A Zionist among Palestinians

Conclusion: Is There Hope?

237 My years of intense activity with Palestinians taught me several things that many of my fellow Israelis seem to have missed. First and foremost, I am convinced that the Palestinians were ready to make peace with us long before we suspected it. We Israelis grew up with thebeliefthatPalestinianswouldneveracceptapeacefulsolution.Atbest, we supported giving the West Bank back to the Jordanian monarchy so that Jordan would suppress the Palestinian troublemakers for us. Intruth,therewereseveralcasesofPalestinianswhowereassassinated by fellow Palestinians because they worked for peace—just as happened later to Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated by a fellow Jew for pursuing a peace policy. In all these cases, the killings did not prove that there was not a willingness for peace. My personal contacts with Palestinians in a dozen communities— Muslim and Christian, wealthy and poor, educated and simple, refugees and old-timers, urbanites and peasants—convinced me that by the start of the First Intifada in 1987 (at the very latest), most of the Palestinian leadershipandmostPalestiniansfavoredapeacefulsettlementwithIsrael based on two states for the two peoples. The second point that I came to realize was that we Israelis were largely ignorant of this readiness on the Palestinian side. I felt at the time that if the Palestinians could but convince us of their sincerity, our overwhelming desire for peace would lead us to the peace table. Unfortunately, the Palestinians did not view proving their readiness for peace as a top strategic priority, or else they did notknowhowto get that messageacross to us. Part of our problem was certainly our Israeli leaders’ ambivalence toward a peace that would permanently block our chances for territorial expansion. We were taught the axiom that a Palestinian state was synonyConclusion Is There Hope? 238 A zionist among palestinians mouswiththrowingtheJewsintothesea.Palestinianswhorefusedtolive under Israeli or Jordanian rule seemed to us unreasonably rebellious. In this atmosphere it could not have been easy for Palestinians to convince us of their willingness for peace. A third problem that I saw was the concerted efforts of my government ’s army and security services to prevent any joint action by Israelis and Palestinians in support of peace. Our general conception was such that even those public servants who sincerely supported a true peace felt called upon to block such actions. Perhaps they wished to protect us from being duped by the Arabs. Or perhaps they saw no contradiction between their sincere desire for peace and their need to block activities that might lead to our giving up any land. Fourth, our press and education system, despite the many journalists and educators who supported a peaceful solution, failed to give us the true picture of where the Palestinians stood vis-à-vis an end to the conflict .OurchildrenwerepoisonedagainstArabsfromthecradle;ouradults had their fears reinforced daily. Even the left-wing papers joined the rest of our press in giving enormous coverage to any Arab violence against Jews, while offering minimal reporting of conciliatory moves by Palestinians . AfifthissuewasourviewofthePalestiniancommunity.SomePalestinians ’ violent resistance to us led most of us Israelis to view their community as a vicious, hate-filled jungle. Even if we were lucky enough to meet a decent Palestinian in our world, we believed that at night he returned to the murderers’ den in which he lived. Most Israeli Jews were afraid to come to dialogues in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, for fear that the Arabs would slaughter us. It is terribly hard to overcome fears that have been taught since childhood, and that are reinforced with each terror attack. These fears prevent the mutual trust that is so important for advancing the peace process. During the years of the First Intifada, I told my Palestinian colleagues what I really believed: we Israelis would agree to a reasonable peace if we could only overcome our fear and distrust of Arabs. The agreement by Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin to embark on the Oslo peace process supported my beliefs. Unfortunately, as I am writing this book in 2011, during a period of almost no Palestinian terror, ongoing demographic 239 Conclusion changes make us more religiously fundamentalist, expansionist,and antiPalestinian . This casts doubt on our long-held belief that we are the forces of peace while the Palestinians are the sole rejectionists. w I know that meeting Yusra and Sa’ed, and becoming drawn into the dialogues,radicallychangedmyapproach.Butwhy?Afterall,Iwasalways identified with the Israeli peace movement. So what changed? I grew up, like most Israelis, viewing the Palestinians as...