If Ever the World Needed a Statesman or Stateswoman, It's Now!

If ever an issue defies a solution and challenges the concept of collaboration to its very core, it's the conflict between Hamas and Israel that is unfolding in Gaza. In fact, a person is hard pressed to imagine a confrontation more intractable. What we're witnessing has deep, deep roots in history, religion, identity, land and the very right of existence. It is filled with such resentment and sense of grievance from generations of conflict that any hope for finding a middle ground often seems both futile and hopeless. As a result the debate has polarized. It is characterized as black and white, with each side pointing to clear evidence of how the other side is at fault for what is a terrible situation. Somehow, somewhere, somebody has to rise above the conflict and help find a two-state solution that meets Israel's right to exist in peace, while providing a stable, independent and viable homeland for Palestinian people. If ever the world needed a statesman or stateswoman, it's now.

For a glimpse of the suffering, especially the many children in Gaza who are victims of an adult world dominated by people in positions of power incapable of goodwill, you can watch this video.

Collaboration and communication were once fundamental virtues in politics and government. It was how democracy worked. People would run for office on a specific platform. If they were successful, they would be called on to work with other successful politicians, many elected on platforms that often differed in terms of priorities and even the role of government. But somehow, through collaboration, they would get beyond their differences and find common ground to address what were considered important public issues.

Along the way, this spirit of collaboration and compromise, where people were willing to put water with their wine and when they didn't make perfect the enemy of the good, has been hard to find in politics and government. Politics has become a fight to the death, where compromise is a dirty word and working together is seen as collaborating with the enemy.

It's not surprising, then, to read the recent Pew Research study Political Polarization in the American Public (http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/) that found the U.S. population is more divided on partisan and ideological grounds than ever.

The result is that people themselves have become more entrenched in their opinions and less willing to see the other side of the argument. The question is what came first, the chicken or the egg - are politicians merely reflecting public opinion, or has hardball politics created a more divided population? Whatever the case, it's not healthy for either democracy or governing.

It's time to make collaboration a virtue again.

Photo credit: http://womenspost.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/democracy.jpg