as, generally speaking, genuine cross-green-line dialogue encounters are quite rare in israel and palestine i just thought i’d cross-post to this blog on the haaretz “makom” site by a friend of mine, rabbi gideon sylvester, on his recent visit to bethlehem.
Our first stop was just a stone’s throw from a Yeshiva where I studied. But, like most Palestinian towns and villages it is served by roads that Israelis don’t travel on, so although for years I have driven past it on a daily basis, I was totally unaware of its existence.
As we drew close to the campus, I was forced to park my car by a garbage tip and walk for fifteen minutes to the entrance, since the main approach road has been blocked off by the army. Hot and breathless, we arrived at the front gate where a welcome sign defiantly proclaims: “We refuse to be enemies” in three languages. We were warmly greeted by our host who plied us with piping hot coffee, fruit and cakes. Then he told us his story. His grandfather had purchased the land in 1916, and the family had lived there ever since, but now the Israeli government and local settlers were challenging his ownership of the land so that they could confiscate it. His inspiring response was to transform the property into a huge summer camp for Palestinian children to educate them about peace and reconciliation.
It was a heart-rending story and left me feeling embarrassed by the apparent cruelty of our government as well as the electricity and water authorities who refuse to supply his home. And yet I was left with niggling questions. Why was his sign warmly welcoming us to a center of coexistence written in Arabic, German and English, but not Hebrew? If the camp was established for children to learn about coexistence, why weren’t we taken to meet them and introduce ourselves as peace loving Jews? Indeed, why were we instructed to remove all visible signs of Jewishness when we arrived?
Over and over again, throughout the day, I was torn between my empathy for the suffering of the Palestinian people, my respect for their warmth, and my confusion about whether they really sought peace with us.
perhaps this will go some way to explain just how much of a gulf there is between the proxy war conducted in the MSM and blogosphere between the israel-bashers and the palestinian-bashers. the complete account can be found here: http://makom.haaretz.com/blog.asp?bId=175
4 Comments
Good story, thank you.
Either his host was a particularly good liar, or he too was confused about peace prospects. I think probably the latter.
What role does theology play in this conflict and would complete secularization on both help or hinder peace efforts?
A very nice story. Thank you Bananabrain for sharing this.
I came away from reading it reminded not only of the terrible things that the Israeli state does to the Palestinians but also reminding afresh of the many thousands of ordinary Palestinians and Israelis who refuse to be brainwashed into hating their neighbours.
the answer really is that theology affects this conflict through the medium of israeli coalition politics on one hand, american lobby politics on another, and american, sunni and shi’a geopolitics on the other. theology motivates the iranians to use hezbollah to prevent a resolution, theology motivates the christian right to encourage the israelis to be intransigent, theology motivates the settlers to be loonies, theology motivates the religious bits of the jewish diaspora to affect whether they support AIPAC, or Jstreet or even neturei karta.
well, it would probably help (lieberman is far more likely to make a deal than khaled meshal is) but how this is to be achieved i cannot see. you can’t get a solution without a religiously workable solution. there is a religiously workable solution that i can see, but it involves the decoupling of the theological-religious notion of eretz yisrael (the land of israel) from the nation-state of medinat yisrael (the state of israel) and that would involve a major backpedal on the part of some of the various religious lobbies. on the other hand, it *also* involves the ability of jews to be able to live in eretz yisrael without living in medinat yisrael – in hebron, for example, or, i dare say, in syria. obviously you can see how this would also involve a religious solution on the islamic side around the definition of “waqf”, but presumably there is no difference between israel and spain from this respect. either way, there’s nothing religious that need stand in the way of a palestinian state as long as that state is not expected to be judenrein – and the same goes for other arab countries.
needless to say, there are plenty of people who would rather take the advice of the bishop of narbonne during the albigensian crusade and just fight it all out. personally, i don’t fancy the chances of the palestinians, israelis, or iranians in that event.
b’shalom
bananabrain