What would you say if, out of the blue, someone offered you an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel? Back in December, London’s Union of Jewish Students did just that, and last Friday I flew to Tel Aviv with seven students from across Britain for a trip described, in rather poor taste, as an ‘election/post-war special.’ Having never been offered a free trip in my life, my initial reaction to the invitation was one of suspicion, and I immediately started searching for a hidden agenda, wondering what line I might be expected to buy on a visit to a country with such notoriously bad PR.
The recent campaign by the Israeli Defence Force in Gaza, which left between 900 and 1,300 Palestinians dead, has led to worldwide protests, student campaigns and calls for a boycott, leaving many Israelis feeling frustrated at what they see at Europeans’ failure to understand their need to defend their state. Despite my reservations about going, however, I decided that seeing one side, however potentially biased, was better than seeing neither. I reassured myself that I would take everything presented to me with a healthy dose of scepticism, whilst vowing to keep an open mind.
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but after arriving in Israel I quickly found myself caught off guard. Yes, I met the caricature of the gung-ho IDF man, full of bravado and machismo, and the cynical civil servant, tired of European liberals who like to ‘play utopia.’ But I was also exposed to a series of thoughtful, liberal voices who presented a compelling narrative of the Jewish struggle to break free from their history of exclusion, persecution and permanent minority status. A visit to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum, as well as meetings with a range of academics, journalists and civil servants conveyed a powerful sense – real, imagined, or somewhere in between – that the Jews are not only a victimised people, but also one that has been let down time and again by governments, regimes and individuals that failed to protect them. There is a deep need to prove the country’s strength, and to never allow the Jewish people to become victims again.
This, I discovered, is the crux of the Israeli psyche. It is within this framework of fear that Israelis view Sderot – the town 1km to the north of Gaza, battered by rockets for the past eight years, and the second intifada – the five-year Palestinian uprising that began after the breakdown of peace talks in 2000 . The residents of Jerusalem lived in constant fear of suicide bombers who targeted buses, cafes and bars. This sense of insecurity was apparent in the run up to elections, in which right-winger Avigdor Lieberman saw his popularity swell on the basis of a campaign that described the country’s Arab citizens as an ‘internal terror threat.’ Demands that Arabs prove their loyalty to the country in order to retain their citizenship struck a chord with voters, and on Tuesday Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party achieved an unprecedented 15 seats in Israel’s new parliament.
The Hebrew University’s Dr Gideon Rahat rejects these ultra-nationalist politics, describing Lieberman a ‘threat to Israeli society’ for ‘turning Israeli Arabs against the state of Israel.’ So too, do many others, but this week’s elections nevertheless saw Israeli politics take a step to the right, in what most analysts see as a disillusionment with the peace process. But Israel’s 20% Arab population, too, feels disillusioned, with most simply shrugging their shoulders when I asked how they’d use their vote.
We were scheduled to meet three Palestinians but, tellingly, two of them were unable to make it due to problems with permits and border crossings. On election day we visited the controversial West Bank wall, designed to prevent suicide bombers but condemned by many as an exercise in land-grabbing. There were no Palestinians at the usually busy crossing point – that day the West Bank was closed, its residents forbidden from entering Israel – but during the five minutes we stood there we watched an Israeli settler speed across the boundary in his car.
I found it strange that the trip, which placed so much emphasis on the importance of understanding the Israeli side of the Middle East conflict, failed to present any detailed analysis of the other side of the story – that of the Palestinians. The anguish of losing their land and their homes, the humiliation of years of occupation and the desperation of poverty were given little consideration, and it would have been easy to have come away feeling that the Palestinians are entirely to blame for their plight.
It is for this reason that, for me, the most inspiring voice of the trip was that of Robi Damelin, who is a member of Parents’ Circle, a group that brings together Israelis and Palestinians whose family members have been killed in the course of the conflict. She usually works in a pair with Ali Abu Awwad, a Palestinian whose brother was shot dead by an Israeli settler, but he had unable to cross into the West Bank from Jordan. Damelin’s son, David, a Master’s student who was active in the peace movement, was called up by the IDF as a reservist in 2002, and soon after was killed by a Palestinian sniper. She now tours schools in Israel and the Occupied Territories, and gives talks across the world, in order to share her story. She tells how, during a talk in the West Bank, a schoolgirl once told her that her son deserved to die. ‘She came from a bereaved family,’ says Damelin. ‘I talked to her about it. I asked her what colours her tears were. She got up in front of the whole class and came up and apologised. That took a lot of courage.’
Sceptical of those who promote ‘hummus and hugs’, Damelin has used her and Abu Awwad’s shared pain as a starting point for an exploration of the nitty-gritty of politics, war and peace, and she now believes that ‘you have to talk to everyone; even Hamas.’ This sentiment was echoed by Khaled Abu Alia, the one Palestinian we did manage to meet, who argues that Israel’s refusal to recognise the democratically-elected group ‘made them into heroes.’ But those who support such views are in the minority, as the declared aim of Hamas’ charter – the destruction of the state of Israel – currently makes dialogue out of the question for most.
I came away from the trip with the feeling that I had, as expected, been shown just one side of the story, but rather than any anticipated crude propaganda, I was offered an intelligent, nuanced exploration of the Israeli national consciousness, and the fears and insecurities of its citizens. I’ve come to understand that many liberal Israelis are uncomfortable with their country’s actions, but that they are also scared for the safety of their children. It’s a story that I’m incredibly glad I’ve heard. But I also left feeling uncomfortable at not even having visited an Arab-Israeli village, let alone the West Bank, because it was deemed too ‘unsafe’ by the organisers. That is surely the point. It’s all very well for Israel’s liberals to covet peace, but until both sides are forced to confront not only their own feelings of insecurity and fear, but also those of their ‘enemy’, there can be little hope of the understanding that is needed for peace.
In a country where every house has an in-built bomb shelter, where Palestinians face the humiliation of daily checkpoint searches, and where Jewish and Muslim children attend different schools, it remains too easy for Arabs and Israelis to dehumanise the threatening ‘other’, blocking out their suffering and justifying actions taken against them. Fear is a powerful force, and despite projects that try to bring the two sides together, most Israelis have never met a Palestinian, and vice versa. ‘Peace is possible when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable,’ declares a letter from Desmond Tutu on the Parents’ Circle homepage. But, for the time being, while rockets are fired and walls are built, it is ignorance and fear that reign supreme.
