This past Lent, I set myself a different sort of discipline of reading. I decided to read some books I have on the Israeli-Palestinian question. I read six books altogether, and here I am going to reflect briefly on each of them, and then consider some of the commonalities in their approach to the vexed, almost intractable, question of how to find peace and justice in the troubled “Holy Land”. The books I read have been written by two Jews (one an American rabbi, the other an Israeli Jew), three Palestinians (one a Muslim, and two Christian Palestinians) and lastly, an American Protestant, a former President of the United States, no less.
To be honest, I did not read all of them in the six-week Lenten period. I gave myself a head-start by reading Rabbi Michael Lerner’s book, Embracing Israel/Palestine: A Strategy to Heal and Transform the Middle East (Berkeley, Calif: Tikkun Books, 2012), during our annual camping holiday in February.
As mentioned above, Rabbi Lerner is an American Jew, but has made many trips to Israel, spending time on a kibbutz as a twenty-two year old, In an introduction, he tells the reader that he grew up in “a Zionist household” where David Ben Gurion, Abba Eban, and Golda Meir visited as he was growing up (p.13), and on trips to Israel he has had conversations with many Palestinians, Israeli government officials, and many other Jews, both “Orthodox Jews” and “labor Zionist secularists” (p. 22).
Rabbi Lerner maintains that both Israeli Jews and Palestinians are suffering from PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). The Jews’ PTSD stems from generations, indeed centuries, of persecution and discrimination, especially in Europe, and culminating in the last century in the Holocaust (also called the Shoah). Palestinians, on the other hand, are suffering from the effects of Jewish immigration to Palestine, the establishment of the State of Israel, which also resulted in “Al- Nakba” (the Catastrophe), namely the flight of many Palestinian Arabs from the homes and lands, and subsequent refugee status. There is also the ongoing disruption to Palestinian lives by the Israeli government’s security measures, and the occupation of the West Bank, and so forth.
A helpful feature of Lerner’s book is a fairly comprehensive overview of the history of the issue from the rise of Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel, until the time the book was written (that is, around 2010/11). He also aims to outline a strategy to bring peace, offering both political and social solutions. At heart, he states, people must be enabled to put the values of “the left hand of God” (compassion, generosity, justice, love, and so forth) over the values of “the right hand of God”, that is, a desire for domination driven by fear.
Lerner puts forth a series of different possibilities for the future, from a two-state solution, or two states wth overlapping electorates (Israeli Arabs would become citizens of Palestine, and Israeli Jews living in Palestine would be citizens of Israel, but both could live anywhere within Israel/Palestine), to a one-state solution. Lerner’s own preference is for a two-state solution. He outlines what he calls “Tikkun’s Proposal for Two States at Peace” (pp. 292-95). Tikkun meaning “healing and transformation” in Hebrew, is the name of a magazine that Lerner has edited. Among other things, this calls for two states (reverting to pre-1967 borders, with some small exchanges of land), Jerusalem the capital of both Israel and Palestine, an international force to keep peace and a joint peace police, reparations for Palestinian refugees offered by the international community, and a peace and reconciliation commission. An interesting proposal is that under the “two states with overlapping electorated” proposal, there is proposed “a jointly-run army to protect [the] two states from external enemies” (p. 296).
Amos Oz (1939-2018) was an Israeli Jew, a writer and academic (at one time professor of Hebrew Literature at Ben Gurion University of the Negev). His little book, Help Us To Divorce: Israel & Palestine: Between Right and Right (London: Vintage, 2004) contains two essays, originally delivered as speeches in Germany in 2003.
The first essay, “Between Right and Right” states the right of both peoples, Palestinians and Israelis, to the land. “The Palestinians are in Palestine because Palestine is the homeland of the Palestinian people”, he writes (p. 5). He goes on, “The Israeli Jews want exactly the same land for exactly the same reasons...and “Rivers of coffee drunk together cannot extinguish the tragedy of two peoples claiming, and I think rightly claiming, the same small country as their one and only national homeland in the whole world” (p. 8).
Oz was an early supporter of the two-state solution, which he sees as a necessary “compromise”. He writes that back in 1967 he was “among the very first and very few Israeli Jews who immediately advocated the idea of negotiating the future of the West Bank and Gaza not with Jordan or Egypt but with the Palestinian population and with the Palestinian leadership and yes, with the PLO, who at that time refused even to pronounce the name Israel” (11). Like Lerner, Oz also sees this conflict as being between “two victims”.
While Oz appears to approach this topic in a more pessimistic frame of mind, though he also makes the case with humour, he calls for a fair divorce, which will mean sacrifices on both sides. The solution must include a re-settlement of Palestinian refugees, a programme to which Israel must contribute, but the re-settlement must be within the Palestinian state. Here Lerner takes a different tack by stating that Israel should “let 20.000 Palestinian refugees return each year for the next thirty years to the pre-1967 borders of Israel and provide them with housing” (295). In a postscript, Oz writes about his support for the “Geneva Accords” (also known as “The Roadmap”): more on this below.
Izzeldin Abuelaish’s book is the most personal of the books I read. In his I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity (London: Bloomsbury, 2012 - originally published Random House Canada in 2010), he details his life growing up in Gaza.
Though his grandfather had a house and land in a village in southern Palestine, Houg near present-day Sderot, when the Nakba broke out, he decided to move the family temporarily to Gaza. They never had an opportunity to move back; Izzeldin was born in the refugee camp of Jabalia, and he grew up there and spent much of his life there.
Abuelaish’s account gives the most telling insight into the frustrations, the harrasment and obstruction (some quite petty) that Palestinians are subjected to by the Israeli Defence Force, and the border security system (when moving from Gaza into Israel, for instance). Abueliash somehow never let this get him down. He worked hard, and, it must be said, had some great opportunities, and good mentoring and help from teachers. He was able to gain qualification as a doctor, and became a specialist in fertility issues. This expertise led to an opportunity to work in Israel, in a hospital in Tel Aviv, where he formed friendships with many Israeli Jewish colleagues.
There is some heart-rending reading in this book. The account of his attempts to get back from overseas to be beside his seriously ill wife, who had been moved to a hospital in Israel, when he was held up at the border for hours on end is harrowing. Then, in January 2009, when Gaza was under seige by Israeli forces, his house was hit by a shell from a tank, and three of his girls were killed. (This is not a spoiler as it is written about in a Foreword by a Jewish friend of his, Dr. Marek Glezerman, and noted on the back cover.) Through all of this, Abuelaish refuses to succumb to hatred. He remains convinced that, with opportunities to get to know one another, Israelis and Palestinians can learn to understand each other and live together.
The next two books are both written by Palestinian Arab Christians. Like Abuelaish, both of their families lost land; and both, naturally enough, focus upon the question of land. Naim Ateek is Palestinian Arab Christian, an Anglican clergyman, and also an Israeli citizen. In his book, Justice And Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990), he writes about the need for justice to be the foundation for a solution.
His emphasis is upon the injustice of the loss of land by Palestinians. However, he maintains that the Palestinian Arabs must recognize the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state, especially in light of the Holocaust. On the other hand, Israeli Jews must recognize the injustice perpetrated against Palestinians. A strength of Ateek’s book is that he begins by clarifying what it means to speak of a Palestinian Arab, pointing out that some are not Muslim but Christian, where they are located (both within Israel, as Israeli citizens, in the West Bank, and elsewhere outside of these territories (see pp. 4-5; and his own discussion of his identity, pp. 13-17).
Ateek is also interested in developing a (Palestinian) theology of liberation. One of the strengths of his book (from a Christian point of view) is his engagement with the Bible, and the theological foundation of his considerations. When it comes to his consideration of political solutions, however, he follows the path of the two-state solution. He also signals the idea of a “confederation between Israell and Palestine”, and beyond that a “federation of states in the Middle East” (172). This is an idea also floated by Lerner when he proposes the possibility of a Middle Eastern Economic Union (like the EU in Europe).
Yohanna Katanacho, The Land of Christ: A Palestinian Cry (Eugene: Pickwick, an imprint of Wipf & Stock, 2013) is also concerned with the question of the land, and is written with reference to biblical and theological considerations.
Katanacho is described on the back cover as “a Palestinian Evangelical” (a Google search indicates that he assists as a pastor in a Baptist church, as well as an independent church). He is the Academic Dean for Bethlehem Bible College.
Like Ateek, Katanacho begins by talking about his identity, in order to provide a personal context for his “presentation and interpretation of biblical texts” (1-4). He also writes about how he learned the importance of “loving [his] enemy”. One of the strengths of Katanacho’s book is that he poses three important questions: (1) What are the borders of the Land of Israel. Here, among other matters, he shows the difficulty of determining these from biblical references. An important insight, however, is that the land of Canaan and the land of Israel overlap. (2) Who is Israel? Katanacho explores the pluraity of meanings this term has in both the Old and New Testaments. He also discusses the ethnically mixed nature of the identity “Jew”. (3) How did God give Israel the Land? Here he raises the question of whether the giving of the land was a permanent condition, or depended upon Israel’s faithfulness to their covenant relationship with God.
This last question is carried over into a further chapter which is devoted to a “theology of the land”. Here he considers a biblical framework for understanding the land, looking at the land before Abraham, the land and Abraham, and the land and Christ. Katanacho argues that Christ is the owner of the land; and that the land has a “unique mission” as a land of “faith, peace, reconciliation, and hope” (43). This leads to a chapter developing “The Kairos Theology”, which discusses and develops a theology based on an ecumenically developed “Palestinian Kairos Document” (this document is provided in full in an Addendum).
Katanacho concludes his book with an interesting exegetical consideration of the story of Hagar. He sees this story as a message of hope, and Hagar is read as a victim, or a representive of an oppressed person (people).
The final book I read (which I finished after Easter) is by former US President, Jimmy Csrter. His book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006, with an Afterword, 2007) provides a clear overview of the history of the Arab-Israeli problem (wars, peace proposals, intifadahs [uprisings] and so forth), laced with many personal insights, discussions and anecdotes about his meetings with various leaders and his attempts to bring peace.
One senses that Carter moves from being a supporter of Israel and holding suspicions of Palestinian motives to learning more about their plight and so becoming a strong advocate for their rights. Nonetheless, he avers that the US must be an “honest broker” and not in either side’s “pocket”.
One of the useful apsects of his book is the provision of appendices whihc provide the text of UN resolutions (e.g. #242 [1967] and 338 [1973] 465 [1980]), and Peace Accords, e.g. the 1978 Camp David Accords, the Framework for the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty (1978), and an Arab Peace Proposal (put forward by the king of Saudi Arabia) in 2002. In his book he also describes and discusses other proposals, such as the Oslo Agreement (1993), and the Geneva Initiative (based on the Quartet’s 2003 Roadmap, the “Quartet” being the US, UN, Russia and the EU) drawn up in October 2003. He also outlines work done under the presidencies of Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, as well as his own efforts during his presidency from 1977-81. After he left office, he founded the Carter Center (with his wife Rosalynn), and this has played a role in observing a number of elections in Palestine and Israel, in 1996, 2005 and 2006.
Carter several times emphasises the fact that many Israelis desire peace and would be very happy to swap land for security. Palestinians also desire peace. A number of Palestinian leaders have attempted to clear a path towards resolving issues. Unfortunately, especially in recent years, one gains the impression that the Israeli Government has often acted in bad faith. Nevertheless, even amongst the Israeli leadership there have been those who have taken initiatives towards peace, and some who have supported peace efforts, or who have seen the need for work towards peace, even despite wider suspicions and problems.
One overriding impression gained in reading all of these books is that there is a recognition on both sides of the rights and the needs of the other. Many Israelis and Palestinians would love to see a way forward which would bring peace and prosperity to both communities of peoples. Both Amos Oz and Izzeldin Abuelaish expressed the conviction that if people only got to know one another then progress would be made. Of course, there are voices missing from this conversation: those of the radical, or conservative members of society: Hamas, radical “terroristic” Palestinians, right-wing Israelis, Jewish Zionist settlers, Orthodox Jews; and outside of the Palestinian/Israeli camps, say, Zionist Christians. Nevertheless, it is fun and interesting to imagine what would emerge if these six had been able to sit down together to discuss solutions (even now we might imagine the five who remain alive doing so).
Lerner’s and Carter’s books are most useful for providing an overview of the history of the Israel/Palestine issue, Ateek, Katanacho, and Lerner provide theological reflection (while also providing some discussion of the issue and possible solutions), and Abuelaish gives a most moving and personal insight into life as a Palestinian Arab in Gaza.
Postscript: My own solution to the issue is to have a two-state solution, but one which recognizes a very close symbiotic relationship between the two states. So, in a sense, it would be to see the two states operate a kind of confederation. There would be a single, common defence force comprising both Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs, which would be responsible for the defence against external aggression on behalf of both states. Jewish settlers (and settlements) currently on the West Bank would be permitted to remain, provided they were prepared to be citizens of, and live under the laws and administration of, the Palestinian state. They would, thus, be in the same situation as Israeli Arabs are in Israel (provided, of course, that in both cases they are not treated as second-class citizens). Each state would have its own police force. Within the wider region and among Israel's neighbours, there would be clear recognition of Israel's right to exist as a state. And it would be helpful if some sort of regional economic union was established. Issues such as the right of return (or settlement within other states) of Palestinian refugees would need to be worked out on a regional basis. I recognize that such solutions would require a great deal of trust to be established not only within Israel/Palestine, but regionally as well (and international support would need to be strong). I guess the first step is for those who live in Israel and Palestine, Jews and Arabs, to truly get to know one another. And, here's a thought - perhaps a radical one - every new recruit to the Israel Defence Force should be required as part of their training to read Abuelaish's book I Shall Not Hate, so that they get a sense of what it is like to be on the receiving end of IDF actions.
No comments:
Post a Comment