Talk!

• To reach an agreement or an understanding with someone, you have to talk to them. Abusing them, threatening them or bludgeoning them is not a path to trust.

In the Middle East, Israel and Hamas and Fatah desperately need an agreement that will produce a new order. But all three have lost sight of what their real need is — peace, freedom from violence, reconstruction, secure homelands. And none is willing admit that this can only be created by talking, by building trust and understanding. To talk with your enemy is considered to be weakness.

Hence the fury which erupted this week when former US president Jimmy Carter actually talked to Hamas and to the Syrians. How dare he! The traitor!

The US particularly hates the idea of talking to the enemy (particularly when it can't control what is said, and most especially when the talking concerns its protectorate Israel). Consider the way this asinine question has become a big deal in the US presidential campaign: would you talk to our enemies without pre-conditions? (That is, without prescribing the result in advance.)

But talking is always — always — the first and inescapable step towards peace. (Which is very different from the sullen submission produced by violence.) It is what ended "the troubles" in Northern Ireland, and what could end such equally foolish conflicts as those of the Basques and the Kurds, not to mention many parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

Not that talking by itself is enough — there needs to be some deliverable advantage in dialogue and compromise. But realpolitik without renewed trust and humanisation never produces a stable outcome.

Jimmy Carter is not the world's brightest spark, but he is at heart a more decent man than any of his successors, and has made much better use of his ex-presidential status. Tony Blair, the ex-prime minister of Britain who took on the role of Middle East mediator, has achieved precisely nothing — it's not even clear if he's active, or too busy with his banking work.

Dialogue between enemies is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of strength, imagination and integrity. Why doesn't the whole world rise up and say: enough of the violence, enough of this endless spiral of retaliation! Put the three leaders in a locked and guarded villa and do not let them out until they have put their three names to a document of conciliation and given each other the sign of peace.


• The big danger of prolonged confrontation is that it becomes a habit, a mindset, a joyful occupation, for the zealots on both sides. In Gaza, they fire rockets on a point of principle towards Israeli settlements; in Israel, they pour back over the border screaming how they are going to level all the buildings and kill all the people they can find (these soldiers' voices were broadcast on the BBC last week). For these people, peace and reconstruction would be just too boring: what could possibly beat sanctioned mayhem?

The same mindset becomes entrenched in politics.

In Trinidad and Tobago this week, part of the ritual jousting concerned the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) which was set up in Port of Spain in 2005 to replace the Privy Council of the House of Lords as the Commonwealth Caribbean's final court of appeal. Twelve Caribbean states have signed the agreement to establish the court; but only Barbados and Guyana have actually accepted its authority. Last year it heard only three cases.

The CCJ has been discussed ad nauseam around the region since it was first mooted in 1970. Why should countries independent from Britain for four decades still be trekking to London to determine their court cases? Surely we can take responsibility for that? If we can elect our own governments, surely our own final appeal court can be here in the Caribbean?

Well, you would think so. In T&T, the government of the day, the United National Congress (UNC) under Basdeo Panday, was keen. Most of the other Caribbean Community members were at least warm if not hot, though many made delaying noises about the difficulty of passing enabling legislation. But the truth seems to be that, while states support the idea in principle, in practice they don't trust their own Caribbean judges, and feel safer with English lords. Whether that is a neo-colonial mindset or sensible pragmatism is a matter of dispute (personally I think it is a miserable failure on the part of Caribbean leaders, who have done everything they can to wriggle out of an agreement they were committed to).

But when the UNC lost to the People's National Movement (PNM) in the general election of 2002, it quickly did a volte face and started opposing the CCJ, as part of its blanket opposition to the new government. It screamed for "constitutional reform", and until that was delivered it would not give its support (a special majority in parliament is needed to bring T&T into the CCJ's jurisdiction; opposition votes are crucial).

So we have the ludicrous situation where T&T has set up the court, but can't use it.

This week the UNC took things a step further. The court should be closed down, it was costing too much, there were no cases, the judges spent their time drinking coffee and reading the papers. (All this is reported in today's press with no reference to the UNC's role in creating that situation.) Back to the Privy Council! Back to London!

Opposition that has become wholly detached from principle, commitment or reason. Opposition because opposition is what opposition parties are supposed to produce. And to hell with public or regional interest.

This is how confrontational politics can destroy the things it was designed to create. This is how countries march proudly backwards from the distant vision of development.