True, the vision and idea seem impotent when faced with the stench of scorched flesh and the spilt blood. Fear overwhelms all other thoughts — when you walk down the street, you examine everyone you see seven times over. Any one of them might be your murderer (and, surprisingly, you discover that almost every single person — even familiar ones — appears sinister in some way). Every decision is liable to be a fateful one. Should I stop for a drink at this stand, or wait to get to the next one? Should I send my two children to school on the same bus? (And then there’s the decision over which child to send on the 7:10 and which child on the following bus.) I find myself walking down the main street where I have walked since childhood, the bustling, raucous, somewhat provincial main street of Jerusalem, with my mind ceaselessly smashing this beloved scene into little bits. I keep bidding the familiar farewell. Its impermanence elicits my compassion. Everything is so fragile — the body, routine, family, the fabric of life.
We Israelis are accustomed to living in the vicinity of death. I’ll never forget how a young couple once told me about their plans for the future: they’d get married and have three children. Not two, but three. Because if one dies, there will still be two left. This heart-wrenching way of thinking is not foreign to me. It’s the product of the unbearable lightness of death that prevails here, a way of seeing things that, in my opinion, is also characteristic of the long-suffering Palestinians. It’s precisely the disease that Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat sought to cure by turning onto the road of peace. Hamas’s suicide bombers want to keep the disease alive, and volunteer to spread it. Once, years ago, they hijacked airplanes; today they wish to hijack our future.
It is depressing to think that we are conducting a dialogue of peace with people who have among them spiritual-religious shepherds who enthusiastically send young people to their deaths in order to kill Jews. I cannot comprehend exactly what kind of God these people worship. What God can be proud that His people slaughter little children on their way to a holiday party?
It’s also depressing to see that, until now, we hear almost no Palestinian voices condemning these acts of mass murder. Where are you, Palestinian intellectuals who should be denouncing this? Where are the writers, where are the humanists? Don’t you understand that this is no longer just Israel’s war? After all, Hamas will want to impose its fanatic worldview on you moderate, secular people as well.
Tempers are high in Israel. People are demanding revenge and the annulment of the entire peace process. But even in this difficult hour, we must remember that this is the one way open to us if we want to live. We’ve already tried the alternative route, the one opposed to peace, for decades, and we still bear its physical and spiritual scars. The peace process will be long and painful, and apparently not all of us will survive it, but there are no quick solutions to such a complex and lengthy conflict. Israel and the moderate Palestinians help each other all along the way, because peace is the only state that can ensure that at least our grandchildren — I no longer believe that it will apply to our children — will be able to live a life of security, of normalcy, of blessed routine. A life in which young couples will want to have three children, maybe more, simply because it is a joy to raise them.
Open Letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
October 1996
Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud Party, won the general elections of May 29, 1996 by a razor-thin margin of 51 percent to Shimon Peres of Labor’s 49 percent. The election results clearly reflected Israel’s deep division on the issue of national security. After initially declaring that he would not convene with Arafat, Netanyahu met the Palestinian leader at the Erez roadblock in the Gaza Strip on October 6, 1996.
Mr Prime Minister, the moment of truth has arrived, like it or not. The talks that will commence in a few hours will ostensibly address only specific points of disagreement. But in the new state of affairs that you have created, these talks might well be the last opportunity to get the peace process back on track, without forcing us all, Israelis and Palestinians, to endure another lengthy bloodbath.
Reality lies before you — read it. Israel cannot long maintain a situation in which the Palestinians live in frustration and rage. Any solution that does not give the Palestinians hope for a state of their own, within a reasonable period of time, will intensify their frustration and rage. Do you perceive some new way to resolve this dilemma?
There is no other way but the way begun by the late Yitzhak Rabin and by Shimon Peres. We have no alternative reality, and there is no half-solution. Most of the world’s countries have recognized this, as has most of Palestinian society. Even most of the Israeli nation has already begun to adjust, if without great enthusiasm, to the idea of sharing the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Five or ten years in the future, after hundreds or thousands have lost their lives, there will be two countries here. They will not have great mutual trust, but they will fear the alternative. They won’t relinquish their dreams, but they will understand the clear advantages of accepting each other’s existence.
Is there really no other way? There is, of course. It’s the way of hostility and humiliation and occupation. But we’ve already tried that, and we’ve seen where it led us. If we go down that path again, we will find it to be more violent and horrible than ever before. We’ve already come to realize that the more time Israel tries to buy, the higher the price it has to pay in concessions, in blood, and in internal disintegration. For those who choose life, there is currently only one way — that of the great and painful concession, of the calculated risk.
Rarely does the world present us with such a drastic and clear choice. Any step that does not lead directly and uncompromisingly to this one road leads to the other. Convoluted words and phrases can no longer create a new condition. The writing is already on the wall, and it is written, as the poet Yehuda Amichai said (in another context), in three languages — Hebrew, Arabic, and Death.
Three days ago you issued a heartfelt and, in your words, sincere appeal to the Palestinians, and spoke of your desire for real peace. But in all honesty, Mr Prime Minister, if you were this morning a Palestinian who desired peace, would the offers that Israel has been making over the last three months seem like “real peace”?
I pose to you another question, which is the core of the matter, in my opinion. Does the vision that you are offering us Israelis today, really include our great and only chance of recovering, finally, from the historical error that has drawn our blood and all the good we could have within us? What is the point of aspiring to lead Israel at this time, in this situation, if you are not able to promise Israeli citizens the opportunity to end its occupation of another nation?
Mr Prime Minister, the late Yitzhak Rabin entered the Oslo process knowing that he also represented the half of the nation that feared this peace. The Oslo Accords actually reflect the anxieties of this half of the Israeli people. This morning, and in the days to come, when you brief your representatives, when you go to meet Yasir Arafat again, and when you face difficult decisions, please do not forget that you also represent those of the other half of the nation who, despite their trepidation, are not prepared to continue this way. For these people, the very desire to live is being taken from them because they have spent the last thirty years in circumstances that they view as deformed, immoral, unjust, and, especially, not safe. It’s this half of the nation that will have difficulty understanding why it is being called to fight, very soon, when the secure peace you have promised becomes a slaughtered peace.