An honest Israeli Jew speaks from the heart!
(This interesting solution was sent to me in a private pm by a Mr. Cohen)
[ ISRAEL ] Time for a Wall
Ofer Zur
I was born into a family that takes pride in having four generations of marchers for peace. For many years, my sister was among the Women in Black who stood silently in support of peace at all major crossroads in Israel every Friday afternoon. My mother not only fought for Israel's independence, but also advocated for Arab women's rights back in the 1940s. My father's complementary message was Zionism and the love of all nations.
At eighteen years young, I was inducted into the Israeli Army, as are all young men and women in Israel. I got my paratrooper wings and served as an officer. Before the first intifada, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, I had already paid the moral and spiritual price of being part of an occupying force. I shot at a crowd of youths who were frighteningly and quickly closing in on me; I participated in the demolition of houses belonging to families of "terrorist suspects," I enforced erratic curfews on 80,000 people in a refugee camp; and I followed orders to round up "young adults" for random interrogation. All these took their toll on me, as they have also on the spirit of thousands of other Israeli soldiers who have served in the occupied territories over the last three decades. Above all, the Occupation has taken a toll on the collective soul of Israel and the hearts of Jews everywhere, whether they admit it or are even aware of it.
After my military service, I found some temporary peace on a merchant marine ship and again later, during my time as a student of chemical oceanography at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I especially remember the tranquility of my daily deep-sea dives in the beautiful Red Sea.
This serene period ended abruptly in 1973 when I was recalled to the army to fight in the Yom Kippur War. I was attached to a paratrooper unit that was thrown into battle during the last part of the war. I left part of my leg buried in the Sinai Desert across the Suez Canal. And, yes, part of my heart was left there, too. After the war, I returned to my oceanography and diving, in an effort to recapture the peace I had known. I didn't succeed too well.
Recovery from the war injury was hard. I did what was necessary to be able to get back to hiking, diving, running, and playing basketball. However, it was much more difficult to deal with the complex and conflicted feelings surrounding my actual participation in the war.
In spite of my efforts, I could not come to terms with the role I had played as a combatant in an avoidable war or as a soldier of an occupying force. I could not bear the idea of protecting mostly Arab-hating, right-wing Israelis or New York Jews, many of them proudly proclaiming that, "The only good Arab is a dead Arab." I found it hard to live with what I did and did not do in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and the West Bank during my service in 1968–1971, and in Egypt during the 1973 war. I could not come to terms with the fact that Israel did not negotiate the fate of Sinai with Egypt from 1967 to 1973, negotiations which would have prevented a war that in the end led to Israel's return of the Sinai anyway, under U.S. pressure. Above all, I could not tolerate being even a passive participant in my country's policies of occupation.
I felt I was faced with impossible options: I could numb myself with drugs (a la Vietnam); I could go insane; or I could leave. I chose to leave the country that was a safe haven to so many Jews, like my parents, who escaped the Holocaust and the Nazi occupation of Europe. I chose to leave because I knew that being politically active was not enough for me. By remaining, I would have felt that I was in collusion with the Occupation and the self-destruction of the Jewish State and its people. Several of my friends also left; many more stayed and continued, like my parents, my sister, and her children, to participate in peace marches, to vote, and later to light candles at Rabin Square. Although it pained them, my parents and sister understood my reasons for leaving. There was a sad saying in Israel at the time: "The best either die first or leave first."
There were brief periods of hope after the Sadat visit to Jerusalem in 1977 and the Oslo Agreement of 1993, but that hope died with Rabin in 1995. A briefer period of hope in 1999–2000 was kindled by Ehud Barak, who seemed to offer the most far-reaching peace proposals ever. Arafat's refusal to accept Barak's proposals and the beginning of the current Palestinian uprising, the second intifada, changed the political picture, in my opinion, permanently. It has certainly been true that the peace movement in Israel has lapsed into silence. The rejection of Barak's offer and the endless killings and suicide bombings have left the movement feeling bitter towards Arafat and simultaneously drawn toward an uncomfortable consensus with the Right, a consensus that the Palestinian people are not to be trusted or considered a serious partner for peace.
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There was a sad saying in Israel at the time: "The best either die first or leave first."
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Seven thousand miles away from Israel, looking at the situation from the idyllic comfort and beauty of the wine country in Northern California, it is clear to me why the Palestinians did not accept Barak's proposals, why they demanded nothing less than full autonomy over the entire West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as their capital. From my eminence in Northern California, it did not make sense that 200,000 settlers, residing in dozens of settlements all over the West Bank in the midst of more than two million Palestinians were allowed to keep escalating the conflict, bloodshed, and immense suffering on all sides in their relentless pursuit of the Greater Israel dream (Of course the mirror image of this is Hamas' image of a "Greater Palestine" where the Jews are finally driven into the sea).
What has also become apparent, although missing from most of the CNN or New York Times news reports on Middle East, is the simple but essential fact that most of the daily violence and casualties in the region occur in specific areas and stem from one source. The bloodshed comes from the fact that the Israeli army is heavily present all over the West Bank and Gaza Strip in order to of defend dozens and dozens of primarily small settlements strategically located in the midst of the Palestinian population. It is quite normal for a few thousand soldiers to be engaged in the defense of a couple dozen families. The army protects the settlers' bulletproof school buses, their main crossroads, the strategic positions in the area, the settlers' "right" to freely drive the West Bank roads and, of course, the settlements themselves. While most of the news reports focus on suicide bombers in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, the presence of the settlers and the army all over the occupied territories and especially at the road-blocked main junctions, where humiliating and demeaning searches take place, fuel the daily violence and death toll in the region. For the Palestinians, the army/settlers combination is the most powerful symbol of the harsh reality of the Occupation.
I remember guarding a tiny settlement occupied mostly by a handful of New Yorkers in the midst of a dense Palestinian population in the West Bank. I vividly recall the dramatic contrast between the lush green lawns and refreshing swimming pool of the settlement and the yellow, dying crops and rationed water of the neighboring Palestinian villages. The contrast was overwhelming.
The reality of the region these days is destruction, injury, and death, and it is not about to change very soon. The recent withdrawal of the Israeli army from Southern Lebanon brought a revelation to the Palestinians. They realized that Israel could not stomach the human cost of occupation indefinitely. Palestinians are also aware that Israel is gradually losing its moral ground and sympathy not only in the eyes of the world, but also in the eyes of the many Jews who have supported Israel unconditionally for so long. Accordingly, the Palestinians are willing to continue sacrificing their lives and the lives of their children for the cause of liberating Palestine. At the same time, the settlers are just as willing to sacrifice themselves and their children for their cause. Lebanon taught the Palestinians that if they fight long enough and hard enough, they will not need to compromise significantly to achieve control over the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The present situation, in which any suicide bomber or gunman can simply walk across from the West Bank into Israel, is becoming increasingly intolerable for Israelis. The eye-for-an-eye and bomb-for-a-bomb exchanges of the last few months have resulted in hundreds of dead and wounded on both sides. Given the amount of bloodshed in recent days and months and years, peace is not even a remote option at this point in time. Unlike the memory of many Americans, which at best is as long as the next quarterly corporate report, Middle Eastern memory goes back thousands of years. Accordingly, any talk of peace in the region is ludicrous when one realizes the extent of death, injury, and, above all, betrayal, which both sides have sustained in the last decade.
Peace now is impossible. This leaves Israel with only one viable option: the unilateral, forced separation of the territories, to be achieved by building a wall and/or creating a buffer zone to physically separate Israel from Palestine.
Such a unilateral division would not require negotiation, agreement, pre-, or post- conditions. Unlike the recent Saudi Arabian proposal, it would not require endorsement by any Arab country. It is based neither on trust nor on love and it will not bring immediate peace or tolerance or love. What this pragmatic, concrete separation will do is serve to reduce the violence between the Palestinians and Israelis significantly. At the very least, it will make it harder for any Palestinian youth with explosives strapped to his (and most recently her) body, to cross into Israeli territory. A wall may never have wide international recognition, but it will allow the Israelis and the Palestinians to spend another forty (or better—one hundred) years in the desert, letting the sharp pain of loss dull a bit, and allowing a new generation to grow up without experiencing the injuries, hatred, and fear of their neighbor. Only then will peace be a possibility. The wall will provide an obstacle to violence and will buy time so that wounds can gradually heal. "Gradually," in the Middle East, may mean a few or many generations.
A wall is not a new idea, nor will it easily be accepted by the Right or the Left in Israel. The Right is appropriately concerned that such a wall would mean the end of their dream of a Greater Israel, and the diminution of their hopes to expel the Palestinians. Above all, this proposal will highlight the Right's concern about the future of the settlements which will come under Palestinian rule. For the remaining members of the Left, this proposal will revive bitter memories of the wall that divided Jerusalem before the Six Day War and, of course, grim memories of the Berlin Wall and the DMZ between North and South Korea.
Yet a wall must be built. To be successful, this wall must be built on the Green line, along the pre-1967 borders of Israel, with only the slightest modifications—for example, the inclusion of sections of Jerusalem where the Jews constituted a majority of the population as of the year 2000 (2000, not today, so as to exclude the possibility that right-wingers will begin to expand their settlements in East Jerusalem tomorrow). The wall will not be successful if it is built as part of an occupational plan to incorporate and annex big parts of the West Bank into Israel (along the lines of the "buffer zones" contemplated by Ariel Sharon), because battle and bloodshed will continue, despite a wall, until Israel agrees to a Palestinian State that is close enough in size and shape to the original West Bank territories which were conquered in 1967.
Consider the following points in favor of such a forced separation:
1. It can be completed unilaterally by Israel.
2. It does not require lengthy negotiation and the sort of endless preconditions that have rendered almost all negotiations hopeless.
3. Building such a wall need not be based on trust or love of the Palestinians.
4. The wall will consist of a real wall and/or fences, and neutral zones where security will be augmented by electronic technology, explosives, satellites and other sophisticated devices. This will enhance the overall security of Israel's borders.
5. Separation will make it very hard for any suicide bomber to simply cross the border into Tel Aviv or Jerusalem and blow themselves up.
6. Israel will retain control over entries along the Jordan River from Jordan to Palestine for the sole purpose of preventing heavy arms from being smuggled into the Palestinian State.
7. The wall will have a few major crossing points where Palestinian laborers and Palestinian goods, under intense Israeli scrutiny, can cross into Israel. These laborers are much needed by both Israel's and Palestine's economies.
8. The Gaza Strip, which will also be surrounded by a wall (in fact, some fenced buffer zones already exist), will be connected to the West Bank via a direct, high security, fenced, non-stop suspended highway. The technology for a fast rail for both passengers and goods is also readily available. This, for the first time, will make possible a cohesive Palestinian State.
9. The separation will enable the Palestinians to focus on their state's affairs. These internal affairs are likely to be complex, numerous, and, regretfully, highly volatile.
10. Israeli armed forces will be categorically excluded from the Palestinian side of the wall. If hostility is initiated from the Palestinian side, Israel will respond the same way it would respond if Egypt, Jordan, Syria, or Iraq had initiated it. As we all know, Israel, having one of the most powerful and sophisticated armies in the world, is thoroughly capable of protecting itself by military and other means.
11. The settlers presently located in the occupied territories will have to choose to move into Israel or risk staying under Palestinian control.
12. In the short run, such a separation will put an end to the role of Israelis as an occupying force and will enable Israel's citizens, its soldiers, and Jews around the world to begin to heal from the wounds of the Occupation.
13. Such a unilateral separation will hopefully lead to a less volatile atmosphere in the region. Hopefully, this will translate into a stable, albeit cautious, coexistence and, ultimately, into real peace.
Day after one more tragic day, I have watched the carnage—angry, sad, and impotent, paralyzed by the growing violence. The Right seems to feed the flames; the Left seems hopelessly naïve and silenced; the great and small powers of the world are repetitive and simplistic, failing to grasp the depth of the differences and complexities of this conflict. Even the most reasonable say "There is no solution." Israel and Palestine are trapped on a deadly carousel, repeating horror after horror, around and around, faster and faster. Israel must act. Knowing that I am abandoning the dream of my parents, the dream of peace in our lifetimes, I cannot avoid the obvious conclusion. First, the carousel must be stopped; Israel must build a wall and force a physical separation. Then, time may do its slow work. Indeed, mine is not a true solution, only a necessary circumvention. But we must try. There is no longer any other acceptable or sane alternative.
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Ofer Zur, Ph.D., an ex-officer in the Israeli Army, is currently a clinical psychologist living in California.
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