and permanent basis for the existence of its public institutions, this Constitutional Convention could seek to incorporate two crucial changes into the laws of New Canaan:

First, religious freedom is not realized automatically merely by the absence of legally sanctioned persecution. Neither the mosque nor the synagogue nor the church should have any direct role in the function of a government if that government esteems contemporary international legitimacy. Therefore, the New Canaanite Constitution could contain a guarantee that its government will enact, in the words of the United States Constitution, "no law respecting the establishment of religion." By predicating its moral authority upon popular and not divine sovereignty, New Canaan could become a secular nation.

Second, participation in a democracy is predicated upon temporal geographic and political criteria legally, not upon an adherence to any particular spiritual dogma, and citizenship should be defined accordingly. All persons who have been born or naturalized within the borders of Israel or the occupied territories at the time of the adoption of its written Constitution could be granted the full rights of citizenship within the state, including the equal protection of the laws. The possession of every right, privilege and responsibility of citizenship could be shared by each citizen coequally. Ethnic, racial, sexual and religious discrimination could be proscribed explicitly, especially as they pertain to naturalization. By predicating its membership upon secular and not religious criteria, New Canaan could become a pluralistic nation.

Contemporary Israel could honor its Declaration of Establishment and assemble a Constitutional Convention to determine whether this newly comprised nation will become an inclusive democracy or remain an exclusive theocracy. Should the Jewish, Moslem, Christian and Druze delegates to this convention choose the former, they might be able to bind the nation's wounds and begin to heal. They may find inspiration in the recent history of South Africa for their moral and spiritual guidance. By following the examples of Mandela, De Klerk and Tutu, the Moslem and Jewish leaders of New Canaan could inspire their supporters to lay down their weapons, thereby leading them out of the miasma of mutual bigotry and into the sunlight of human equality. Should they choose the latter, however, and create two separate states, one predominantly Jewish and the other Moslem, each with full independence and sovereignty, their reciprocal enmity is likely to persist. Large segments of each nation's body politic might perceive the other nation as a mortal enemy occupying, threatening and defiling its natural territory, and their peaceful coexistence could become extremely improbable. Such an arrangement is intrinsically unstable and, hence, problematic. The region could remain a tinderbox, and either side might use the slightest intentional, accidental or fallacious incident as a pretext to spark a cataclysmic conflagration.

This self-perpetuating cycle of violence and retribution, of incessant preemptive vengeance, can be broken, and as the world's first federal republic and its most powerful secular democracy, America could broker the peace. First, Congress might consider eliminating the $3.1 billion that the United States provides to Israel annually in military aid.¹⁷ Instead, it could grant these financial resources to Israel with the stipulation that they be used to defray any costs associated with creating, ratifying and implementing its written constitution. Our nation's pecuniary resources could be redirected to help foment peace, not exacerbate belligerence, and the money we have been giving to buy swords could be used to purchase plowshares. Second, the election of the constitutional delegates could be based upon universal adult suffrage throughout Israel and the occupied territories, and the Carter Center might monitor these elections in order to ensure their freedom and fairness. Third, the United States could ensure that the delegates who are elected to this convention are provided with a sufficient degree of physical security so that they may meet, discuss and draft a constitution in an environment conducive to conscientious deliberation. Thus, the United States might proffer respectfully that, immediately upon its organization, the convention's first order of business might be to establish its locus in quo. If a majority of the delegates determines that such a location does not exist within the region, the United States should be prepared to offer the delegates a change of venue to a more secure and tranquil site within its own borders, if requested. Finally, if this convention composes a document that is acceptable to a majority of the delegates, it could be put before the citizenry directly for ratification, and the United States might monitor this referendum in order to ensure its validity by verifying its impartiality and inclusiveness.

If the New Canaanite Constitution codifies secular pluralism and protects the fundamental human and civil rights of each of its citizens equally, the United States might consider engaging in three diplomatic initiatives. First, it could ratify a bilateral defense treaty between the two countries that is similar to the Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States of America and the Republic of China (Taiwan). Most fundamentally, this treaty might stipulate that,

"Each Party recognizes that an armed attack ... directed against the territories of either of the Parties would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes."¹⁸

Second, it could advocate vociferously for the admission of this new secular democracy into a Global Democratic Confederation. Third, it could induce similar methods of inaugurating limited secular democracy under the auspices of written constitutions among America's other friends and allies within the region such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait. In this way a comprehensive and enduring regional peace among all of the peoples of the Middle East might become plausibly feasible instead of perpetually quixotic.

Finally, if this new nation adopts a liberal and secular constitution and joins those nations that resolve their cultural differences peacefully, the United States might urge it to permit the United Nations to relocate its headquarters from New York to Jerusalem. In addition to creating an ideal location in New York for the headquarters of a Global Democratic Confederation, this relocation would honor the spirit of United Nations Resolution 181, as well. Adopted in 1947, Resolution 181 designated Jerusalem as a "corpus separatum," a separate entity under international control.¹⁹ Further, the Security Council has adopted numerous resolutions regarding the status of Jerusalem subsequently. In 1980, the provisional Knesset adopted a Basic Law that defied these resolutions inimically and declared that, "Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel."²⁰ The Security Council reacted adamantly merely fifteen days later by adopting Resolution 478. Notwithstanding the abstention of the United States, this unanimous resolution stated that the Council,

"1. Censures in the strongest terms the enactment by Israel of the 'basic law' on Jerusalem and the refusal to comply with relevant Security Council resolutions;

2. Affirms that the enactment of the 'basic law' by Israel constitutes a violation of international law...."²¹

Therefore, the United Nations could ensure that, as a holy site for 3.3 billion Christians, Moslems and Jews, Jerusalem acquires its supranational status legally as well as theologically by relocating its headquarters to this city.²² Jerusalem is unique among all of the cities of the world, and the proper home for a union of nations created to foster corporeal peace throughout the world could become a city whose very existence exemplifies spiritual peace.

Nevertheless, it is entirely possible that this process will fail because the people and their leaders do not possess the moral courage to eschew the false nirvana of a religious utopia for the contentious reality of a secular democracy. Religious tribalism may triumph over secular nationalism. The Constitutional Convention may not be held, or it may produce a document that does not guarantee essential human rights and civil liberties, including a prohibition against the establishment of an official state religion, or, even if it does, the people may not ratify it. Under any of these circumstances, America could withdraw from the region completely and rescind its conditional diplomatic recognition of Israeli sovereignty. Further, the United States might renounce all of its existing diplomatic agreements with both Israel and Palestine if any of these events occur. In short, if the Middle Eastern Montagues and Capulets are victorious and choose to prolong their brutal religious vendettas in perpetuity, before America suffers Mercutio's fate it could invoke his oath of "a plague o' both your houses!"²³

Concurrently, the United States could offer an expansive sanctuary to any refugees from Israel, Gaza and the West Bank who might seek to vacate nations that have rejected religious neutrality and embraced lawful discrimination by permitting unrestricted and permanent emigration to the United States or any of its amenable allies. If the constitutional process fails and America disassociates itself from the region, it is reasonable to assume that a significant number of the inhabitants of Israel and Palestine might choose to depart voluntarily. The United States should not abandon these tolerant and secular democrats to the tender mercies of incessant sectarian warfare. When America was confronted with a similar scenario in 1980, Congress enacted a Refugee Act that permitted over half a million Indochinese and Cuban refugees who had fled communistic oppression in their native lands to immigrate to the United States.²⁴ Thus, a future Congress might permit those Palestinian and Israeli secularists who wish to escape from the tyranny of theocracy and the horrors of bloody religious combat to immigrate as well. Having done so, the United States would then be free to leave the holy zealots to their own devices knowing that it had done all that it could do in order to establish and institute a paradigm for permanent peace in the "Promised Land."

More than two hundred years ago, the recently elected President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, elucidated the principles upon which the human right of religious freedom is predicated succinctly in a letter to a Connecticut Baptist Association when he wrote,

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, ... I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."²⁵

Rather than building an ineffectual, demeaning and ultimately untenable concrete wall between a Jewish Israel and a Moslem Palestine, the people of New Canaan could build a philosophical wall of separation between the expression of private religious convictions and the exercise of public political power.

The historical imperatives of democracy and secular pluralism imply that the Israeli and Palestinian citizens of New Canaan will choose to do so, thereby differentiating the laws of man from the strictures of religious dogma. The question is not if, but when. How much more needless suffering must they inflict upon each other before they realize that their disparate cultural mores can flourish within the context of a heterogeneous society? When will the United States understand that if its governmental canon of human rights within the context of a limited secular democracy is valid universally, it is applicable universally, as well? Governments should be religiously neutral if they esteem contemporary cultural legitimacy, and they should be culturally legitimate for them to receive American approbation. The United States could adopt this precept as a fundamental societal prerequisite, not only for the ethical conduct of its own government, but also for all governments everywhere. When it does so, it may discover that the road to victory in its global war against religious terrorism does not begin in Kabul or Baghdad or Damascus or Tehran or Cairo or Riyadh. It may end in any of these cities or in none of them, but it could begin in Jerusalem.

1http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH00pp0

2http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/hangar/2848/bomber1.htm

3http://mondediplo.com/1997/12/palestine

4http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2002/13941.htm

5http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH00hb0

6 Ibid.

7http://www.knesset.gov.il/laws/special/eng/basic3_eng.htm

8http://knesset.gov.il/laws/special/eng/return.htm.

9http://www1.cbs.gov.il/reader/shnaton/templ_shnaton_e.html?num_tab=st04_02&CYear=2007

10http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Zionism/herzlex.html

11http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/jewpop.html

12http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH00hb0

13http://www.trumanlibrary.org/photos/israel.jpg

14http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH00hb0

15https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

16https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

17http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/185014.pdf p.510

18http://www.taiwandocuments.org/mutual01.htm

19http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH00ps0

20http://www.knesset.gov.il/laws/special/eng/basic10_eng.htm

21http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/dde590c6ff232007852560df0065fddb?OpenDocument

22http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html

23http://the-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/romeo_juliet/romeo_juliet.3.1.html

24http://209.25.133.193/html/03202603.htm

25http://www.usconstitution.net/jeffwall.html