Syndication
Too Late for Peace, and Too Soon, Too
The Hour
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More in Forward ForumThey say it hasn’t been this hot here in Israel in 65 years. Where I am for a few days is Kibbutz Geva, in the Valley of Jezreel, not far from Nazareth and Afula, hardly the warmest place in Israel, yet here it reached 104 today. In this kind of heat everything feels suspended. One moves slowly, or not at all.
And yes, that is a metaphor. Now and then a spasm, such as the Hamas victory in Gaza, but more typically, a disconnect. The nightly hour-long news telecast tonight spends 40 minutes on the plea bargain of ex-president Moshe Katsav, for all practical purposes exonerated of rape and other serious charges, a suspended sentence for minor residual offenses. You have to look hard or listen very carefully to find acknowledgment of the “existential crisis” that so engages foreign policy elites around the world.
I seek out the politically obsessed. At lunch with three former senior officials of the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, old friends all, one dismisses my dovish perspective, says that “you can’t make peace while there’s a war on.” He goes on to clarify the obvious absurdity of what he’s said: “First we must destroy Gaza.”
Not out of anything so vulgar as blood lust, but because terrorism must be quashed before there can be peace. Another agrees, and when I suggest that the world might not react casually to Gaza’s “destruction,” he throws Darfur at me, and follows that with, “What does it matter, they all hate us anyway.”
The third, a dove, calls me the next day to express his shock, even outrage, at the other two. But I am not shocked. The day before, another old friend, a classic liberal, an erstwhile supporter of the very dovish Meretz party, has recited to me his objections to Israel’s enabling humanitarian aid to Gaza. “Let them all die. Barbarians.”
The new Pew Research Center Global Attitudes Survey reports that 86% of Israelis have little or no confidence in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, that nearly a third of Israelis do not believe that Israel and Palestine can coexist. The same survey reports that 62% of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have favorable views of Hamas and that 77% do not believe Israel and Palestine can coexist. (The survey was completed before the recent clashes between Hamas and Fatah.)
The dark highlight of my two-week visit here (lowlight, I suppose) was a daylong excursion to Bethlehem, where, thanks to Rabbi Melissa Weintraub and a program called “Encounter” that brings American Jews to meet with Palestinians, I listened to Palestinian advocates of non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation.
Their frustrations were manifest; their commitment to non-violence brings little reward and considerable risk, since they can so easily be seen as collaborators. Still, the meetings with them were a reminder of the importance of not lumping all Palestinians into one undifferentiated and murderous mass.
So much for the good news. The bad news, the very bad news of my Bethlehem experience, was my tour of “the separation fence,” the fence and sometimes wall that an overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews believes has brought them a measure of security from suicide bombers.
But in Bethlehem, the “fence” is no fence at all. It is a concrete wall, 24 feet high, that snakes through the city and its environs, a wall whose path powerfully suggests that security is not its only goal, that it is intended to provide ample room for Jerusalem’s expansion southward. (The trip from Jerusalem to Bethlehem takes just 15 minutes or so.)
One can almost feel thankful — save for the damage it does to the local economy — that the ongoing conflict has stunted tourism; relatively few visitors are exposed to the shattering insult to human dignity the wall embodies.
I was in Israel just after the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War, during the Gulf War of 1990 while the Scuds were falling. I have been to refugee camps in Gaza and to military cemeteries in Israel.
Outside Damascus, I have seen missiles pointed toward Israel, and I have been to West Bank settlements at which (so I assume) some of those missiles are pointed. Never have I been so disturbed — ashamed, even — as by this grotesque monstrosity, this strangling wall that meanders up one street and down another, dividing the city from itself, isolating villages and in one instance abutting a single house on three sides.
To my regret, Israelis are not permitted to visit Bethlehem, which is part of “Area A,” allegedly autonomous Palestinian territory. It is not that the Palestinians won’t let Israelis in; it is Israel that will not let them out, not to those Palestinian parcels defined as part of Area A.
I nurture the perhaps naive belief that a tour of the wall would come as a revelation to visiting Israelis, would pierce through the resentment and contempt regarding Palestinians that are so common here, would elicit from them an empathic response. A response analogous to that experienced by a West Bank Palestinian of my acquaintance when, together with other members of a network of bereaved families, Israelis and Palestinians who’ve lost a family member to the violence, he visited Yad Vashem, Israel’s leading Holocaust memorial museum.
Some here say it is too late for peace, others that it is too soon. The forecast for tomorrow is for more of the same. Maybe, they say, Shabbat will bring some relief from the heat. There is no sign yet of relief for the heart.
Comments
To David Hoffman: Not every Israeli -- or Palestinian -- who has suffered loss wants to remain focused only on pain and revenge. There are those who can reach out to feel the pain of others, and work for understanding and peace. See http://www.theparentscircle.com/
The suicide bombing is an act of war, and the fence is one of the counter-measures. Strangely, the suicide bombers are not an issue for Mr Fein, and they are not a "shattering insult to human dignity". Only the tool that prevents the bombings is an "insult". In short, Mr Fein apparently undertands the situation thus: The Palestinian people is at war, and a people at war strikes at its enemy - but the Jewish people is not at war, and hence its actions are judge as if they are simply scandalous. Another indication that Mr Fein lives in his own never-never land is his hint that Israelis should come and see the barrier for themselves - seeing it would be a "revelation" of some sort (as if we haven't seen it). The Israeli public insisted on this barrier. The suicide bombings were terrifying and irrational - and the building of the fence has been a major strategic success. If Mr Fein believes that a visit to the fence will convince me to tear it down, preferring a return to two suicide bombings a week - well, frankly, he doesn't have a picture of Israeli society. Everyone has seen the fence (highway 6 goes right by it; Jerusalem, the biggest town in Israel is right on the fence). Finally, Mr Fein regrets that Israelis are not permitted to visit Area A. Again, he lives in his strange world of one side being at war, but the other side (Israel) should go about its business as usual. So, I'll explain it in the simplest of terms: Israelis have gone to West Bank cities, and have been murdered in cold blood. The government, which sees itself responsible for the lives of its citizens (as opposed to Mr Fein who is responsible just for writing about make-believe worlds), has made it forbidden for Israeli citizens to cross over into territory where they cannot be protected. It quite a reasonable policy for people who understand reality.
In their snotty responses, both David Hoffman and Reuven ignore the point. My column was not a critique of the wall, not of the wall one whizzes past on Highway 6 nor of the wall as it is seen in Abu Dis. It was a specific response to a specific portion of the wall, that portion which slices Bethlehem apart and which has no evident security justification. "My pain is more authentic than yours" is a useless argument. A useful argument would be one that shows that the placement of the wall in Bethlehem is, in fact, based strictly on security considerations alone, that it conforms to the Israeli Supreme Court mandate that the separation barrier must be situated in a manner that balances security needs and humanitarian considerations. The fact that suicide bombings are always evil does not mean that the barrier is never evil. Life is not that simple.
Respectfully Mr. Fein, neither David Hoffman's or Reuven's replies to your article were "snotty." Rather, they appear to be thoughtful counterpoints to your article, and your somewhat childish characterization of their comments seems to be a way to avoid addressing their cogent criticisms directly.
You respond that "'My pain is more authentic than yours' is a useless argument," but that is simply a straw man. Nobody says that the pain caused by the barrier is not real or authentic. Your article implies, however, that the pain caused by the barrier justifies its removal. Put more starkly, you argue that the pain caused by a cement wall running through the middle of Bethlehem is so severe, and its removal so paramount, that Israeli men, women, and children must pay with their lives so that the barrier can be removed. Very few Israelis would agree with you, and I seriously doubt that seeing the barrier with their own eyes would change their minds.
You seem to forget that Israel is not like the US, which sends other's children to fight wars thousands of miles away with no clear rationale. Israelis send their own children to front lines that are a mere bus ride from their homes, and the children come home every other shabbat and tell their families about their experiences. Unlike in the US, when there is a war in Israel, almost everybody knows someone whose life is at risk.
Given that reality, building a wall through Bethlehem seems entirely reasonable. When there is peace, God willing, the barrier will come down. Until then, it would be suicide.
I agree. This is an absurd article.
Leonard Fein in his response to readers' comments ignored the criticism about entering Area A. In his article, it is implied that something is wrong with the decision not to allow Israeli citizens to enter Palestinian controlled territory: "It is not that the Palestinians won’t let Israelis in; it is Israel that will not let them out" (of Israel across the border to Area A). Reuven commented correctly that the reason for the border closure is that it is simply too dangerous for a Jewish Israeli to be there. The danger of kidnapping and murder is more than obvious. Indeed, it is very misleading on the part of Leonard Fein to mention that Israelis don't enter Area A without explaining why. His intended impression was that Israel is unreasonable, whereas the contrary is the case. It has to be this way at this stage of the conflict.
At the risk of sounding "snotty" again, I will commence to address Mr. Fein's response.
Mr. Fein implies that the persuasive power of his article can be diminished if one "shows that the placement of the wall in Bethlehem is, in fact, based strictly on security considerations alone, that it conforms to the Israeli Supreme Court mandate that the separation barrier must be situated in a manner that balances security needs and humanitarian considerations".
If Mr. Fein, rather than relying on his exaggerated symptoms of guilt, were to have become even marginally familiar with the factual circumstances surrounding the construction of the Bethlehem barrier, he would have realized that such a showing can easily be made.
To wit, on February 3, 2005, the High Court of Justice (an appellate court, just like the Supreme Court) rejected a petition filed by the Bethlehem and Beit Jallah municipalities to reroute the building of the security fence near Bethlehem. The Court ruled the proposed route of the security fence, submitted by the IDF in response to an earlier petition, does not infringe on Palestinian residents' freedom of movement.
Accordingly, the requisite balancing between security and humanitarian concerns(Palestinian only, of course) was conducted and resulted in a measured ruling that clearly undermines Mr. Fein's conclusion.
As for Mr. Fein's equally unsupported assertion that the Bethlehem barrer has "no evident security justification", I refer to the following series of accounts, which is by no means exhaustive:
December 5, 2001 At least two people were wounded by a suicide bomber in a hotel near the old city's Jaffa Gate; the perpetrator, Daoud `Ali Ahmad Abu Suway, was a forty-four year old father of eight children from Artas, near Bethlehem. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.
January 15, 2002 The abduction and murder of Avi Boaz, a US citizen residing in Israel. Boaz was stopped at a Palestinian roadblock near Beit Sahour. There he was abducted by Fatah Tanzim commander Atif Abayat's operatives, who took him to Bethlehem, and upon Abayat's instructions, shot him to death.
March 2, 2002 Eleven people, including five children, were killed and at least fifty wounded when a suicide bomber detonated in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Me'ah Shearim in Jerusalem. The attack took place as a bar mitzvah was ending. The suicide bomber was a seventeen-year-old refugee from Bethlehem. The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades claimed responsibility.
March 31, 2002 Four people were wounded in an attack near a volunteer medical station in the Efrat settlement near Bethlehem. The suicide bomber was seventeen years old. The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades claimed responsibility.
July 30, 2002 At least five people were injured in a suicide attack on a falafel shop in central Jerusalem by Majd `Atta, a seventeen-year-old from Beit Jala, near Bethlehem. The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.
January 29, 2004 At least 10 people were killed in a suicide bombing on a bus in central Jerusalem. More than 50 were injured in the explosion, at about 9 am local time, 100 metres from the Israeli Prime Minister's official residence on the Gaza Road. The bomber was named as a Palestinian policeman from Bethlehem.
February 22, 2004 Palestinian suicide bomber killed eight Israelis and wounded about 60 when he blew himself up on a bus in Jerusalem during the morning rush hour yesterday. The dead included two 18-year-old pupils on their way to school in the city centre. Nine of the wounded were children. The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, affiliated to Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, claimed responsibility for the attack and identified the bomber as Mohammed Zeoul, 23, from the village of Hussan near Bethlehem.
November 2, 2004 Israel's security services said today they had arrested several terror cells comprised of 16 residents of Bethlehem planning a series of large-scale terror attacks in Jerusalem, HA'ARETZ reported. The cells planned to launch two pairs of suicide bombers to the Mea She'arim neighborhood in the capital, and to carry out a terror attack using an explosive-laden ambulance. Also attributed to one of the cells is a plan to attack a bus carrying worshippers to Rachel's Tomb near Bethlehem. ---
I would submit that the "security justification" aspect of Mr. Fein's article has also been satisfactorily addressed.
Life may not be simple, Mr. Fein, but it does require better scholarship and less demagoguery from those that purport to be journalists.
David B., David H. and other readers,
Please come see for yourself! The program in which Leonard Fein participated (www.encounterprograms.org) is founded on the importance of bearing witness, with our own eyes, to the concrete and human expression of the policies we endorse. Encounter brings Jewish leaders from across the political and religious spectrum on listening tours to Bethlehem and other Palestinian cities. Our mission is open-ended education; we do not impose political beliefs or perspectives on our participants. As Rabbis and Jewish leaders, our highest priority is the protection of human life and dignity - but we do not make assertions about whether the barrier is or is not justified by its human benefits and costs. We do assert - as hundreds of Jewish participants confirm, regardless of their views - that no maps, statistics, or arguments can substitute for an encounter with the tangible reality itself. Please be in touch if you would like to join us on one of our trips.
Many blessings, Rabbi Melissa Weintraub Co-founder and North American Director Encounter www.encounterprograms.org "Transforming conflict through face-to-face understanding"
Melissa, thanks for the invitation. I have personally seen the barrier, and I find that I am better able to see something with my own eyes without a "Rabbi" or "Jewish Leader" there to tell me what I am seeing.
Rabbi Weintraub - When you bring Mr Fein to meet the Palestinians face to face, is the dialogue in the Arabic language? There is no understanding the conflict with the Palestinians when their positions are presented in Hebrew for the Israelis or in English for the Jewish tourist. A Jewish professional such as you should understand that Jewish culture is a Hebrew language phenomenon, and similarly the Palestinian position must be encountered in their language.
Melissa: I have unfortunately not seen the wall personally. If I did, I am certain that I would not feel sorry for it. True, I would not feel as much reverence for it as for the Western Wall. Nevertheless, I would probably feel very happy to see it. Also true, it would not be pure joy. I would still feel sorry for the land grab. Of course by this I refer to the fact that what lies on the "Palestinian" side of the wall is still Jewish land that is barred to Jews. This land was G-d given and no "Rabbi" or "Jewish leader" has a right to relinquish it. But then again, I don't expect that a "Rabbi" that goes by the name of Melissa is competent enough in the field of Halachah to understand this.
Melissa,
You write that your organization does "not make assertions about whether the barrier is or is not justified by its human benefits and costs".
This claim would appear to be disingenuous in view of the fact that the program consists of "listening tours to Bethlehem and other Palestinian cities", rather than trips that expose the participants to the viewpoints of both Arabs who feel that they are wronged by the presence of the Bethlehem barrier *as well as* Jews who describe how their lives were affected by the absence of the barrier, e.g., by acts of Arab violence, or how their lives have been improved by the barrier's construction.
You cannot claim that "tangible reality" is at hand when that "reality" is skewed by exposure to only one viewpoint. An attorney can state that he or she is merely reciting the relevant "facts" to a jury, but there is no fair trial unless the story is told by the opposing counsel as well. This is a foundational aspect of due process.
Unless I am missing something from your description of the "Encounter" program, the participants would have no choice but to try and convict Israel's deployment of the Bethlehem security barrier, which belies the claim that your program lacks an agenda.
However, if you would agree to fully subsidize my participation in your program and permit me to speak on behalf of the proponents of the security barrier, I would be happy to attend.
An addendum: in the interests of fairness, I will ask the Israel Foreign Ministry to supplement my presentation with any guest speakers (e.g., relatives of terror victims) and all necessary data ( such as audiovisual material, including photographs of the aftermath of terrorist attacks originating from the Bethlehem area) to ensure that all participants are exposed to tangible reality. Or perhaps the tour can involve a stop at the homes of the relatives of terror victims or at the gravesites of their loved ones. As you correctly noted, there is no substitute.
I'm still wondering why Mr Fein would mention that Israeli citizens are not allowed to cross over into Palestinian-held territories (Area A of the Oslo agreements) without given any background as to why this is the policy of Israel. I suppose it could be that he wasn't aware of the reasoning behind this decision, which would mean that he wrote his article without investigating an important aspect of the story. It could be that he that he does know the reason (i.e. it is very dangerous, and the fear of being murdered or being held hostage is very real), but he preferred not to mention it - meaning that the article is intentionally misleading.
The only thing that Fein gets right is that suicide bombings are always evil. 100% of these bombings are committed by Arabs against Israelis. The majority of Arabs polled support these bombings. 100% of the missiles shot into Israel by Hamas are shot by Arabs. The majority of Arabs polled support this as well. Compared to this the wall pales in comparison to the evil exhibited and supported by the majority of Arabs. It is not surprising that Fein doesn't get it. As the Talmud says, "He who is merciful to the cruel will soon be cruel to the merciful". This is what Fein and most liberals have done. They show more righteous indignation against those fighting evil, then those perpetuating it. Fein is a fool. Snotty enough for you?
Are we condemned to perpetual war? We must look at ourselves squarely in the face and say, “Perhaps.” The answer to that question does not depend on ourselves alone. We did not start any of the previous wars. They were all started by belligerent Arabs who surround us and are still bent on our destruction. This is a reality which we must honestly face rather than blindly hoping for peace. You can not make peace with an unwilling partner. From the heads of state to the ordinary man in the street, the Arab world’s attitude toward Israel is one of hatred and contempt. There have never been any serious attempts by the Arabs toward coexistence. We must take an honest look at the situation, confronting it with realism rather than idyllic abstractions about peace. We must firmly establish our priorities emphasizing the security of Israel, first and foremost. The term "peace process" has become virtually synonymous with demands for Israeli concessions. Peace can never be achieved when only one side gives and the other merely receives.
The author writes, "relatively few visitors are exposed to the shattering insult to human dignity the wall embodies".
The author, like all of those who value Arab "dignity" over Israeli lives, suggests that the wall near Bethlehem, which is not permanent and could be removed pursuant to any future peace agreement, is more "shattering" and a greater "insult" than being murdered (forever and irreversibly) by a suicide bomber or drive-by shooter that would have otherwise been stopped by a life-saving barrier between civilians and killers.
If the author cannot imagine a worse pain to the heart than the presence of the Bethlehem wall, then perhaps he should interview the mother, father, son, or daughter of an Israeli who was killed by terrorism prior to the construction of the security barrier - that is where authentic pain resides, not in the hand-wringing of an outside observer who is safely ensconsed in his American apartment.