Are the Palestinians and Israelis going to live in peace? Is there going to be a utopian society in the Promised Land? Is it really a could-be-reality or just a foggy dream? Is peace a one way ticket? Is it possible and just that one day Palestinians and Israelis can overcome their differences and live in harmony? Is it possible to have a peace treaty and actually abide by it? Penny Rosenwasser answers these questions and others in her powerful book, 'Voices from a Promised Land.'
Penny Rosenwasser, herself an activist from California, traveled to Israel after the Gulf War in search of answers and hoping to learn if the everlasting conflict between Israelis and Palestinians would ever come to an end. 'Voices from a Promised Land' deals with Israeli and Palestinian peace activists who, in their own special way, found a way to achieve a mutual understanding of a problem that is, for most of us, bewildering and genuinely puzzling.
In fact, we all know that relations between Israelis and Palestinians entered a new phase in the late 1980s with the Intifada, a series of uprisings in the occupied territories that included demonstrations, strikes and stone-throwing attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians. The generally harsh response by the Israeli government drew censure from both the US and the UN. The Palestinians felt that if they let themselves be colonized it was precisely because they lacked the capacity to fight either militarily or technically. This is absolutely not the case with the Palestinians. It is apparent that they are willing to lose thousands of lives and then have their own state. But how does the Israeli government feel about this willingness? More blood baths!
You can take the life of a Palestinian but you can't take Palestine out of a Palestinian. From every conversation Rosenwasser conducted, we come to the realization understanding that Palestinians will not stop the Intifada. Yet it is futile since the Israeli government will not change its mentality. "Palestinians before didn't want to recognize Israeli, but Palestinians changed their mentality," says a young journalist, Qassem Izzat, in his conversation with Rosenwasser. One irony of the situation is that most Arab countries do not acknowledge or recognize Israel but Palestinians, trying desperately to live in peace, do.
Interestingly, Rosenwasser found people willing to put aside the mindsets and prejudices of their own communities in order to reach each other. There are Palestinians who, trying their best simply to live, come to a rare understanding of the state of Israel. And on the other hand, there are Israelis who have changed from a self-absorbed focus on Jewish rights and Jewish survival to a broader concern for ensuring that Palestinian rights are guaranteed.
Tikva, an Israeli activist, believes "the main thing is calling upon the American public to stop aid to Israel. (This)...is the most important thing to mobilize all our energies for." We know that the American public didn't begin objecting en masse to Vietnam until the cost became too high. Surely the Intifada is a war with a tremendous cost in economic and moral terms, to say nothing of the human casualties.
In reading this book, we realize that every Palestinian voice reflects the Palestinian mainstream's readiness to work at a peace agreement but every Israeli voices is outside the Israeli mainstream. Rosenwasser's Israelis are on the extreme left in Israeli politics - to the left even of the mainstream peace movement that now exist.
Being on the left means not only accepting and assisting in people's national liberation but also includes political democracy and freedom, economic democracy and justice, rejection of racist xenophobia and universality. And Israel will not accept any forbearance or tolerance at all.
It seems to me that the Palestinians will ultimately be completely crushed - exactly what happened to America's Red Indians. First, they are locked off their own land in what is called reservations. Then, they will be either lost among the thousands of immigrants or just become a memory of villains in old movies and children's bedtime stories. Whatever you think as a Westerner or as an Arab will be very different. What you realize as a thinker from either group, however, is sadly: No Peace.
In the land that is described in the Bible as "a land of milk and honey," and from reading 'Voices from a Promised Land,' we will be brought to the realization that compromising for realistic reasons is the key to a good peace treaty.
Conversely - and obviously for its own advantages - the Israeli leadership has not demonstrated that willingness and has not even come close to it. So the question remains: Are Israelis and Palestinians ever going to get to taste peace and live in harmony? Do you have an answer? |
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