The variety of informal Palestine negotiations just below the surface of the Middle-East diplomatic staging is telling us something about how the public conscience can penetrate the surface of statecraft. Careful consideration of the ways in which the people will be have to live with the fruits of diplomacy is becoming an element that strengthens diplomacy itself. Peace proceeds by rising degrees of readiness. More and more the process is involving popular needs at an early stage, and not just after the more conspicuous leaders have produced a deus ex machina. These negotiations, almost for the first time in such diplomatic festivals, are ready to incorporate consideration of the living realities of the new condition that is being created.
Peace is more than the gradual removal of a threat of war.
Going beyond even the restraint of military responses to spastic political gestures, it is a positive condition in its own right. It demands as many details of logistics and planning as the conduct of war itself. At its best it captures the essence of a spirit of nobility and service, even as it descends into details like sewage, electric grids, and road networks. At its worst it is merely boring. That we can live with.