Is there a Path to Peace in Israel/Palestine?

How can a One State of Israel/Palestine work?

Why not a Two-State or a Confederation?

There is no “solution” to work on until there are leadership changes on both sides and new leaders come in who are more interested in seeing the “Other” as humans rather than as people with whom the choice is to kill or be killed; leaders who are more interested in a greater nation than they are in their own greatness and ability to be seen as leaders. Leaders who are willing to see the pain the “Other” feels and are willing to work to heal the pain, not just in their own people, but among the other people as well.

Each “side”; Jews and Christian/Muslim Palestinians have experienced great pain and remains deeply suspicious of the other side, knowing full well that if given half a chance “They” will slaughter “us”. We must realize that the pain is measured, not in piles of bodies, but in the depths of the minds; that it is the Mind that maintains the fear, the suspicion and the hate, it is the Mind that makes coexistence impossible. We may not agree with how a side refers to its foundation of Fear, whether it is the endless string of Pogroms leading to the Shoah of the Jews, or the endless attacks and dispossessions leading to the current Shoah of the Palestinians, but what we must agree on is that a lasting Peace can only come from a change in the perception of the “Other”.

This is where leadership comes in because when leaders decide to change the perception, people feel safe in going with the change no matter how horrible the past may have been. The leaderships have to show that identities are not based on religion but on the humanity of each other because only after the divisiveness of religious identities are set aside, can the people see each other as equal humans and fellow brethren.

Foreign interference also needs to change. Currently Israel is being plied with unquestioned and endless money and war material by Western countries. All this does is feed the Jewish existential fear of annihilation; in effect, feeding the very fears that make peace impossible. The money and the weapons may make Israelis feel “safe” (how safe is a nation whose people constantly carry guns and has to occupy and kill people?), but it also creates an incentive to keep the minds shut and not look for peace. Peace, in a situation where one has taken over the lands and properties of the “Other”, means that the injustices have to be accounted for and that in turn, means “giving up” what one has. Peace means that absolute power and absolute impunity can no longer exist, that power and rights must be shared equally. Difficult as it may appear, Western nations must make their support and aid conditional to to definite, measurable, changes in attitudes of Israeli leadership. At the same time, similar pressure must be applied to Palestinian leadership that currently exists to maintain itself in utter disregard for the Palestinian people.

It is a most difficult but not an impossible obstacle to overcome but it must be overcome if people and their children in Israel/Palestine are to live as the brothers and sisters that they really are.

But Peace is not a shadow that cannot be caught. History has proven again and again, that yes, Fear and Hate are easy to ignite and can be maintained very easily with catastrophic results, but Peace can also be achieved if a leadership is willing.

For hundreds of years, Britain, France, Netherlands, Spain and Portugal have been at each other’s throats, waging wars that cost millions of lives and uncountable amounts of money, yet today, they are allies and neighbors so friendly that they barely recognize each other as different nations.

Germany fought two major wars with European countries that devastated Europe, yet today, they are all part of a single unit (except for Britain which marches to a different beat altogether). The Germans committed genocide of the Jews, slaughtering millions of them as if they were less than insects. Yet today, Germany is the staunchest supporter of Jews.

The United States fought genocidal war in South East Asia in which millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians were butchered, yet today, the US has a close relationship with all those countries.

Japan carried out genocide in China and Korea and was responsible for millions of lives lost during WWII but today, Japan has good relations with all of its former adversaries.

Pakistan fought a brutal, genocidal civil war which resulted in the independence of Bangladesh (East Pakistan), yet today, the peoples of the two countries are close in their mutual relationships.

Being from Pakistan myself, I remember when Bangladesh was liberated, the leaders of West Pakistan declared the Bangladeshis to be traitors, deserving death and that Pakistan would never recognize them. Then there was a terrible hurricane and massive flooding that took thousands of lives in Bangladesh. Bhutto, Pakistan’s leader at the time, declared that he had already sent some ships loaded with food and supplies to aid the devastated people of Bangladesh and that the Bengalis were our brothers and it was Pakistan’s duty to help. Almost immediately, people in Pakistan started to agree that they were indeed our brothers (and sisters) and the hostility disappeared. The people of Bangladesh opened their hearts to the people of Pakistan in spite of the devastating genocide.

One major objection raised by many Jews in Israel as well as outside is that Israel must remain a Jewish nation with its Jewish character and that a nation with equality for Palestinians and Jews would destroy its Jewish character; it would be tantamount to the annihilation of the Jewish state.

Setting aside the fact that the very premise of such an objection is racist, one has to deal with the genuine fears it raises. Perhaps the best way is to illiterate again, examples from history.

The American civil war was a war for the way of life for the Southern states…a way of life that included the slavery of an entire people based on their race. After the war, slavery was abolished and today, the South still exists, the evil “way of life” is no longer and people of all races live well together.

South Africa was based on White supremacy and here too, the African people were suppressed and exploited and the country had a “White Character” for several hundred years. After the overthrow of the White rule, Blacks got parity with the Whites, there was no “annihilation” of the Whites. Today, South Africa is a much admired leader of African states.

Yes, there are still some animosities among people from the different countries but they have been relegated more to family “traditional” rather than communal or national frictions.

In spite of the disparate positions of Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians, they do work together and cooperate with each other. About a quarter of all the doctors and healthcare workers in Israeli hospitals are Palestinians. They and their Jewish colleagues routinely work together to care for Patients who may be Jews, Christians or Muslim. This is a situation of major trust, literally a matter of life and death and their cooperation shows how a path to peace is within reach.

Leadership can be achieved because there are plenty of people on both sides who want peace and who wish to live together as equal brothers and sisters; people who desperately want their future generations to experience what it is like to live in an environment of friendship and love, rather than in the climate of hate and slaughter. Such people will rise to lead as soon as the foreign support for the hate-mongers is replaced by support for the peaceniks.

Utopian? Unrealistic? Perhaps, but so far the “realistic” and the “pragmatic” paths have shown nothing but misery, insecurity and death, what is there to lose?