reply by
observer
9/7/2002 (10:37) |
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JERUSALEM- On this Rosh Hashana, a time of self-examination, I confess that my capacity as an Israeli for self-criticism has been exhausted. The terrorist war that began around Rosh Hashana two years ago and provoked official campaigns of Jew-hatred throughout the Arab world has convinced Israelis like me who are ready to make far-reaching compromises for peace that there will be no acceptance of a Jewish state in the Middle East no matter how much territory we concede.
Once I was prepared to reach different conclusions. During the first intifada that began in the late 1980's, I served as a reservist in Gaza's refugee camps. For one month a year I became an occupier, entering family bedrooms in the middle of the night to arrest suspects for crimes ranging from terrorism to failure to pay taxes.
That experience taught me that both sides share ample rights and wrongs. I was hardly alone. The first intifada reduced to a minority those hardliners who believed that only the Jewish people had legitimate claims to the land. The majority of us learned to accommodate a competing narrative. We neutralized our attachment to the biblical territories and accepted the inevitability of uprooting most of the West Bank settlements. We offered to share our most precious possession, Jerusalem, with our bitter enemy, Yasir Arafat.
For me, that process of examination meant undertaking a journey into Islam and Christianity. As a religious Jew, I went on pilgrimages to mosques and holy places, seeking to experience something of the devotional life of my neighbors. I joined the Muslim prayer line and learned the power of its choreographed surrender. I prayed in a refugee camp that I had once patrolled as a soldier.
In turn, I sought from Palestinians an acknowledgement that I wasn't a crusader or a colonialist but an exiled son returning home. I waited for Palestinian leaders to tell their people what the late Yitzhak Rabin told us: that we must withdraw from our exclusive claim to the land. Those words never came.
Few Palestinians seem prepared even now to examine their own share of responsibility for the conflict. Instead, most remain barricaded in a self-righteous understanding of history, apportioning all innocence to themselves and all blame to us. Perhaps their inability to acknowledge the historical complexity of this conflict is understandable: The Palestinians, after all, were its losers. Yet that failure led them to commit their greatest blunder in a history of missed opportunities. By declaring war two years ago against an Israeli government that was as far left as any in history, they turned Israelis like me from supporters of Ehud Barak into supporters of Ariel Sharon.
What the first intifada was for Israelis, this intifada should be for Palestinians: a precious moment of self-examination. The Oslo process failed because of an asymmetry of self-criticism: Only one side came to the realization that this is a conflict between two legitimate national movements. The time has come for Palestinians to partition their sense of historical justice. They need to admit that much of their suffering, especially now, has been self-inflicted. And they need to confront the repeated moral failures of their leaders, from supporting Nazi Germany to backing Saddam Hussein.
Yet so far, there are few signs of moral unease. An ad placed earlier this summer by Palestinian intellectuals urging an end to suicide bombings because they are ineffective isn't good enough. Few Palestinians have challenged the historical revisionism now increasingly prevalent in Arab culture that denies the ancient roots of Jews in this land, the existence of the gas chambers and even Arab involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks.
In my journey into Palestinian Islam, I encountered the profound Muslim ability to live daily life with a constant awareness of mortality ? an awareness that can create humility, a prerequisite for reconciliation between enemies. Peace will come only through mutual introspection and atonement. Many Israelis went far in trying to understand Palestinian claims and grievances. To resume that necessary process among Israelis now requires a self-critical moral dialogue among Palestinians.
(Yossi Klein Halevi, Israel correspondent of The New Republic, is the author of 'At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for Hope with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land.')
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