Author: Yossi Klein Halevi
Publication: The New York Times
Date: September 7, 2002
On this Rosh Hashana, a time of
self-examination, I confess that my capacity as an Israeli for self-criticism
has been exhausted. The terrorist war that began around Rosh Hashana two
years ago and provoked official campaigns of Jew-hatred throughout the
Arab world has convinced Israelis like me who are ready to make far-reaching
compromises for peace that there will be no acceptance of a Jewish state
in the Middle East no matter how much territory we concede.
Once I was prepared to reach different
conclusions. During the first intifada that began in the late 1980's, I
served as a reservist in Gaza's refugee camps. For one month a year I became
an occupier, entering family bedrooms in the middle of the night to arrest
suspects for crimes ranging from terrorism to failure to pay taxes.
That experience taught me that both
sides share ample rights and wrongs. I was hardly alone. The first intifada
reduced to a minority those hardliners who believed that only the Jewish
people had legitimate claims to the land. The majority of us learned to
accommodate a competing narrative. We neutralized our attachment to the
biblical territories and accepted the inevitability of uprooting most of
the West Bank settlements. We offered to share our most precious possession,
Jerusalem, with our bitter enemy, Yasir Arafat.
For me, that process of examination
meant undertaking a journey into Islam and Christianity. As a religious
Jew, I went on pilgrimages to mosques and holy places, seeking to experience
something of the devotional life of my neighbors. I joined the Muslim prayer
line and learned the power of its choreographed surrender. I prayed in
a refugee camp that I had once patrolled as a soldier.
In turn, I sought from Palestinians
an acknowledgement that I wasn't a crusader or a colonialist but an exiled
son returning home. I waited for Palestinian leaders to tell their people
what the late Yitzhak Rabin told us: that we must withdraw from our exclusive
claim to the land. Those words never came.
Few Palestinians seem prepared even
now to examine their own share of responsibility for the conflict. Instead,
most remain barricaded in a self- righteous understanding of history, apportioning
all innocence to themselves and all blame to us. Perhaps their inability
to acknowledge the historical complexity of this conflict is understandable:
The Palestinians, after all, were its losers. Yet that failure led them
to commit their greatest blunder in a history of missed opportunities.
By declaring war two years ago against an Israeli government that was as
far left as any in history, they turned Israelis like me from supporters
of Ehud Barak into supporters of Ariel Sharon.
What the first intifada was for
Israelis, this intifada should be for Palestinians: a precious moment of
self-examination. The Oslo process failed because of an asymmetry of self-criticism:
Only one side came to the realization that this is a conflict between two
legitimate national movements. The time has come for Palestinians to partition
their sense of historical justice. They need to admit that much of their
suffering, especially now, has been self-inflicted. And they need to confront
the repeated moral failures of their leaders, from supporting Nazi Germany
to backing Saddam Hussein.
Yet so far, there are few signs
of moral unease. An ad placed earlier this summer by Palestinian intellectuals
urging an end to suicide bombings because they are ineffective isn't good
enough. Few Palestinians have challenged the historical revisionism now
increasingly prevalent in Arab culture that denies the ancient roots of
Jews in this land, the existence of the gas chambers and even Arab involvement
in the Sept. 11 attacks.
In my journey into Palestinian Islam,
I encountered the profound Muslim ability to live daily life with a constant
awareness of mortality - an awareness that can create humility, a prerequisite
for reconciliation between enemies. Peace will come only through mutual
introspection and atonement. Many Israelis went far in trying to understand
Palestinian claims and grievances. To resume that necessary process among
Israelis now requires a self-critical moral dialogue among Palestinians.
Yossi Klein Halevi, Israel correspondent
of The New Republic, is the author of "At the Entrance to the Garden of
Eden: A Jew's Search for Hope with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land."
