Hillary Clinton, Gaza, and the six-state solution

Welcome, Madame Secretary.

Welcome to Israel, a country whose byzantine electoral system has managed only to elect an outgoing premier-for-life. Advertisement Welcome to a nation in which, with apologies to a former Louisiana legislator, half the country is under fire, and the other half is under indictment.

Welcome to a peace process which, in the manner of lies, damn lies, and statistics, seems determined to prove that there are impossibilities, absolute impossibilities, and Two States for Two Peoples.

Welcome, that is, to the political campaign of your life.

At this, the outset of your tenure at State, the campaign for peace in the Holy Land gives every appearance of a diplomatic offensive. Don’t be fooled. You and your president must approach this challenge for what it is: a campaign for swing states.

At stake is nothing less than the conflict the world wants most to solve.

To prevail, you will need to successfully contend with six swing states. There are, first of all, the Four States for Four Peoples located within the cramped confines of the Holy Land itself – two of them Palestinian -one in Hamas-ruled Gaza, one in the Fatah-led West Bank – and two of them Israeli – one for settlers, one for the rest of us.

Then, for good measure, there are the swing states of Syria and Iran.

These six are the keys to Middle East peace, and the reason for its absence.

The conflict is so hidebound, the sides so exhaustively jaded, that you will need every ounce of creativity, energy, sensitivity, wiles, wisdom, charm and against-the-squall optimism to make a half an ounce of headway.

Your opening moves have been useful. The hundreds of millions of dollars in aid earmarked for reconstruction in Gaza recasts the U.S. policy message in a way that will be difficult for Israel and the Palestinians to ignore. It will lend fresh impetus and urgency to solving the logjam over border crossings and the critical need to speed reconstruction aid into the Strip.

One left-field reason that U.S. the aid may actually foster movement: Americans, who have been notably understanding of wide-scale Israeli attacks on heavily populated areas, may take heightened interest in the rebuilt structures, and having them remain intact. This is, in turn, a potentially powerful incentive for Israel to seek alternatives to the devastation of the recent war, whose effectiveness inn the service of Israel’s interest has yet to be demonstrated.

Herewith an overview of the swing states.

1. EXODUS ISRAEL In essence, the nation within the pre-1967 borders of the state of Israel.

THE UPSIDE: Opinion polls have consistently shown that a majority of Israelis, Jews and Arabs alike, favor a viable independent Palestinian state in the West Bank. In fact, given Avigdor Lierberman’s explicit endorsement last week of such a state, a clear majority of 70 Knesset members in the 120-seat house may be said to favor such an eventual solution [Kadima (28 seats), Yisrael Beiteinu (15), Labor (13), Hadash (4), Ra'am-Ta'al (4), Meretz (3), and Balad (3)

THE RUB: Qassam and Grad/Katyusha rocket attacks in the wake of the 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip have gutted all Israeli popular support for a withdrawal in the West Bank in the foreseeable future.

THE WAY FORWARD: High energy, under-the-radar diplomacy with presumptive prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Allow him to pay domestic lip service where needed, but encouraging him to quietly but powerfully explore a peace deal with Syria and take back-channel local steps like gumming up new settlement construction in bureaucratic mire [see next].

2. THE ORANGE FREE STATE The settlement empire in Judea, Samaria [the West Bank] and East Jerusalem.

THE UPSIDE: The financial crisis along with fringe anti-government extremism on the part of a small but vocal segment of the settler population has cooled general Israeli sympathy and support for fostering settlements.

THE RUB: Despite the obvious differences in form and function, settlement construction inflames Palestinians in much the same way that Qassam rockets infuriate Israelis, placing peace that much farther from reach. Meanwhile, the rise of radical Islam among Palestinians props up the settlement enterprise, adding weight to the basic settler argument that Arabs covet Tel Aviv as part of a Palestinian state every bit as much as they claim Jenin and Nablus.

THE WAY FORWARD: Continued U.S. support for and coordination of successful Palestinian Authority police security responsibility in Arab population centers of the West Bank, fostering greater autonomy, less friction, and tangible movement toward future Palestinian sovereignty. Also, savvy U.S. encouragement of concessions to boost employment and economic growth for Palestinians in the West Bank, at the same time ensuring that this does not come at the expense of the security of settlers. Also, the U.S. should lend planning assistance toward a future two-state solution, with settlement concentrated in enclaves along the 1948-67 Green Line borders, the geographic option left open for a Palestinian state including part of Jerusalem as a capital, and free movement for Palestinians north and south in the West Bank.

3. QASSAMISTAN The Gaza Strip, more rigorously Islamic and poorer by far than the West Bank. Herein dubbed Qassamistan, and not Hamastan, in commemoration of the lethal role that the rockets have played in the death of the peace process.

THE RUB, WHICH MAY ALSO BE THE UPSIDE: Hamas, sole ruler of Gaza since bitter civil warfare with Fatah in mid-2007, is itself divided at least three ways. Once a movement with iron discipline and one voice, Hamas’ leadership is shared with varying levels of ease between the Damascus-based Political Bureau of Khaled Meshal and his deputy Musa Abu Marzuk, the founding Gaza branch of Ismail Haniyeh and Mahmoud Zahar, and Izz el-Din al-Qassam, the group’s shadowy but influential military wing. Despite an unwillingness to amend the group’s frankly and even murderously anti-Semitic charter, there have been voices within the group suggesting that Hamas would be willing to reach an accommodation with Fatah and even, on a level which allows it its own lip service, an eventual co-existence with Israel.

THE WAY FORWARD: Intelligent and largely unseen U.S. diplomacy to help forge a Palestinian unity government which Israel can suck up and live with, so that negotiations on a wide range of sub-peace-deal issues (e.g., aid distribution, prisoner exchange including Gilad Shalit, border crossing policy) can take place without one Palestinian side, or Israel, intentionally scuttling any talks between any two of the others. Key: An effective Egyptian role in mediation and in cooling cross-border attacks.

4. THE DUCHY OF UPPER PALESTINE East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Culturally and to an extent linguistically different from Gaza, and with a legacy of some condescension toward the Strip and its residents.

THE RUB: Fatah’s long history of corruption and double dealing has harmed its standing with Palestinians. Many younger residents of the West Bank have opted for radical Islam and the eventual erasure of the Jewish state.

THE UPSIDE: Successive Palestinian disappointments this decade have effectively eroded support for every Palestinian faction in existence, leading to signs of a new openness for solutions to the conflict, along with hope for economic stability.

THE WAY FORWARD: Fostering the Fatah-ruled West Bank as a new model for an eventual independent state. Convincing Israel to let Fatah-PA control security (and suppress the Islamic Jihad and armed Hamas units) in the West Bank, rather than having Israeli soldiers undermine PA authority in high-profile IDF raids.

5. SYRIA Arguably the most important swing state of them all.

THE RUB: Damascus still plays host to a range of ultra-militant Palestinian organizations. It remains allied to Iran and, as such, is crucial to the power Hezbollah holds in Lebanon.

THE UPSIDE: Syria, increasingly cash-starved as falling oil prices sap Iran’s treasury, is desperate to end its international isolation, and fervently desires Washington’s help to that end. Netanyahu has flirted with the prospect of peace with Syria in the past, knowing that only a Likud-led government could command the clout needed to give up the Golan. Were such a peace concluded, Hezbollah would lose much of its strength in Lebanon, and there would be strong Palestinian public pressure for a final peace as well.

THE WAY FORWARD: Encourage Netanyahu to pick up where he left off in the 1990s.

6. IRAN

THE RUB: Nuclear weapons research, ballistic missile research, lobbying and backing Hezbollah, Hamas, for proxy wars.

THE UPSIDE: Plummeting oil revenues, economic crisis, long-term effects of inflation and imbalance of wealth, an internet-aware younger generation. An election later this year, which could topple Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

THE WAY FORWARD: Keep back channels open to Tehran, while supporting Netanyahu, should he pick up with Syria.

Life in spite of everything – Gaza Sderot

Two cities separated by a little more than three kilometre. Millions experiencing the same fears and horrors. Violence nourishing the same hate. If you listen closely what people from both side tell you, you understand at first sight simple fact of life. Everybody wants to have to pursue happiness for her- and himself and their descendants. In conflict the most common point you can find among enemies is the way people mourn over the loss of a child. So while we are divided by race, colour, social class, sex, religion, nationality and abilities we still are the literally identical. Today such a sentence should not need to be written, at least not again. To be honest, it’s with a sad feeling that I write these lines. We are constantly reminded through the action of ourselves or through external events that it is far more natural, or at least seems, to behave violently than to overcome this impulse. It is important to note that it is through our intellect and our experiences that we overcome it. But, and this is a crucial point, we are the result of evolution, of a natural fight for survival, to put it far to simply we fight for the right to procreate, we do nothing more than to protect the future of our genes.

Arte TV followed several citizen of both cities during the month before the military incursion. It is a documentary revealing, at close observation, more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than many well known so-called ‘experts’.

See for yourself  – http://gaza-sderot.arte.tv/

On Ignorance

Yesterday I watched a video on Youtube that was send to me through a friend of my cousin. The movie was a Hamas propaganda movie. I’m not upset about the movie. During conflicts any side tries to win world public opinion for its cause. What caused me to write this note was a comment someone made. He wrote “One in a million is not enough”, reffering to the 1000 Palestinian deads of  Operation Cast Lead and the world Muslim population. I wondered:

Could it be that some german might have had a similar thought in 1936…

Après moi, le déluge

The ongoing violence in Gaza, the siege, the humiliation and the apathy of world leaders create the next generation of terrorists. While it seems that the blood which is currently spilled in this round of violence is mostly Palestinian, it will be the state of Israel and its citizens who will carry the final burden. However, long sightedness is not an Israeli virtue.

Karl Marx informs us that shame is a revolutionary sentiment. Jean Paul Sartre encourages us to inform ourselves so to feel that sentiment. The first time I really understood this idea was in 2002. At that time I was still soldier in the IDF. When I was off duty I lived in Tel Aviv.

We, that is a bunch of new immigrants, shared a single room flat plus a roof top. Two (Palestinian) friends of us had lost their jobs and flats due to the intifada and we, as friends do, invited them to stay with us. This were uneasy days for them. They had to hide constantly. Every small excursion turned into an adventure. Countless times did we have to go to the Abu Kabir jail in Holon to pick up our friends after they had been arrested. It was also a time of intense discussions and mutual understanding. I wouldn’t want you to think that this was some kind of ‘humanitarian’ action. We were friends, first and foremost.

One Saturday in spring Adel’s cousin Abed came from Nablus looking for work. He had just turned 20 and had never left Nablus before. We accommodated ourselves to make one more sleeping spot. In the afternoon then we thought to go to the beach.  Avoiding the patrolling police squads we reached the sea. While I was walking into the water, someone grabbed my hand. I looked up. It was Adel’s cousin. With tears in his eyes he confessed to me that he saw the sea every day from his home but had never sat a foot into it. He was afraid. In this moment, for the first time I understood what the occupation meant. It meant to have a world full of possibilities untouchable, right behind a glass wall. In this very moment I felt ashamed like I’ve never did before.

People like Abed are an exception. While he felt the humiliation of the occupation every single day as a young man unable to provide for his family, he did not fall into blind hatred. This in itself is not an accomplishment. However, separation leads to ignorance and ignorance to hate. Many others chose another path. The path of resistance and violence. They fill the cells of our prisons, planning their revenges.

In the streets of Gaza, somewhere there is a boy. He grew up in eternal violence. Violence against Israel, but also between rival palestinian factions. On the one hand he recognizes the limits of the Palestinian resistance movements to face the IDF. On the other he sees the incapacity of Arab leaders to unite in the face of the attacks on Gaza. He observes the sly smiles of senior Fatah members, stating that Hamas has brought this upon itself. He hears the helpless UN security council stumbling. He knows, only through more violence, more resistance will he one day be free. Free to travel, free to educate himself and his children, free to pursue happiness.

The price tag for our security is his freedom.

Tahadiye Now!

Divide et Impera

In 169-170 Flavius Josephus informs us about Gabiniuses’ efforts to divide the Jewish Nation into smaller fractions, which ultimately lead, a century earlier, to the destruction of Jerusalem and the defeat of the Judean Revolts. Flavius was referring to Maxim’s ‘Divide et Impera’ (Divide and Rule) which stipulated that in order to gain and maintain economic, military and political power, weakening the enemy by dividing it into opposing or at least conflicting interests was and remains to be a valid and successful strategy.

The current events in the Palestinian Authority are just another example. Israel would be satisfied to implement a ceasefire on its terms, the Fatah hopes to regain the public trust by showing how Hamas failed. In fact it is the international isolation of the Hamas government that is to be blamed for the current situation. Since month the peace movements have stopped calling for peace, but for ceasefire instead. So should the new grass-root organizations be called ‘Tahadiye Now!’. Hopefully not.

Since the rift between Hamas and Fatah took such dimensions Israel and Egypt, but also the EU and the US, have tried to isolate the Hamas government. It is of outmost importance to understand that Hamas, especially in Gaza, is not some sort of marginal group. It is a strong social movement supported by, first and foremost, the people.  Only few seem to remember that Israel ’supported’ Hamas in the early 1970s. It was seen as a sound counterweight movement to the PLO.

The blindness of the war hawks

If we are to promote democracy as a desirable value and the ideal form of social organization, we in no manner can approve a coup d’état of democratically elected governments. The EU and the incoming Obama administration should remove the Hamas from the list of terror organizations for some diplomatic achievement. I’m aware that this is a highly sensible issue. But we have to understand that it is only by upholding values of freedom of speech and of thought that we live up to our own expectations.

While the military removal of the Hamas government would lead to short term reduction of violence, similar to the wall in the West Bank, in the long term it will create more readiness for violence and escalation and a further incentive to acquire more and better military equipment. Examples are to be found all over the world. Weak ‘puppet’ governments are toppled sooner or later by an ‘authentic’ national movement. The resurrection of the Taliban in Afghanistan is just a last example.

Currently both sides are preparing for a ground offensive. The IDF knows that it won’t be able to stop the rocket launching without it. Hamas was well aware that this day would come and has prepared accordingly. Should it come to a ground offensive there will be a lot of causalities on both sides, however, most likely less civilians will be injured.

In 1907 Yitzhak Epstein wrote an article entitled ‘The hidden question’. In this article he mentioned the incapacity of the Zionist movements to understand the other national movement present, namely the Palestinian one. The article was largely ignored, as it would be today too. But it remains valid. The eternal problem lies in the incapacity to accept that there are two, and for now even three, national movements in Israel/Palestine which demand and won’t stop until they determine their lives themselves. In this sense the Hamas movement today is nothing else than the Irgun. Not a terror group but a paramilitary national movement.

Israel attacks Gaza – Goliath vs. David Round 13

by Raif Azoulay

Round 13 or Operation ‘Solid Lead’

The sirens haul anew throughout Gaza. Identical to the bell of a box match,  its sound marks the beginning of hostilities and unleashes the fighters from their respective corners. The sirens  seem to shout, ‘and here we go…Round 13′.

Suddenly the sirens mute and are replaced by the mind-numbing noise of fighter jet drones. Fighter jets are nothing new in Gaza. Ramy, an old friend, used to tell me that they were an integral part of the landscape. But this time it is different. With unprecedented strength today over sixty jets hit fifty targets killing over 200 Palestinians and injuring many more. According to Israel, the attacks came as a response to the ongoing rocket shelling on southern Israel, killing one and injuring four today.

Numbers don’t talk. However, those creating them do. In an interview with the Israeli Broadcasting Chanel Yossi Levy the Foreign Ministry’s spokesman for the Israeli media explained that Hamas was to face the responsibility for the many dead. He maintained that Israel was promoting human rights, which Hamas violated, and in an unprecedented effort (Annapolis) reached out to the Palestinians. Asked for a reaction to the numbers of casualities, he calmly replied that Gaza ‘is the densest place on earth’, carefully avoiding to reflect on how it became it. He further failed to mention that Gaza resembles rather a refugee camp than a city or region. The central point of his message was the need to promote a coherent message across the globe of an Israel fighting on behalf of the Palestinian and their rights – against the democratically elected tyrant which he sees in Hamas. Later in his speech to the nation, Olmert reiterated the points Levy made. Explicitly pointing out that he does not intend to fight the Palestinian people. The public was prepared for a prolonged fight. It seems Levy’s message already reached Olmert.

It is interesting to observe the media in the early hours of a conflict. The message that it is not Israels choice to fight and that Hamas brought this wrath upon themselves was repeated time after time. Ridicule examples were brought up, incoherent arguments, falsifications, omissions and possibly even lies.

A new reality and an ever newer one

Since the second Intifada only sporadic and local incursions have occurred in Gaza by the IDF. Hamas used this time effectively. Entering this round of clashes, the IDF is not fighting a terror organization anymore, but a well structured and disciplined para-military guerrilla. In the light of the events in Lebanon from 2006, Hamas improved its training facilities and has turned Gaza into a deadly mining field should Israeli ground forces decide to enter the strip. Hamas forces count fifteen thousand soldiers. Among them some thousand soldiers belonging to the Iz al-Din al-Qassam, the Palestinian ‘revolutionary guards’. It is predictable that Fatah, Hamas and the other factions will put their differences aside during the escalation.

Any violent military conflict entails tragedies. Nothing new under the sun.

However, the reasons why we fight are determinant. A deeper look at Israeli domestic politics could help shed some light on this incursion. While Prime Minister Olmert is preparing his suitcases, disconnected from reality, his possible successors all fall into strategic role games. According to any poll, at the current moment, opposition leader Netanyahu is set to win the elections. The disintegration of Ariel Sharon’s Kadima party seems inevitable, leaving two main protagonists of Israeli politics once again face to face. Labour vs. Likud.

It does not look good for Ehud Barak’s Labour party. These days he is exposed to a lot of pressure. In my opinion, Barak sees a crucial opportunity for himself in this conflict. He believes that he can show the public that he is a military mastermind and can provide the so cherished security to the Israeli society. The only chance for him to become PM again is to change reality in Gaza and southern Israel and he needs to do this quickly. I guess in his wildest dreams in two or three days he sees himself parading with the newly freed soldier Gilad Shalit. The timing of the ‘response’, in my opinion, reflects the understanding that with the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama pressure on Israel will rise. Change has come, and change scares Israel.

After all, no matter

One of the deadliest day in Gaza in 60 years of conflict

who the Israeli PM may be, Washington will set the tone for the future in the Middle East. While Netanyahu is hailed as a hard-liner able to defend Israel, people forgot that he was the PM who actually returned the biggest percentage of the occupied land. In any case, further escalation won’t bring the expected security. Not in the short-run and much less in the long-run.

As always, this conflict remains unpredictable. Whether Hizbollah will try to open a second front in the north and whether the sporadic uprises in the West Bank will turn into new large-scale revolts creating a third Intifada remains to be seen. In any case, the current events reveal once more the enormous disparities. During an entire month of shelling one Israeli was killed. In two hours over two hundred Palestinians. Truly, Goliath vs. David. The question therefore is; why does David keep standing up again?

Poem by Yehudah Amichai

‘God takes pity on kindergartners,
Less so on the schoolchildren,
And will no longer pity their elders,
Leaving them to their own,
And sometimes they will have to crawl on all fours,
Through the burning sand,
To reach the casualty station,
Bleeding.’

Religion in the Palestine-Israel conflict since 1967

by R. Azoulay

What role has religion played in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict especially since the Six Day War in 1967? First, it is important to clarify how the terms of Palestine/ Israel vary through different times.

Palestine refers to the period before 1948, from the Roman Empire to the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate. Israel refers to the period after 1948 with Jerusalem as its capital city, as of 1967, but without the temporarily occupied West bank and the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority refers to Gaza and the West bank, the territories annexed by Israel during 1967 that were subject to the negotiations of Oslo II and led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority and mutual recognition between Rabin and Arafat, but even more important led to the recognition of the mutual right of the two people to coexist in peace, security and self-determination in two sovereign states.

How is religion used? Intentionally and symbolically. How does religion influence the achievement of political goals? Which segments of both societies have experienced an increase in the importance of religion since 1967 and has it had direct influence on the conflict? I will concentrate more deeply on interactions between Islam and Judaism since 1967.

One issue may be brought up right at the beginning. Using and emphasizing history as the foundation for claims over Palestine/ Israel provides endless possible nationalist claims, as Palestine was ruled by various empires and people across different eras in history. Or as a Jewish lawyer al-Kabir from Baghdad commented in the Iraqi times in 1936; “If one goes reconstituting history two thousand years back there is no reason why one should not go further back,… and presently have the world ruled by militant archaeology”. Of course, most Sephardic Jews, as al-Kabir, had neither experienced the brutal Pogroms in Eastern Europe nor would most of the Sephardic Jews have to experience the Holocaust to come.

It is important to remember that in Judaism there is no single, highest authority. This fact provides ground to very diverse groups and attitudes within the Jewish religious tradition. However, in the early 20th century Zionists were predominantly secular Jews. Orthodox Jews appeared to resist to the idea of a Jewish homeland without the installment of Jewish law, the “halakha”. Influenced by the spirit of colonial period secular Zionist groups even discussed the possibility of other locations for the Jewish homeland, such as the British Uganda Proposal first proposed by Chamberlain, who sought to give territory in British East Africa, more precisely the Mau Plateau in what is today modern Kenya. Besides the fact that Jews had no historical nor religious connection to the Mau Plateau in British East Africa, looking back on the disastrous outcomes of the colonial era it is more than questionable if such a decision would have led to peaceful coexistence.

However, after the Balfour declaration, no Zionist could anymore think of another homeland for the Jewish people than Palestine. Not only secular Jews called for resettlement in Palestine. For example, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, was among the first religious thinkers to advocate political activism for Palestine in the form of resettlement. Jerusalem seems to have had a very special place in the hearts and minds of Jews throughout the two thousand years of Jewish Diaspora. Nevertheless, during the first half of the twentieth century the symbolic importance of Jerusalem increased stedily and saw efforts being made by Zionist organizations to buy holy Jewish pilgrimage sites, such as the Wailing Wall from the Muslim trust that owned it.

According to scholars the nationalist claims of the Muslim majority of Palestine are based on a religio-legal concept called waqf, translated into trusteeship. It is understood that God has permanently entrusted Palestine to the Muslim people. This is maybe best exemplified in the words of Sultan Abd al-Hamid of the Ottoman Empire in his response to Theodore Herzl’s offer to buy Palestine for twenty million lire. “Please advise him never to mention this ever. … It does not belong to me. It belongs to my people. My people acquired this Ottoman Empire by their blood”.

However, the Palestinian nationalist movements were initially also mostly secular. In fact, the radical Islamic organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad were “a reaction to both; the spread of Islamic political activism and the increasing role of religious mobilization in Jewish nationalism” of the 1980s. We can see that prior to 1967 religious identification and symbolism was not as central to the main nationalist movements on both sides.

While I do not want to explore the reasons why, where, when and how the conflicts between Jews and Muslims began in general, since there is an endless number of reasons, but their impact on the conflict is most of the time contested from one side or the other; beginning with the Balfour, respectively McMahon declaration over to the UN proposition in 1947 to the displacement of Palestinian civilians in the early years of the state of Israel. Nevertheless, it seems that there wasn’t a political and diplomatic will neither on the side of the Palestinian leadership nor on the side of the surrounding Arab countries to tolerate the creation of a Jewish national-state, alongside the proposed Palestinian state. This is crucial because failure to accept the UN proposal has made return to normal terms very complicated since. With the Israeli declaration of independence and the following war, the civilian Palestinian population was the main victim of aggressions and confrontations between the new state of Israel and its surrounding Arab neighbours.

So what changed in 1967? The crucial event of this year in the Middle East was the Six Day War. The end of the Six Day War seems to have been the beginning of a new sort of conflict. The Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, Gaza and the West Bank were conquered and occupied by the Israeli army, but at the centre of these dramatic days was the liberation or occupation, depending on the standpoint, of East Jerusalem and the control over its religious sites sacred to all three monotheistic traditions. This had several far reaching consequences.

First, with the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank more than a million Palestinians came under Israeli control. Second, for the Muslim the loss of the sovereignty over the holy sites through the occupation of Jerusalem by Israel seems to have turned a regional, political conflict over territory into a religious war. Religious identity and symbolic became increasingly important. Not surprising then, that the Yom Kippur War in 1973 was launched on the most distinct Jewish holy day. The implementation of Jewish settlement in these years around the Palestinian cities is another example of how religion was used to legitimate occupation. It was promoted in form of the strongly ideological notion of expanding the boundaries according to the biblical Israel. The longer the occupation of Palestinian land continued the more the paradox between a Jewish and democratic state became apparent. If Palestinians were granted full citizenship, within a few years the state would have an Arab majority and would cease to be Jewish in its traits, character, ethos and legislation. If, on the other hand, Palestinians were denied citizenship an civil rights in order to preserve the Jewish character of the state, Israel would find itself in the uncomfortable situation of being a democracy only for Jews, and an apartheid regime for the rest of its inhabitants.

Unfortunately, it seems that Israel has chosen to remain an essentially Jewish state, and although I wouldn’t go that far and call the Israeli government an apartheid regime, remembering the fact that all Israeli citizens may vote and be elected, it seems that institutionally Jews are being favored. The 1990’s saw at the same time an Israeli government under Rabin reaching out and recognizing the Palestinian cause and Baruch Goldstein “opening fire on worshipers gathered in a Muslim holy site… killing 29 people and injuring a further 150”. For many radical, militant Jews Rabin betrayed the biblical Israel. These events culminated on the 4th of November 1995, when Yitzhak Rabin was shot by a Jewish fanatic named Yigal Amir after one of the biggeest Peace rallies ever held in Tel Aviv.

The phenomenon of militant Judaism as the Gush Emunim combines both “Orthodoxy and Zionism”. Striving for an expanded Jewish state, this right wing religious group has pushed for the extension of Jewish settlements into Palestinian territory and does not recognize the rights of non-Jews (Palestinians) to exist in a sovereign state.

On the Palestinian side there has been a radicalization since the first Intifada in 1987. Since then religion has become increasingly important. Islamic movements such as the Islamic Jihad or the Hamas have promoted the “notion of Palestine as an Islamic state, within which Jews would be a tolerated minority”. This reveals an interesting point; the difference between anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist. If the Jews would have renounced to political sovereignty they would have been tolerated by the Muslim population. We will never know whether under such circumstances Jews and Muslims would effectively have lived peacefully alongside each other.

Hamas is using distinct anti-Jewish rhetoric, as described in a leaflet published in 1988 the Jews are “brothers of the apes, assassins of the prophets, bloodsuckers, warmongers [and] only Islam can break the Jews and destroy their dream”. But the possibly most fundamental characteristic of the ideology of Hamas is the concept of “shahid” or “martyr” used to justify suicidal bomb attacks on Jewish civilians. This also involves the notion of “jihad”. We all saw the images of mothers sending their son into death of a “shahid”. Suicide bombings as an act of martyrdom seem to be so deeply embedded that the prohibition of Islamic law to both suicide and the killing of non-combatants is simply not respected.

In conclusion, it seems as both radical religious groups represented for a long period a small but influential minority in their societies. While the ongoing conflict has reduced the wide Israeli public support for settlements, the ongoing violence has further radicalized Palestinian society. In general it seems that during the 1990’s an opportunity to achieve peace was missed. The efforts of politicians in the name of the majority of the populations were torpedoed by small radical groups such as Hamas or the Gush Emunim.

The usage of religious symbols and reinterpretation of texts contain the potential to fool some segments of the population and to use them accordingly to achieve political goals. For example, to secure settlements on the Israeli side or to frighten and terrorize on the Palestinian side. Recent events have shown that the region is deeper then ever splitted across religious boundaries.

The overwhelming victory of Hamas at the Palestinian elections, has cast a shadow over a possible return to the negotiation table. Further the recent incursion of Israel into Gaza has not helped to stabilize the region. The renewed warfare with the Shiite Hezbollah (Party of God) in Lebanon is promising further bloodshed and retaliation.

In order to end on a more positive note I would like to cite in my opinion a great visionary man, who understood the need of both people to achieve long-lasting peace. “We say to you today in a loud and a clear voice: enough of blood and tears. Enough” because the “pain of peace is preferable to the agony of war” .

The silence in which I remain alone

Remember PM Rabin… For all, political and security ‘experts’: Read this speech carefully, there are important lessons to be gained. Lessons that may save lifes.

Remarks by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on Receiving the Nobel Prize for Peace Oslo
December 10, 1994

At an age when most youngsters are struggling to unravel the secrets of mathematics and the mysteries of the Bible; at an age when first love blooms; at the tender age of sixteen, I was handed a rifle so that I could defend myself.

That was not my dream. I wanted to be a water engineer. I studied in an agricultural school and I thought being a water engineer was an important profession in the parched Middle East. I still think so today. However, I was compelled to resort to the gun.

I served in the military for decades. Under my responsibility, young men and women who wanted to live, wanted to love, went to their deaths instead. They fell in the defense of our lives.

In my current position, I have ample opportunity to fly over the State of Israel, and lately over other parts of the Middle East as well. The view from the plane is breathtaking; deep-blue seas and lakes, dark-green fields, dune-colored deserts, stone-gray mountains, and the entire countryside peppered with white-washed, red-roofed houses.

And also cemeteries. Graves as far as the eye can see.

Hundreds of cemeteries in our part of the world, in the Middle East — in our home in Israel, but also in Egypt, in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon. From the plane’s window, from the thousands of feet above them, the countless tombstones are silent. But the sound of their outcry has carried from the Middle East throughout the world for decades.

Standing here today, I wish to salute our loved ones — and past foes. I wish to salute all of them — the fallen of all the countries in all the wars; the members of their families who bear the enduring burden of bereavement; the disabled whose scars will never heal. Tonight, I wish to pay tribute to each and every one of them, for this important prize is theirs.

I was a young man who has now grown fully in years. In Hebrew, we say, ‘Na’ar hayiti, ve-gam zakanti’ [I was a young man, who has grown fully in years]. And of all the memories I have stored up in my seventy-two years, what I shall remember most, to my last day, are the silences: The heavy silence of the moment after, and the terrifying silence of the moment before.

As a military man, as a commander, as a minister of defense, I ordered to carry out many military operations. And together with the joy of victory and the grief of bereavement, I shall always remember the moment just after taking such decisions: the hush as senior officers or cabinet ministers slowly rise from their seats; the sight of their receding backs; the sound of the closing door; and then the silence in which I remain alone.

That is the moment you grasp that as a result of the decision just made, people might go to their deaths. People from my nation, people from other nations. And they still don’t know it.

At that hour, they are still laughing and weeping; still weaving plans and dreaming about love; still musing about planting a garden or building a house — and they have no idea these are their last hours on earth. Which of them is fated to die? Whose picture will appear in the black frame in tomorrow’s newspaper? Whose mother will soon be in mourning? Whose world will crumble under the weight of the loss?

As a former military man, I will also forever remember the silence of the moment before: the hush when the hands of the clock seem to be spinning forward, when time is running out and in another hour, another minute, the inferno will erupt.

In that moment of great tension just before the finger pulls the trigger, just before the fuse begins to burn; in the terrible quiet of the moment, there is still time to wonder, to wonder alone: Is it really imperative to act? Is there no other choice? No other way?

‘God takes pity on kindergartners,’ wrote the poet Yehudah Amichai, who is here with us this evening — and I quote his:

‘God takes pity on kindergartners,
Less so on the schoolchildren,
And will no longer pity their elders,
Leaving them to their own,
And sometimes they will have to crawl on all fours,
Through the burning sand,
To reach the casualty station,
Bleeding.’

For decades, God has not taken pity on the kindergartners in the Middle East, or the schoolchildren, or their elders. There has been no pity in the Middle East for generations.

I was a young man who has now grown fully in years. And of all the memories I have stored up in my seventy-two years, I now recall the hopes.

Our people have chosen us to give them life. Terrible as it is to say, their lives are in our hands. Tonight, their eyes are upon us and their hearts are asking: How is the power vested in these men and women being used? What will they decide? Into what kind of morning will we rise tomorrow? A day of peace? Of war? Of laughter? Of tears?

A child is born in an utterly undemocratic way. He cannot choose his father and mother. He cannot pick his sex or color, his religion, nationality or homeland. Whether he is born in a manor or a manger, whether he lives under a despotic or democratic regime is not his choice. From the moment he comes, close-fisted, into the world, his fate — to a large extent — is decided by his nation’s leaders. It is they who will decide whether he lives in comfort or in despair, in security or in fear. His fate is given to us to resolve — to the governments of countries, democratic or otherwise.

Just as no two fingerprints are identical, so no two people are alike, and every country has its own laws and culture, traditions and leaders. But there is one universal message which can embrace the entire world, one precept which can be common to different regimes, to races which bear no resemblance, to cultures that are alien to each other.

It is a message which the Jewish people has carried for thousands of years, the message found in the Book of Books: ‘Ve’nishmartem me’od l’nafshoteichem’ — ‘Therefore take good heed of yourselves’ — or, in contemporary terms, the message of the sanctity of life.

The leaders of nations must provide their peoples with the conditions — the infrastructure, if you will — which enables them to enjoy life: freedom of speech and movement; food and shelter; and most important of all: life itself. A man cannot enjoy his rights if he is not alive. And so every country must protect and preserve the key element in its national ethos: the lives of its citizens.

Only to defend those lives, we can call upon our citizens to enlist in the army. And to defend the lives of our citizens serving in the army, we invest huge sums in planes and tanks, and other means. Yet despite it all, we fail to protect the lives of our citizens and soldiers. Military cemeteries in every corner of the world are silent testimony to the failure of national leaders to sanctify human life.

There is only one radical means for sanctifying human life. The one radical solution is a real peace.

The profession of soldiering embraces a certain paradox. We take the best and the bravest of our young men into the army. We supply them with equipment which costs a virtual fortune. We rigorously train them for the day when they must do their duty — and we expect them to do it well. Yet we fervently pray that that day will never come — that the planes will never take off, the tanks will never move forward, the soldiers will never mount the attacks for which they have been trained so well.

We pray that it will never happen, because of the sanctity of life.

History as a whole, and modern history in particular, has known harrowing times when national leaders turned their citizens into cannon fodder in the name of wicked doctrines: vicious Fascism, terrible Nazism. Pictures of children marching to slaughter, photos of terrified women at the gates of the crematoria must loom before the eyes of every leader in our generation, and the generations to come. They must serve as a warning to all who wield power.

Almost all regimes which did not place the sanctity of life at the heart of their worldview, all those regimes have collapsed and are no more. You can see it for yourselves in our own time.

Yet this is not the whole picture. To preserve the sanctity of life, we must sometimes risk it. Sometimes there is no other way to defend our citizens than to fight for their lives, for their safety and freedom. This is the creed of every democratic state.

In the State of Israel, from which I come today; in the Israel Defense Forces, which I have had the privilege to serve, we have always viewed the sanctity of life as a supreme value. We have never gone to war unless a war was forced on us.

The history of the State of Israel, the annals of the Israel Defense Forces, are filled with thousands of stories of soldiers who sacrificed themselves — who died while trying to save wounded comrades; who gave their lives to avoid causing harm to innocent people on their enemy’s side.

In the coming days, a special commission of the Israel Defense Forces will finish drafting a Code of Conduct for our soldiers. The formulation regarding human life will read as follows, and I quote:

‘In recognition of its supreme importance, the soldier will preserve human life in every way possible and endanger himself, or others, only to the extent deemed necessary to fulfill this mission. ‘The sanctity of life, in the point of view of the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, will find expression in all their actions.’

For many years ahead — even if wars come to an end, after peace comes to our land — these words will remain a pillar of fire which goes before our camp, a guiding light for our people. And we take pride in that.

We are in the midst of building the peace. The architects and the engineers of this enterprise are engaged in their work even as we gather here tonight, building the peace, layer by layer, brick by brick. The job is difficult, complex, trying. Mistakes could topple the whole structure and bring disaster down upon us.

And so we are determined to do the job well — despite the toll of murderous terrorism, despite the fanatic and cruel enemies of peace.

We will pursue the course of peace with determination and fortitude. We will not let up. We will not give in. Peace will triumph over all its enemies, because the alternative is grimmer for us all. And we will prevail.

We will prevail because we regard the building of peace as a great blessing for us, for our children after us. We regard it as a blessing for our neighbors on all sides, and for our partners in this enterprise — the United States, Russia, Norway — which did so much to bring the agreement that was signed here, later on in Washington, later on in Cairo, that wrote a beginning of the solution to the longest and most difficult part of the Arab-Israeli conflict: the Palestinian-Israeli one. We thank others who have contributed to it, too.

We wake up every morning, now, as different people. Peace is possible. We see the hope in our children’s eyes. We see the light in our soldiers’ faces, in the streets, in the buses, in the fields. We must not let them down. We will not let them down.

I stand here not alone today, on this small rostrum in Oslo. I am here to speak in the name of generations of Israelis and Jews, of the shepherds of Israel — and you know that King David was a shepherd; he started to build Jerusalem about 3,000 years ago — the herdsmen and dressers of sycamore trees, and as the Prophet Amos was; of the rebels against the establishment, as the Prophet Jeremiah was; and of men who went down to the sea, like the Prophet Jonah.

I am here to speak in the name of the poets and of those who dreamed of an end to war, like the Prophet Isaiah.

I am also here to speak in the names of sons of the Jewish people like Albert Einstein and Baruch Spinoza, like Maimonides, Sigmund Freud and Franz Kafka.

And I am the emissary of millions who perished in the Holocaust, among whom were surely many Einsteins and Freuds who were lost to us, and to humanity, in the flames of the crematoria.

I am here as the emissary of Jerusalem, at whose gates I fought in the days of siege; Jerusalem which has always been, and is today, the people, who pray toward Jerusalem three times a day.

And I am also the emissary of the children who drew their visions of peace; and of the immigrants from St. Petersburg and Addis Ababa.

I stand here mainly for the generations to come, so that we may all be deemed worthy of the medal which you have bestowed on me and my colleagues today.

I stand here as the emissary today — if they will allow me — of our neighbors who were our enemies. I stand here as the emissary of the soaring hopes of a people which has endured the worst that history has to offer and nevertheless made its mark — not just on the chronicles of the Jewish people but on all mankind.

With me here are five million citizens of Israel — Jews, Arabs, Druze and Circassians — five million hearts beating for peace, and five million pairs of eyes which look at us with such great expectations for peace.

I wish to thank, first and foremost, those citizens of the State of Israel, of all the generations, of all the political persuasions, whose sacrifices and relentless struggle for peace bring us steadier closer to our goal.

I wish to thank our partners — the Egyptians, the Jordanians, and the Palestinians, that are led by the Chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Mr. Yasser Arafat, with whom we share this Nobel Prize — who have chosen the path of peace and are writing a new page in the annals of the Middle East.

Allow me to close by sharing with you a traditional Jewish blessing which has been recited by my people, in good times and bad ones, as a token of their deepest longing:

‘The Lord will give strength to his people; the Lord will bless his people — and all of us — in peace.’