In a recent debate on +972, proponents and detractors of normalizing relations between Israelis and Palestinians in the current political environment make their cases.
In his recent post on “normalization,” my colleague Aziz Abu Sarah was right about one thing, the topic is reaching a fever pitch within Palestinian society. What Aziz gets wrong is the logic of anti-normalization as he attempts to paint it as some form of unjustifiable reactionism, ignoring its most cogent and compelling arguments. In truth, projects that constitute “normalization” promote a false image of parity between the conflicting sides and foster a dangerous psychology within the minds of the oppressor that stifles progress towards a just resolution of the conflict.
Although the “anti-normalization” debate has been around a long time, its resurgence in public discourse can likely be attributed to two things: the rise of the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement and the beginning of a transitional period in internal Palestinian politics.
Due to the very nature of the BDS movement, everything pertaining to Israel is put under the microscope and scrutinized. Subsequently, any relationship between Palestinians and Israelis is done so in spades. BDS encourages its adherents to look critically at everything they do and everything that is happening around them. It is important to distinguish what works in the service of achieving Palestinian rights and what does not, or even works against it. This is why the BDS movement has produced strict and coherent guidelines for what can be considered worthy of boycott and what constitutes normalization.
Secondly, the era in which Palestinians and Israelis engaged in dialogue under the wider auspices and example of governmental-led negotiations is coming to an end—at least for the time being. We are now at the cusp of a transitional period in Palestinian politics where the lack of a clear strategy and path forward on the diplomatic and resistance fronts is forcing Palestinians to look internally at the state of their own society and political situation. Reconciliation and reform within their fractured political system are desperately needed in order to move cohesively in a new direction. Thus many Palestinians have started to re-examine the logic of their relationships with Israelis and criticize those Palestinians who have benefited immensely from it over the years while others around them have suffered.
When we consider the resurgence of anti-normalization, we must also remember that the post-Oslo period witnessed an explosion in normalization programs and projects between Israelis and Palestinians. Any organization, group or program that had “joint” or “co-existence” in reference to Israelis and Palestinians was instantly given credibility and financing on the world stage. Such programs became extremely lucrative and many people profited with little regard to the actual state of the conflict and its overall deterioration. Even prior to the breakout of the Second Intifada, but largely afterwards, normalization programs lost their relevance. We were no longer in the post-conflict transitional period we thought Oslo had ushered in, and things got worse, not better.
FEELING COMFORTABLE WITH OPPRESSION
It has become senseless for Israelis and Palestinians to act like nothing is wrong with the status quo and carry-on with such projects. Normalization may be fine for those bridging the gaps between people in India and Pakistan or Venezuela and Colombia—where the two sides are on equal footing—but not in Israel/Palestine where one side lives under the yoke and chain of the other. When we seek to normalize this relationship by giving each other equal standing and equal voice, we project an image of symmetry. Joint sports teams and theatre groups, hosting an Israeli orchestra in Ramallah or Nablus, all these things create a false sense of normality, like the issue is only a problem of recognizing each other as human beings. This, however, ignores the ongoing oppression, colonization, and denial of rights, committed by one side against the other.
Moreover, normalization creates a false sense in the mind of Israelis that they are working for peace, while in actuality, though maybe unwittingly, they are contributing to the calcification of the status quo. Their energy is misdirected away from root causes and channeled into making the current situation more tolerable—largely for themselves—by helping them to cope with wider injustices occurring in their name. Many Israelis who participate in normalization projects believe that they are detached, that they are not part of the problem, because they have some Palestinian friends or colleagues, even if they are doing nothing to rectify the actual injustices that have been committed by their society daily for over half a century. In the words of Israeli architectural theorist Eyal Weizman in his monumental work on the architecture of occupation, Hollow Land: “The history of the occupation is full of liberal ‘men of peace’ who are responsible for, or who at least sweeten, the injustice committed by the occupation. The occupation would not have been possible without them.”
Likewise, these normalization projects are put on display for all the world to see, so that they may all feel comfortable and say: look, the moderates are resolving the differences in a civilized manner. This is probably why the largest contributors to normalization projects are not Israelis and Palestinians themselves, but rather the international community. These programs work in much the same way as endless negotiations, offering a semblance of progress so that the world may deceive itself without having to take real action.
I do not discount the authenticity of Israelis who desire to see a just peace. Nor do I overlook the importance of meeting your enemy on a human level, of the power of these efforts in defusing tension, mistrust, and misunderstanding. But we can’t ignore the negative impact of normalization given the ongoing occupation and colonial enterprise. We must ask ourselves, what did all the normalizing get Palestinians after Oslo except for deterioration in their circumstance? For all the money pumped into these programs why are there no statistics or data showing they work? Why does no one think to question the effectiveness of normalization, including its proponents, in the case of Mr. Abu Sarah’s article? We can sit back and comfort each other that we are not fanatics or extremists, and that may be all well and good, but the fanatics are determining the reality on the ground while liberals and moderates provide a veneer of normality and progress.
The truth is when we “normalize” relations with Israel and Israelis without bearing to the political situation, we legitimize Israel despite its continued oppression of Palestinians and its colonial policies on Palestinian land. We must remember that the greatest boon in Israeli history came after the Oslo Accords were signed. Many countries around the world that had refused to have “normal” relations with Israel reversed their policies. This false peace opened Israel up to the wider international community, spurring unprecedented growth and trade. By reversing the normalization trend, we strip the conflict of many illusions and niceties in favor of exposing the raw truth.
Mr. Abu Sarah portrays anti-normalization like it is based purely on hate for the “other.” In order to do this he ignores the strongest arguments against normalization in exchange for obscure notions that take anti-normalization to the extreme; such as any instance in which a Palestinian and an Israeli come together constitutes normalization. In my own experience meeting people who are against normalization, I came to understand that Israelis are valued and encouraged to take part in the resistance movement to occupation. As long as an Israeli is working for Palestinian rights and the end to occupation, the cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians is perfectly legitimate and justified. This is the concept of “co-resistance” as opposed to “co-existence,” and should hardly be described as radical.
Yet, Mr. Abu Sarah’s article chooses to harp on these extreme cases at the expense of a serious argument over the topic. In what constituted an extensive blog post, there is little argument discussing why normalization activities are valid and beneficial; rather the entire piece is devoted to portraying anti-normalization as irrational. Some of his claims are true, such as those who use “normalization” as a character attack for dubious ends. But none of that still gets to the heart of the matter. I simply want to know, are we better off today because of normalization projects?
THE KIDS RETURN HOME
I wish to conclude this piece with an example of normalization from my own history. When I was fifteen years old, I was a participant in the Seeds of Peace program, which brings young teenagers from conflict zones together to a summer camp in the northeastern United States. Although originally set up for Israelis and Arabs, the program expanded over the years to include Greek and Turkish Cypriots, Indians and Pakistanis, and others. In each session there was also a delegation of American teenagers, of which I was a part. This was still prior to the breakdown of the Oslo Accords and the outbreak of the Second Intifada and most believed we were on the path to peace. Teenagers, who for the most part had never met someone from the other side before, would tell stories from their own experience in the hope of making their enemy understand them. Yet, I can still remember feeling at the time that the effort would be somehow wasted when these kids returned home because even I knew that, despite pretenses, there was no real peace on the ground. During my trips to the West Bank to visit my extended family, I would see and feel the military presence that continued to persist in the still-occupied territories. And in the “co-existence” sessions at Seeds of Peace, I would hear from those Palestinians what life still held for them.
The most poignant moment for me, however, was when a Palestinian teenager near the end of the program asked an Israeli teenager if he would still join the army and serve in the occupied territories, to which the answer was “yes”. To me, this said it all. What did this whole program mean if in a few years that Israeli teenager would be sitting at a checkpoint in the West Bank and shoving his M-16 in the face of a Palestinian while asking for his ID? Would it make him a more compassionate soldier serving in an inherently unjust system? When all the fun and games were over, we each returned to our respective societies and things stayed the same.
If these teenagers had returned to a cold peace, it may have been different. They could continue to work to establish more friendly relations between their respective peoples. But for Palestinians and Israelis, they live everyday in a system of imbalance and injustice where one side is oppressing the other through an engineered structure of superiority and subjugation. That is it. Normalization can try to make you forget that fact, but the next time a gun barrel is pointed in your direction, or a cousin is arrested and thrown in prison, or the home of a neighbor is bulldozed, or your relatives in Gaza fall under the bombs, you will be hard pressed to do so.
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Carl
Sinjim dismiss the power of Fatah as you like. They are all ready over the media explaining asserting themselves as the originators and arbiters of the ‘anti-normalisation’ movement. And they do it with an extensive security service, jails and the ubiquitous AK47. Not to mention some choice tips from the chaps at the local Isaeli DCO. I recall Palestinian Solidarity crowd coming over from a stint in Gaza to the West Bank to talk to us. In spite of Tom Hurndall having just been killed, one of the main things that was making them consider leaving was the wholesale infiltration by Fatah.
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I categorically do not doubt your motives Sinjim and and I rate both your posts and passions highly. But in its current form, I’d be amazed if the anti-normalisation agenda doesn’t fracture along the lines of Palestinian, Israeli and international activists. I – and I am categorically not recommending BDS you sharp eyed lawyers you – have to come back to looking at Israeli/Palestinian cooperation in terms of employment and administration. The Palestinian building work in settlements, the Israeli food products, the green number plates (did it used to be white plates for a taxi to Gaza City?), and the orange and green ID cards; all these are the things I think AntiNorm should be looking at as a tactic. From grubbing about on the floor after a Palestinian funeral procession I seem to remember that Israeli arms manufacturer IMI was very popular for cartridges at one time. That might be a tricky meeting for all those involved.
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Anyhow, thanks to every who wrote in to this thread so far. It’s like a load of people who not only have brains, but actually use them in conjunction with grammar, and rarely the CAPS LOCK! I might bring it up at my ‘Haaretz: have your say’ counselling session tomorrow. Now that’s a 21st century illness.
AYLA
you know what I think gets missed, here? People here, on this land, are actually living together. Not nearly as much as they used to, and not with nearly as much freedom to travel, but in subtle ways, they are. People in different parts of this tragically chopped-up land have family in other parts of it. And I have found in my own experience that the most fierce anti-normalizers live far away, and the people living in Palestine are more likely to have more flexibility regarding how they want to fight the occupation, even though they are the ones having the terrible experiences with the IDF, etc. This is not because they have accepted something abnormal as normal; it’s just because this is their actual life, and it is not theoretical. This is true of most of the people you are calling “dupes”, Sinjim, which I think takes a lot of nerve considering how hard-lined most of those so-called dupes are in their politics, and how much of an actual difference they are making toward ending the occupation as compared to most of us, as are people such as Aziz Abu Sarah. I know that @Omar is here, too, and I’d love to hear, Omar, if you think there’s any truth to this observation (people here vs. away); I’m certainly not the only person to have made that observation. Before we got on this subject, Sinjim, you and I had always respected each other, because we have a common goal. Now we’re at odds because of the means, or lack thereof. We will probably never see eye to eye on this. I don’t think you can separate out what is and what isn’t anti-normalization by just saying that some people are practicing with the rulebook and some people aren’t. If the PA calls “normalization” illegal and defines it as they do, you can’t just say it has nothing to do with the movement. It has everything to do with the ripple effects of the movement, whether it has been hijacked or not.
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I look forward to returning to our common goals.
AYLA
just to further clarify: I’m saying that it seems it’s often internationals shutting down local events, after locals, on both sides of the line, work hard on them. That’s what I’ve gathered, from lots of activists. It’s mostly second-hand insight. (not to disown myself from the insight; just to clarify where it’s coming from. It’s coming from activists who do a lot more than I do toward ending this occupation).
Sinjim
I view the Palestinian struggle as a civil rights movement, which is what it is. Every single civil rights movement in history has featured anti-normalization as a central tactic, from the Non-Cooperation Movement of India to bus boycotts of Montogomery to the anti-Apartheid Movement of South Africa. For some reason, Palestine is supposed to be different? Black people in America lived together with their white oppressors. No one but apologists for the status quo ever took issue with their non-violent tactics.
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You’ve all tried painting the anti-normalization movement as some sort of sinister cabal intent on cutting off contact between Palestinians and Israelis. This is obviously false, not least of all because Israelis are encouraged to join it. Anti-normalization is about exposing Israel’s shameful underbelly, including such examples as the KKL’s two-faced activities where it supports the destruction of Palestinian lives on the one hand and funds “co-existence” programs. You poopoo the movement, but without it and the principles behind it, no one would’ve ever called attention to the AIES’s racist hypocrisy, which is now forcing it to deal with a drop off of Palestinian participation. Here’s another example of anti-normalization from October of last year: http://electronicintifada.net/blog/maureen/video-students-organize-mass-walk-out-targeting-israels-token-arab-spokesperson.
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Without the anti-normalization narrative, we’d still be talking only about how ending the occupation is “good for Israel,” forgetting its real victims. Now the welfare of Palestinians has been injected into the conversation. Those who want to ignore it (out of conviction or convenience) are being called out in a big way.
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Anyway, nothing any of you say here will stop Palestinian resistance to the legitimization of occupation and Israel’s anti-Arab policies and institutions. If Israelis want to join in that resistance, the anti-normalization movement has made clear that they welcome them with open arms. If not, I think most Palestinians are already used to Israelis averting their eyes to what their country does, so no biggie.
AYLA
@Sinjim! I taught at the University of Michigan for ten years! Quit that job to move here. Love those kids. Felt prideful watching that video. Go figure… Complex, complex. ‘night (here).
Carl
Sinjim to start I’ll say that we aim for largely the same thing: a viable, sovereign Palestinian state – leave the semantics for another time. Ease up with the pejoratives in your articles as we’re all largley after the same things. And more importantly, we’re not on HYS on Ha’aaretz or JPost. Doesn’t that make us all feel good?
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The A-N strikes me as yes, an ethically cogent programme. But Palestinians have been ethically right for a very long time and have also lost consistently for a very long time. If you can’t persuade a huge rump of the Israeli Electorate to come over to your side, you are lost. Israeli has the third or fourth strongest army in the world – it can keep Palestine as long as it likes. In being in the West Bank, during the times of daily deaths in Nablus, to lounging about in Mas’Ha, waiting for the fence to arrive, I was struck at not only the gulf between International Activists (understandable given the global spread) but also between the Palestinians and the Israeli activists.
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The Israelis got, hit, stoned, shot and tear gased like anyone. But still I kept hearing ‘but why do they have to join the army?, why don’t they just leave Israel?’. An Israeli anarchist laid it out for me:
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“Do these people understand what it is to dodge the army? My family have thrown me out, and I get hassled in the street. I can’t get work, I can’t even get a girlfriend as once they find out I’m not in the army, that’s it.”
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And that is about the easiest of people there are to convince. As I said earlier, at the cost of ethical certainty, you’re left with alienating Israelis like this whilst listening to Mark Regev gleefully recounting how the rejectionist Palestinians have violently broken up a meeting between Arab and Israeli peace activists. Stick to BDS and target high profile brands (oh. that’s theoretically lawyers, ehem, ehem). SA apartheid fell twenty odd years ago and because of one leaflet pinned up in my home, to this day I cannot buy Del Monte.
Joel
@Sinjim: Thank you for your response. Let me respond to you in the interest of understanding, as I respect what you said in your response to Ayla about not changing your mind.
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I think there are two things that goes to the core:
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First, you said that, “I view the Palestinian struggle as a civil rights movement, which is what it is. Every single civil rights movement in history has featured anti-normalization as a central tactic, from the Non-Cooperation Movement of India to bus boycotts of Montogomery to the anti-Apartheid Movement of South Africa. For some reason, Palestine is supposed to be different?”
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While I very much agree with you that the Palestinian struggle is a civil rights struggle, the Palestinian struggle has ALSO been tied to other dimensions. The involvement of other Arab countries, the US and the Brittish have created several other dimensions that gives the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation ALSO components of an international conflict, which has been asymmetrical in relation to Palestinians and less asymmetrical in relation to neighbouring Arab countries. And it is through this paradigm of international armed conflict – not the civil rights paradigm – that wars and violent resistance against Israel have been justified.
With that said, I very much appreciate the efforts made by everyone to redefine the Palestinian struggle in terms of a non-violent civil rights struggle. And I think this is definitively the way foreword, as can bee seen today from the increased activism around the world. Democracy and civil/liberal rights are the “lingua franca” of today and these shared values definitively have the potential to unite people from around the world, including Israelis in a struggle for Palestinian rights. But that requires the civil-rights struggle to indeed be committed to those democratic values and civic rights, in which the internal intimidation and aggressiveness towards other approaches has no place. That will alienate, not only Israelis, but internationals from countries with long democratic traditions, such as Finland (where I’m from).
Now, you also said that, “At the end of the day, I don’t view alienation as a bad thing. I’m happy that Israelis are alienated and that they’re offended by the anti-normalization movement. They need to be alienated and offended because that’s the first step towards change.”
And again, I think this would be true, if the Palestinian struggle was only a civil rights struggle. However, because of the earlier mentioned history and the fact that the international armed asymmetric conflict paradigm is still upheld between Israel and Palestinian groups engaged in armed resistance, I don’t think “alienation and offence” will work as the first step towards change as it has in the other civil rights movements you mentioned. Instead, it will strengthen those, both in Israel and in the international community, who say that Israel really has legitimate security concerns and (unjustifiably) use that to legitimize the occupation or to prevent international pressure against Israel.
I think that only when/if the international armed conflict dimension is removed and Israel continues with the oppressive policies can the kind of international consensus and pressure that lead to the fall of Apartheid South Africa be gathered. Then the Palestinians would probably win the right to define concepts of justice and fairness quite widely in the ensuing new reality.
However, it does not take many Israeli and Palestinian spoilers to keep the armed conflict going (as the cycle of retaliations continue) and thus prevent the above development. It is not enough that either Palestinians or Israelis alone manage to keep these violent spoilers in place, because sooner or later the persistent efforts of terrorist on either side will provoke a retaliation from the other, pushing the situation away from the civil rights paradigm towards the (continued) armed conflict paradigm.
This is why I think the realization of Palestinian rights requires that Israel has sufficient incentive to keep its own spoilers in place and that requires both international and Israeli support. And that is also why change in this conflict can not begin with alienation of Israelis and internationals, who support the civil rights of Palestinians, but who ALSO are aware of the armed conflict dimension.
In other words, the destructive interaction potentially caused by a too strict anti-normalization movement is not limited to alienated Israelis and internationals with hurt feelings; it can escalate to violent armed conflict, which pulls both the Israelis’ desire to live in safety and the Palestinian struggle further away from a rights and values based solution and towards a power struggle instead. And in this scenario there are only loosers.
Israelis and Palestinians need each other to realize their goals. Not only because they (or we, as I consider Israel a second home) live on the same land, but because the reciprocal relationship between our two societies is much stronger than either party would like to admit. When I write for the Jewish community newspaper in Helsinki about the discriminatory policies of Israel and why they should be changed, my strongest argument is Aziz Abu Sarah and Sari Nusseibeh. Without Palestinians who want to live in peace with Israel DESPITE what Israel has done to them is my most convincing argument, when I try to persuade them to see Israel as an occupier that deprive civil rights from Palestinians.
In fact, according to some studies (http://www.polisci.umn.edu/~freeman/BCF20070718.pdf), the reciprocal relationship between public opinions of societies in asymmetric conflicts are even stronger in determining their leader’s policy towards the other than the other side’s leaders reactions. And that’s another reason why these perceptions matter so much.
But it’s getting late. Good night for now.
Henry Weinstein
It looks like Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, this surreal debate (as surreal as the Debate on Zionism, and it doesn’t smell good this impasse look-like parenthood). Because The Good was as bad as The Bad and The Ugly wasn’t so bad compared to the others. I’m not joking, Sergio Leone (born January 3, 1929) had witnessed Fascism in Italy.
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It’s a surreal debate because of the ideological language (REPEAT!) which has been designed to prevent people from both sides to have a straight talk about the real issues.
I’m not the first one to remark this: extremist racist nationalists from both sides don’t want a democratic debate.
The main real issues being: Do you want to work for a secular democratic bi-national state securing self-determination for two different people with different values?, Do you want to work for two separate entities, one being Jewish Israeli, the other being Islamic Palestinian?, do you want to replay the 1948 war-solution?
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I think leaderships from both sides are working on the third scenario.
I don’t understand why Palestinians – who are under the threat to lose everything with the present Far Far Right in Israel, if they fall again in an asymetrical conflict with Israel – would want to fight for their rights on the ‘All or Nothing’ Zionist battleground designed by their enemies.
I mean: Anti-normalization = Anti-Zionism, so what if I were a Zionist Anti-Palestine waiting for the next Intifada to grab more land? Where is the strategy to challenge the Zionist ideology & Order inside Israeli society?
If Palestinian leaderships & militants are as One-Sided nationalist ‘religious’ as Zionists, why Israeli Jews would support reforms?
I mean: Anti-normalizers don’t care at all about Israeli Palestinians promoting their ‘All or Nothing’ agenda, just like ‘Arabs’ haters in Israel.
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Neither leadership want to let their people have a straight talk about social justice, equal rights in a secular democracy.
What can we do?
Henry Weinstein
Ayla,
Frankly I don’t see how you don’t demonize people living in Ariel calling to boycott any event there.
I can understand Palestinian activists call to boycott any “normalizing” event in settlements.
I don’t understand why Israeli activists should call systematically to boycott events & people living in Ariel and other settlements. It seems to me rather self-defeating to boycott – not far from the present witch-hunt against Leftists – any possibility to debate with right-wing non-extremist settlers.
I mean the Occupation goes far beyond settlements, and the conflict Israel-Palestine & Arab world goes far beyond the Occupation. People in Ariel don’t deserve to be scapegoats for failures from Israeli leaderships.
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Another thing to tease you, Ayla I remember you teach in an university called BEN GURION University – escorted by desert dogs, according to some sources: do you think our sweet hardcore anti-normalizers would accept to debate in such a BEN GURION labelled-place, or even accept to have coffee with you & desert dogs?
I wonder, you know Rastaman Frenchy Intuition…
Sinjim
@Carl: Firstly, just so you understand where I’m coming from, I don’t believe that a sovereign Palestinian state should be the goal. For one thing, it’s become clear over 20 years that Israel and Israelis will never allow it to come about, so I might as well be wishing for dancing ponies and rainbow halos. The other thing is what if Palestinians get a state, and it’s just another Syria or Egypt or Tunisia which is entirely possible with Fatah and Hamas at the helm? What would’ve been the point of all that struggle? To go from one oppression to another? It makes more sense, to me at least, to focus on Palestinian human and civil rights. Whether that comes about as a result of one or two states is a secondary factor at best. Perhaps the difference between what you and I are saying is minute, I don’t know, but it’s an important distinction.
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I don’t agree with your prognosis at all because I don’t believe you need to get Israelis on Palestinians’ side. Israel depends on the rest of the world’s complicity to maintain its “superpower” status. Anti-normalization is directed much more at the rest of the world than it is at Israelis, in much the same way that the Anti-Apartheid Movement was.
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But let’s say you’re right. What’s your solution? That Palestinians bear quietly the efforts to mask the occupation’s effects? That they participate in events and programs where Palestinian rights count only insofar as they don’t upset Israeli Jewish privilege, such as One Voice? How are they supposed to get support internationally for that other shall-not-be-named-for-legal-reasons project that you’re suggesting (agreed with you on that point), when their own collaboration with these normalization events relate the opposite story?
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Your advice, as far as I understand it, is that Palestinians normalize the occupation and the rest of the oppression because otherwise Mark Regev or whoever will get a free ticket to Hasbara City. To be frank, I don’t find that convincing at all. Over 20 years of jaw flapping “coexistence” projects have resulted in the lowest point of existence for Palestinians as a whole. What do you expect will change in 20 more years of this nonsense, with or without Mark Regev in the picture?
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I don’t see how you or Seth or Ayla or anyone else can deny that normalization activities have had exactly zero impact on changing the dynamics of the conflict. By every measure of success, they’ve failed miserably. Am I just not understanding what you’re arguing or what? Because it strikes me as a waste of time to continue to advocate for failed strategies.
AYLA
Sorry, Henry, but I just think it’s a no-brainer not to have justice dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians in a settlement. I’m guessing they only happen there at all because it is the West Bank, and half the battle with these things is just where to have them where everyone can legally attend…
Joel
Looking at this discussion with new eyes this morning, I think the most troubling part for me is the fact that there is an increased amount of ordinary people – not just antagonistic leaders – in both Israel and Palestine who don’t belive the other side want to guarantee their fundamental rights. Hence all the increased efforts to coerce – be it with physical violence or international pressure – about the desired change.
The problem is, this conflict is not “winnable”, it is only solvable. As long as Isralies or Palestinians think they can win and guarantee those rights with coercion, the conflict continues. Only when people start wanting to live with eachother, regardless in how many states, can this seemingly endless struggle end. Yes, true reconclilliation can only come ones there is a “cold peace”, but to get there some minimum level of trust and co-operation is required.
Consequently, the illusions about the possibility to win is right now propelling this conflict towards a major confrontation, with completely unacceptable additional human suffering.
And some of us simply belive that we can and should convince ourselves and eachtoher to live together without causing more destruction and bloodshed. And all those programs and institutions that try to combine co-existance efforts with political activism are working towards this end. Real change cannot come about from any kind of coercion and that is also something that the history of this conflict proves.
AYLA
nice, Joel.
Simon Stiel
@”For all the money pumped into these programs why are there no statistics or data showing they work?”
Paul Frosh discusses what these joint projects have achieved here: http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=731
The novelist Samir El Youssef asked, was Edward Said, the author of Orientalism, providing a cover-up for Israel when he collaborated with Daniel Barenboim?
Who “profited” from these programmes? The members of the Parents Circle certainly didn’t and neither did those Israeli academics who are vilified by the government and media for talking to Palestinians.
Yovav Kalifon
This line caught my eye:
“The most poignant moment for me, however, was when a Palestinian teenager near the end of the program asked an Israeli teenager if he would still join the army and serve in the occupied territories, to which the answer was “yes”. To me, this said it all.”
The explanation for this line is that the Israeli sees the conflict and his role in it differently than the writer might expect. It seems meeting Israelis did not help the write see them for who they truly are.
To restore some balance into the equation, I ask:
If your cousin was arrested for violent activity against Israel or if your neighbor’s house got demolished for taking part in criminal activity, would you tell them to stop their actions and keep their friends from taking similar actions against Israel?
If your answer is that you acknowledge their “rights to resist the occupation”, then you are no better than the Israeli teen who accept the role of sharing the responsibility of defending Israel against your cousins and neighbors.
To end this cycle, the two sides should at least meet more often and try to see the conflict through the eyes of the other. If you can’t see the conflict from the Israeli perspective, don’t be surprised that Israelis can’t sympathize with violent actions against themselves.
For us to reach this level of understanding, some normalization would be required, so let’s keep meeting and talking in relaxed settings until we learn to deal with each other in a nicer fashion.