A long career in law (more than 50 years) has taught me a few things: the first is that a bad settlement is always better than a good judgement. If the argument (to use an admittedly silly example) is about who owns a dog then it is better to reach a compromise of sorts rather than go through the time and expense of a major trial that could end up costing more than the dog is worth. Of course there will be an argument that X loves the dog too much to allow Y to have it (or vice versa) and the solution of King Solomon to cut the dog in half is clearly unacceptable. A compromise in this situation could range from one paying to the other the price of the dog or some portion of its value. That there could be other solutions to this otherwise intractable problem is obvious. The point here is that both X and Y have equal but different claims to the dog and some sort of compromise is obviously essential.
The next thing that was drilled into me as a young lawyer is that if you ever want to understand a problem go back to basics, Without an understanding of the basics of the problem a solution will always elude you.
With these two self imposed injunctions on me I have found myself looking at the latest events in the long running Israeli/Palestinian dispute with a great deal of dismay. Clearly, given the whole history of this matter starting with 2,000 years ago and coming up to date it is clear that BOTH sides have rights and that neither side is innocent of wrong doing. I'm not going to get into the argument as to who is more to blame or who did what first. At the end of it all there is a serious dispute that requires compromises from BOTH sides before there can be any resolution.
Now, a compromise is just that: a compromise! In a compromise neither side will get what they want, but the basic question would be 'is this the best solution for everybody?' And such a settlement could be achievable if only there could be some sort of dialogue. "Jaw-Jaw" is always better than "War-War". And that is the third thing that I learned.
I hesitate to give my own ideas of what a compromise solution might look like. For one thing, this is not the purpose of this particular post. But I do have some ideas.
The purpose of this post is to criticize the leaders in Caricom for their failure to come forward and try to insert themselves as a neutral third party to try and achieve a settlement. People (on both sides) are dying and obviously calmer heads are needed to try and bring some sort of resolution to this conflict. We (i.e., the citizens of Caricom) have nothing really to gain from trying to help but then, people are dying! If that alone was not a good reason to try and help stop the carnage then nothing is. There could even be some side benefits to us mounting (or at least trying to) mount the world stage, but our basic aim should be to try and prevent more people who could be alive next week staying alive if they weren't killed today. The problem with dying is that if you are dead it will be for a lllooonngg time!
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