RETURNING TO ISRAEL FROM AUSTRALIA
[Avigail Abarbanel is a pyschoterapist in Australia. She writes, "I was
born in Israel in 1964 and grew up in Bat Yam, a working-class satellite
suburb south of Tel Aviv. . . After finishing high school in 1982 I
served my compulsory two years in the Israeli army, where I first
trained as a platoon commander and later worked as a draftsperson in the
army's central headquarters in Tel Aviv. I finished with the rank of
Staff Sergeant. My army experience has turned me into a pacifist.']
AVIGAIL ABARBANEL, PEACE PALESTINE - Two months ago I returned from a
two-week family visit to Israel. Although I am an activist for
Palestinian rights, I decided that this visit would be entirely private.
Living for two weeks with my brother, his wife and their two little
girls in their tiny apartment in a North Tel-Aviv suburb, gave me an
opportunity to observe and see what daily life is like for Israelis at
the moment.
I went for long walks in the streets of Tel-Aviv and visited many of the
places that I knew from my past. I shopped at the local supermaket and
had coffee at the nearby shopping mall. I watched local TV and even went
to the gym. . . Rather than talk, I did a lot of listening. I speak
fluent Hebrew, of course, so it was easy to blend in and people spoke
freely around me. Australian media likes to emphasize how hard life is
for Israelis, and I wanted to see for myself.
The most obvious thing about Israeli society is how profoundly insecure
Israelis feel. They are nervous and twitchy and live with extremely high
levels of anxiety. Not that any of this was new to me but there did seem
to be a new edge to it. When a bomb exploded in the Ha?carmel Market in
central Tel-Aviv, I was at the gym. I looked around me and within
moments everyone was on their mobile phones reporting to, or checking on
their loved ones. A young woman right next to me in the weights area
sighed to herself with anguish, ?not again?.
Since my adolescence, I was used to having my bags checked whenever I
entered a public building like a cinema or a supermarket anywhere in
Israel. Despite my 13 years in Australia, the reflex to open my bags was
still there. What was different this time was that now security guards
also have an electronic detector to scan your body. These days even
small businesses like restaurants and coffee shops have their own
security guard up the front. There is a small ?security levy? of 2 NIS
added onto your bill to help the business pay for the security guard,
but you aren't required to pay it.
Israelis have always talked about peace, sung about it, made art and
poetry about it as if it is something almost supernatural, some kind of
a paradise that they yearn for but that has nothing to do with their
everyday reality, and that they have no idea how to create. But what
peace really means to these exhausted, anxious Israelis is to be left
alone. It was sad and disturbing to see how desperately Israelis hold on
to what they believe is ?normality?. They are desperate to be ?like
everyone else? in any other Western country, go to work, go shopping, go
out to bars and coffee shops with friends. They feel outrage and
desperation when Palestinian militants occasionally disrupt this routine
of ?normality?. To some degree I can sympathize with that. After all
one of the main reasons I left Israel was that I found this way of life
unbearable.
When life is so difficult I suppose it is human to wish your
difficulties away. But here is where the problem really lies. When an
individual, a group or an entire society live with a dark secret or are
in denial about something important in their past, they cannot
experience peace. It is simply impossible to live a ?normal? or
peaceful life on a foundation of lies and secrecy. Denying the ethnic
cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948, trying to not think about the
consequences of long years of brutal occupation, and just wishing for it
all to go away is no more than a fantasy.
In family therapy there is an accepted principle that unless serious
injustices are addressed, there cannot be real peace. Families that
protect dark secrets always pay a heavy price. I watched Israeli
intellectuals on TV engage in genuine discussion trying to analyze and
understand why things are so bad in Israel. They raised every possible
reason for the situation other than the most obvious one Israel?s
history. It was excruciating to watch but also familiar. I have never
seen a society so steeped in denial as Israeli society. . .
When Israelis engage in ?peace talks? it is important to understand
their basic position. They have no real interest in a solution that goes
to the core of their problem. They are like an individual who wants his
or her symptoms to go away but refuses to do anything about their real
causes. A wish ?to be left alone? is not much of a basis for a
sustainable peace, at least not without another act of ethnic cleansing.
Six million Palestinians are there to remind Israel of its past, and
they are not going anywhere.
If a day comes, and I hope it does, when Israelis decide to stop living
in denial, they will have to realize that real peace will only come
through justice. Justice in this context means one thing, that the ideal
of an exclusively Jewish state at the cost of an entire people might
have to be abandoned. Only a bi-national state and a right of return for
the Palestinian refugees will come close enough to rectifying some of
the injustices committed in 1948 and since. Having been ethnically
cleansed, this is also what the Palestinians are entitled to under
international law and common human decency.
This could be Israel?s atonement. It will also be Israel?s opportunity
to free itself from carrying this burden of guilt that I believe is
making their lives and the lives of the Palestinians a nightmare. Yes,
it will be a challenge. But it will offer a possibility of real and
sustainable peace both for Israelis and for Palestinians, possibly for
the entire region. Continuing with the mentality and policy of denial
will lead nowhere, and will continue to cost the lives and wellbeing of
many more people and communities.
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