Israel
does not want peace. There is nothing I have ever written that I would be
happier to be proved wrong about. But the evidence is piling up. In fact, it can
be said that Israel has never wanted peace – a just peace, that is, one based on
a just compromise for both sides. It’s true that the routine greeting in Hebrew
is Shalom (peace) – shalom when one leaves and shalom when one arrives. And, at
the drop of a hat, almost every Israeli will say he wants peace, of course he
does. But he’s not referring to the kind of peace that will bring about the
justice without which there is no peace and there will be no peace. Israelis
want peace, not justice, certainly not anything based on universal values. Thus,
“Peace, peace, when there is no peace.” Not only is there no peace: In recent
years, Israel has moved away from even the aspiration to make peace. It has
despaired utterly of it. Peace has disappeared from the Israeli agenda, its
place taken by the collective anxieties that are systematically implanted, and
by personal, private matters that now take precedence over all else.
The
Israeli longing for peace seemingly died about a decade ago, after the failure
of the Camp David summit in 2000, the dissemination of the lie that there is no
Palestinian partner for peace, and, of course, the horrific blood-soaked period
of the second intifada. But the truth is that even before that, Israel never
really wanted peace. Israel has never, not for a minute, treated the
Palestinians as human beings with equal rights. It has never viewed their
distress as understandable human and national distress.
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The
Israeli peace camp, too – if ever there was such a thing – also died a lingering
death amid the harrowing scenes of the second intifada and the no-partner lie.
All that remained were a handful of organizations that were as determined and
devoted as they were ineffectual in the face of the delegitimization campaigns
mounted against them. Israel, therefore, was left with its rejectionist
stance.
The
single most overwhelming item of evidence of Israel’s rejection of peace is, of
course, the settlements project. From the dawn of its existence, there has never
been a more reliable or more precise litmus test for Israel’s true intentions
than this particular enterprise. In plain words: The builders of settlements
want to consolidate the occupation, and those who want to consolidate the
occupation do not want peace. That’s the whole story in a nutshell.
On
the assumption that Israel’s decisions are rational, it is impossible to accept
construction in the territories and the aspiration to peace as mutually
coexisting. Every act of building in the settlements, every mobile home and
every balcony, conveys rejection. If Israel had wanted to achieve peace through
the Oslo Accords, it would at least have stopped the construction in the
settlements at its own initiative. That this did not happen proves that Oslo was
fraudulent, or at best the chronicle of a failure foretold. If Israel had wanted
to achieve peace at Taba, at Camp David, at Sharm el-Sheikh, in Washington or in
Jerusalem, its first move should have been to end all construction in the
territories. Unconditionally. Without a quid pro quo. The fact that Israel did
not is proof that it did not want a just peace.
But
the settlements were only a touchstone of Israel’s intentions. Its rejectionism
is embedded far more deeply – in its DNA, its bloodstream, its raison d’être,
its most primal beliefs. There, at the deepest level, lies the concept that this
land is destined for the Jews alone. There, at the deepest level, is entrenched
the value of “am sgula” – God’s “treasured people” – and “God chose us.” In
practice, this is translated to mean that, in this land, Jews are allowed to do
what is forbidden to others. That is the point of departure, and there is no way
to get from there to a just peace. There is no way to reach a just peace when
the name of the game is the dehumanization of the Palestinians. No way to
achieve peace when the demonization of the Palestinians is hammered into
people’s heads day after day. Those who are convinced that every Palestinian is
a suspicious person and that every Palestinian wants “to throw the Jews into the
sea” will never make peace with the Palestinians. Most Israelis are convinced of
the truth of both those statements.
In
the past decade, the two peoples have been separated from each another. The
average young Israeli will never meet his Palestinian peer, other than during
his army service (and then only if he does his service in the territories). Nor
will the average young Palestinian ever meet an Israeli his own age, other than
the soldier who huffs and puffs at him at the checkpoint, or invades his home in
the middle of the night, or in the person of the settler who usurps his land or
torches his groves.
Consequently,
the only encounter between the two people is between the occupiers, who are
armed and violent, and the occupied, who are despairing and also turn to
violence. Gone are the days when Palestinians worked in Israel and Israelis
shopped in Palestine. Gone is the period of the half-normal and quarter-equal
relations that existed for a few decades between the two peoples that share the
same piece of territory. It is very easy, in this state of affairs, to incite
and inflame the two peoples against one another, to spread fears and to instill
new hatreds on top of those that already exist. This, too, is a sure recipe for
non-peace.
So
it was that a new Israeli yearning sprang up: the desire for separation: “They
will be there and we will be here (and also there).” At a time when the majority
of Palestinians – an assessment I allow myself to make after decades of covering
the territories – still want coexistence, even if less and less, most Israelis
want disengagement and separation, but without paying the price. The two-state
vision has gained widespread adherence, but without any intention to implement
it in practice. Most Israelis are in favor, but not now and maybe not even here.
They have been trained to believe that there is no partner for peace – a
Palestinian partner, that is – but that there is an Israeli partner.
Unfortunately,
the truth is almost the reverse. The Palestinian non-partners no longer have any
chance to prove that they are partners; the Israeli non-partners are convinced
that they are interlocutors. So began the process in which Israeli conditions,
obstacles and difficulties were heaped up, one more milestone in Israeli
rejectionism. First came the demand for a cessation of terrorism; then the
demand for a change of leadership (Yasser Arafat as a stumbling block); and
after that Hamas became the hurdle. Now it’s the Palestinians’ refusal to
recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Israel considers every step it takes – from
mass political arrests to building in the territories – to be legitimate,
whereas every Palestinian move is “unilateral.”
The
only country on the planet with no borders is so far unwilling to delineate even
the compromise borders it is ready to be satisfied with. Israel has not
internalized the fact that, for the Palestinians, the borders of 1967 are the
mother of all compromises, the red line of justice (or relative justice). For
the Israelis, they are “suicide borders.” This is why the preservation of the
status quo has become the true Israeli aim, the primary goal of Israeli policy,
almost its be-all and end-all. The problem is that the existing situation cannot
last forever. Historically, few nations have ever agreed to live under
occupation without resistance. And the international community, too, is one day
apt to utter a firm pronouncement on this state of affairs, with accompanying
punitive measures. It follows that the Israeli goal is unrealistic.
Disconnected
from reality, the majority of Israelis pursue their regular way of life. In
their mind’s eye the world is always against them, and the areas of occupation
on their doorstep are beyond their realm of interest. Anyone who dares criticize
the occupation policy is branded an anti-Semite, every act of resistance is
perceived as an existential threat. All international opposition to the
occupation is read as the “delegitimizing” of Israel and as a provocation to the
country’s very existence. The world’s seven billion people – most of whom are
against the occupation – are wrong, and six million Israeli Jews – most of whom
support the occupation – are right. That’s the reality in the eyes of the
average Israeli.
Add
to this the repression, the concealment and the obfuscation, and you have
another explanation for the rejectionism: Why should anyone strive for peace as
long as life in Israel is good, calm prevails and the reality is concealed? The
only way the besieged Gaza Strip can remind people of its existence is by firing
rockets, and the West Bank only gets onto the agenda these days when blood is
shed there. Similarly, the viewpoint of the international community is only
taken into account when it tries to impose boycotts and sanctions, which in
their turn immediately generate a campaign of self-victimization studded with
blunt – and at times also impertinent – historical accusations.
This,
then, is the gloomy picture. It contains not a ray of hope. The change will not
happen on its own, from within Israeli society, as long as that society
continues to behave as it does. The Palestinians have made more than one
mistake, but their mistakes are marginal. Basic justice is on their side, and
basic rejectionism is the Israelis’ purview. The Israelis want occupation, not
peace.
I
only hope I am wrong.
The
articles that appear in this section have also been published in Hebrew and Arabic.
