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Israel Today - The Complexity of the Situation

An attempt to make sense of the visit

Personal Summary:

• The visit to Israel was billed as a fact-finding mission to understand the complexity of the situation. According to this criterion it was a successful visit. Naturally it did not provide insight into the whole picture of the suffering of two peoples. Most of our contacts were with Jewish men and women covering the whole spectrum of political and religious positions. There was no chance to visit the occupied territories and only limited chances to speak with Palestinian people. We heard statements that attempted to demonise the other. We heard statements that attempted to look at the plight of the other with understanding. That being said, it was a valuable and informative experience.
  
• One of the concepts to which we were introduced early in the visit was that of two narratives. Two peoples, one experience that each endures; two opposing interpretations of and understanding of events and their meaning.
  
• The existence of a Jewish and a Palestinian narrative is not new. Indeed it is as old as Abraham our common father in faith. Force and counter-force, violence and retaliation can never lead to peace. A telling statement we heard was that this land has too much history and too little geography. What is sorely needed is the opportunity for each to hear the other’s narrative or story as a non-negotiable first step. Hopefully then they can begin to appreciate and respect the other’s narrative, which tries to make sense of their experience and attribute meaning to that experience.

“The Palestinians don’t have a state; they don’t have an economy; their suffering is ten times worse than ours. I am completely against people using power against others’ (Statement by a Jewish man whose son was murdered by Hamas)

“Don’t try to compare and compete with your pain. It is useless to say my suffering is greater than yours. Each side has its own trauma, for the Palestinians the Naghbar, for the Jews the Shoah. As partners in dialogue we must listen to the trauma /pain of the other side”

(Statement by a Jewish person teaching coexistence through studying the Holocaust)

• Time and time again we were told that the polls rate 70% or more of both Palestinians and Israelis wanting peace and prepared to make the concessions needed for this to follow.
  
• When they were asked what could we as outsiders coming from USA do to help the tragic situation of the Middle East, there was a similarity in the response from many of the people with whom we met:

“Help people to see beyond the biased reporting, past the propaganda which simplifies and demonises one side of the conflict and absolves the other side, to the complexity of the situation. We need people to believe that peace is possible”.

I quote part of the message from the recent meeting of delegates of Catholic Bishops Conferences of Europe and North America in Jerusalem, as it expresses some of my thoughts at the end of my visit to Israel.

“Last year we said, ‘The present cycle of violence is a tragedy for everyone. It is profoundly wrong to keep a people under occupation; it is abhorrent to hold millions of men, women and children confined in one enormous jail. It is likewise morally reprehensible to take vengeance or undertake resistance with random attacks on innocent people’ The continuing violence indicates to us something is profoundly wrong…..

No one can remain indifferent to the injustice of which the Palestinian people have been victims for more than fifty years. No one can contest the right of the Israeli people to live in security. However, neither can anyone forget the innocent victims, on both sides, who fall day after day under the blows of violence. Weapons and bloody attacks will never be the right means for making political statements to the other side. Nor is the logic of the law of retaliation capable any longer of leading to the paths of justice”.

• I would want to be fair in presenting both the suffering and the hopes of the people who live on both sides of this terrible cauldron of fear and violence.
  
• I would stress the right of both Jewish people and Palestinian people to a homeland where they can live without fear. The gravest obstacles to a peaceful solution are the illegal occupation of and building of settlements on Palestinian territory, the targeting of non-combatant Israeli civilians by Palestinian terrorists and inordinate use of force against the Palestinian people by the Israeli Defence Force.
  
• If there is to be a move towards peace so desperately needed by both sides, action must simultaneously happen from the top down and from the bottom up. Political will from the leadership of Israel and the Palestinian Authority must be shown to at least initiate a cessation of hostilities and a cooling off period. At the same time cooperative action among Palestinian and Israeli peers is critical to begin to dissipate the fog of pain, mistrust, suspicion, demonisation and hate. These signs of hope (which already are numerous) must also be written about and communicated both to their own people and to the world which looks on with sadness and consternation.