On the Fence
By Mona Eltahawy
The Washington Post
Sunday, April 14, 2002; Page B07
It is easy to take sides in the Middle East conflict. Few other parts of the world engender such impassioned debate or leave such little room for doubt. For many, there's little to consider when choosing sides. Just follow your birthright: If you're an Arab, go join the Free Palestine demonstrations; and if you're Jewish, go join the Save Israel marches.
Don't forget, you can always throw God into the mix. Lay claim to your holy sites, and you'll have religiously sanctioned wrath to fuel your rage.
But what's the point of choosing sides when both sides are losing? The real challenge when it comes to the Middle East is to sit on the fence.
While on the fence, think long and hard not only about the physical survival of the Israelis and Palestinians but also about their moral future. Yasser Arafat is happy to sit out yet another crisis; Mr. Palestine is an expert at crises. Ariel Sharon is happy to blast his way through Palestinian towns -- he's a bully who is an expert at conflict. There is little doubt that their respective peoples deserve better leaders.
Israelis and Palestinians must think about the kind of societies they will end up with when the massive onslaught on the West Bank and the rash of suicide bombings finally wane. The extremists on both sides are shouting the loudest. Ordinary Palestinians and Israelis must not let their slogans go unchallenged.
Palestinians need to seriously think about what suicide bombings are doing to the nature of their society. The killing of innocent civilians on any side of this conflict is wrong. Yes, the Israeli occupation must end, and yes Palestinians deserve a state. It is with that state in mind that Palestinians must worry about the lionization of suicide bombers. Do they really want their young people to aspire to grow up to become suicide bombers?
Until recently, suicide bombings were the "weapon of choice" of the Hamas Islamist movement and Islamic Jihad -- both arch rivals of Yasser Arafat's mainstream and secular Fatah faction. Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group affiliated with Fatah, which have carried out several of the recent suicide bombings, have resorted to the tactics of what once was their Islamist opposition.
No one doubts that the Israeli occupation has generated desperation and frustration in Palestinian society. But as with other Arab societies, the success of the Islamist alternative in Palestinian society has taken root on the grave of democratic institutions and the corruption and lack of vision of Arafat.
I'm sure many Palestinians oppose suicide bombings, but with "collaborators" being shot in the middle of public squares and Israeli tanks reoccupying Palestinian towns, they will not be rushing to speak out.
But they must wonder about the cynical use of their young people by both the militant leaders who send them to their deaths and the Arab countries that provide money to their surviving relatives.
Similarly, Israelis must think of the damage to their national soul brought about by their country's role as occupier and the ensuing degradation forced upon the Palestinians. Several American Jewish friends of mine who had immigrated to Israel left because they were disgusted by what had become of the Jewish state.
What becomes of the moral barometer of a nation that served as shelter for survivors of the Holocaust when the most vocal of its citizens are proposing the "transfer" of the Palestinians? I know many Israelis disagree with Jewish settlers whose calls for the expulsion of Palestinians have grown more vocal recently.
But the Israeli left and the country's peace movement are practically ineffectual during these days of back-to-back suicide bombings. It does not help that the man who has been the biggest supporter of settlements is the prime minister of Israel.
Sharon has in the past been the instigator of campaigns from which Israel had great difficulty extricating itself, most notably the 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
Because of two old men, lacking in vision but brimming with a hatred for each other that spans two decades, the most extreme Israelis and Palestinians are setting the region's increasingly murderous agenda.
But brave people on both sides have bucked the trend. Ismail Hawaja, a Palestinian whose wife bled to death in front of their children at the Aida refugee camp on the West Bank in March, told the Christian Science Monitor he did not want revenge. Shrapnel gouged his wife's arm and thigh when Israeli soldiers blew open the Hawajas' metal front door.
"What has a mother done to be killed in front of her five children? And what is the crime of a child to be killed in front of his mother at a synagogue?" Hawaja asked, referring to a victim a few days earlier of a Palestinian suicide bomber who struck an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem. Hawaja was born under occupation at the Aida refugee camp and has lived there all his life yet is not rushing out wrapped in explosives.
On the Israeli side, more than 350 combat officers and soldiers from the reserve forces have refused to serve in the occupied territories, risking court-martial and imprisonment.
It is those brave voices that make fence-sitting worthwhile.
The writer reported from the Middle East before she moved to the United States.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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