Wait Just a Minute Here -- Peace?

By Rick Horowitz

So what's this all about? There are few enough certainties in the world as it is; do we really want to start tossing the most famous of them aside like yesterday's chicken bones?

I don't think so -- but what do I know? The folks who matter have gone ahead and tried it anyway. They may even have pulled it off. And the rest of us? We'll just have to deal with the consequences.

If they can stop the fighting in Northern Ireland, we can't rely on anything anymore.

I know, I know: It's still early. They've only just announced the deal; there's still every chance the thing can come unglued. They still have to explain it and sell it and get enough votes on all sides to ratify it. Then everyone has to live up to it.

In the meantime, of course, somebody gets to thinking his side got the short end of the stick, somebody gets to worrying his side's concerns are being overlooked, somebody is perfectly capable of throwing a monkey wrench -- or worse -- into the gears. It's not there yet.

But it's closer than it's been in a long, long time -- and how are we supposed to deal with that?

It was unsettling enough -- if you're used to having things the way they've always been, if you're not much for surprises -- watching the Berlin Wall crumble, the Soviet Union collapse, apartheid disappear. At least we still had Northern Ireland. We'd always have Northern Ireland.

It was dependable, like death (especially like death), like taxes. Every morning, year after year, we could turn on the radio or the TV with a perfectly good chance of hearing the latest news of the latest carnage. Details on the particular bomb or gunshot. The innocent victim -- perhaps a name, perhaps even a photograph. The claim of responsibility. The threat of retaliation. The promise of justice.

Northern Ireland, and its awful twin in the Middle East -- bastions of stability, that's what they were. If the bloody boys of Belfast happened to be taking a breather for a few days, there was always the Middle East. Always someone in Gaza or Beirut or Jerusalem or wherever ready to send yet another deadly message, or to answer one. When it came to unending conflict, to sheer intractable, insoluble bleakness, the Middle East could hold its own with anyone, even with Northern Ireland; you wanted that in your diplomatic tar pits.

Arabs against Jews, Protestants against Catholics. Year after year, body after body. It was dependable to the point of boring, actually, like the same two baseball teams beating up on each other all season long. Had they ever considered interleague play? The IRA against the Israelis for a change? The PLO against the British? Just to shake things up a bit?

They hadn't considered it, you could tell. They had too much invested in the status quo -- the placards already painted, the folk songs already sung. Nobody seemed the slightest bit interested in changing partners, let alone abandoning the game.

But then there were handshakes in the Middle East. Handshakes and the first halting, frustrating conversations, trying to turn handshakes into something more.

Now this -- this shocking news from Northern Ireland. Some of the very same people who've kept the place at a boil all this time might finally be willing to call the whole grisly business off. Might be willing to try competition instead of killing. Might be willing to bury their differences instead of their children. It's not there yet, but still...

And now North and South Korea have started talking again.

Is nothing sacred?

4/14/98