c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and sociologist at the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center. His home page on the World Wide Web is at http://www.greeley.com. Or contact him via e-mail at agreel(AT)aol.com.)

(RNS)-Peace is tough. And there is ample evidence that the peace processes unfolding in Israel and Ireland have brought out the worst in some people. The grim scenarios unfolding in both nations show just how self-destructive human stupidity can be.

As soon as Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat and former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had signed their historic peace accord, extremists on both sides began to fight against it.

Palestinian extremists killed hundreds of Israelis. Then a Jewish extremist killed Rabin. And now it is possible that a majority of Israelis will vote against the peace process in the upcoming elections, thus giving the extremists exactly what they want.

And the best chance for peace in a half-century goes down the drain.

Admittedly the Israelis, who live in an ongoing nightmare, are under enormous pressure. And the world community clearly is biased against Israel.

When Arab terrorists pour rockets into Jewish settlements, there is little reaction in world media and the United Nations. Yet when Israelis shoot back and accidentally hit a refugee camp, they are roundly denounced.

So there may be some reason for the Israelis to feel paranoid. But they can’t let the United Nations or the world media destroy the opportunity for peace any more than they can let terrorists destroy it.

The mess in the Irish peace process makes the problems in the Middle East almost look simple.

If there is one obvious truth about the situation in Northern Ireland, it should be that there will not be peace unless the outlawed Irish Republican Army agrees to it. So British Prime Minister John Major, whose bad faith in bargaining for the last 20 months is at last catching up with him, goes on implacably toward an election and a peace conference which the IRA might not attend. Why bother?

The IRA has been fighting for 75 years for what it wrong-headedly believes to be justice in Ireland. And the terrorist”lads”have demonstrated that they are capable of continuing the fighting for another 75 years. They may have the support of no more than 10 percent of the people in Northern Ireland and less than 5 percent of those living in the South, but that is enough to keep them going. Unless a solution is found with which they can live, the violence will continue.

The IRA called a cease-fire in good faith 18 months ago because they came to believe that negotiation and slow progress were the way toward justice. This change of policy was an enormous step forward.

But Major then did what English prime ministers (and their predecessors) have been doing for a thousand years, give or take a couple of centuries: He cheated. A cease-fire was not enough, he said. The IRA must surrender and turn over all its weapons.

It was a wonderlandish demand. The IRA did not think it had lost its war, why should it surrender? Why should anyone think calling a cease-fire meant surrender? Why should it accept a new condition for negotiation which would give England a victory it had not earned on a battlefield?

Major had a de facto peace that was welcomed by both Catholics and Protestants. There was no need to negotiate. Surely the IRA would not destroy a peace which was so precious to both sides.

Once again the English had over-reached. They had failed to understand the minds of the IRA leadership. Major did not comprehend that his bad faith was an invitation to more violence.

Yet everyone now urges the IRA to proclaim another cease-fire, which would, in effect, give Major another chance to negotiate in bad faith. I hope they will.

But my Irish friends tell me there won’t be another cease-fire as long as John Major is prime minister. He is as self-destructive as the Israeli electorate may be if it votes opponents of the peace process into power.

The difference between the two countries is that peace may have a slim chance of winning in the Israeli elections. But in the unfolding scenario in Northern Ireland, the proponents of peace are losing badly.

MJP END GREELEY