The Day After

Yesterday's (and probably tomorrow's) news | Non-Fiction | Fresh Soup

I wrote the piece below a week ago, when all eyes were on Gaza. I’m writing this introduction in the midst of Iran’s attack on Israel, while I and much of the world gaze at a sky lit up by rockets and drones that may appear like shooting stars, but they aren’t the kind that grant wishes: they only make fears comes true. But even as we look up in fear of Iran, we must remember that Gaza, Netanyahu, and the destructive government he helms are all still here.

Image by Uriel Sinai / Stringer

A couple of weeks ago, I watched the Egyptian-American comic Ramy Youssef’s opening monologue on Saturday Night Live. Towards the end, he talked of praying for God to “stop the violence” and “free the people of Palestine,” and the audience responded with raucous applause. As a world-weary Israeli, I diagnosed the enthusiastic crowd as liberal, pro-Palestinian New Yorkers. But a second later, Youssef said he was also praying for all the hostages to be freed, and was met with equally loud applause. That was when I understood that, unlike my social media feeds, where there is a clear-cut split between Israel-lovers and Israel-haters, the rest of humanity is mostly very human: when it sees a panicked young Israeli woman being dragged into Gaza, it wants her to be released; when it sees a hungry Palestinian family huddled under a makeshift tent, mourning its dead, it wants their suffering to stop. Yes, I know, a lot of people will now jump up to explain that you can’t compare Palestinian suffering to Israeli suffering, or Israeli suffering to Palestinian suffering, and that one side is to blame while the other side was simply left with no choice. But beyond all the explanations and reasonings, however impassioned, there remains one basic truth: suffering is suffering, and it’s only human to want it to end as soon as possible.

For the past six months, I’ve been living the same day over and over again in my mind, waking up every morning to another October 7. On TV, an endless loop of coverage exposes more unimaginably heroic acts, more horrific atrocities, more investigations, more heartbreaking testimonies from that terrible day. The passing of time has not moved me even a millimeter farther away from that Saturday morning. Because how can anything really be different if the hostages are still held in Gaza, the evacuated Israelis still can’t go back to their homes, and I can still hear the din of helicopters bringing injured soldiers to the hospital near my home?

The government refuses to discuss the future, silencing any talk of what is known as “the day after.” As far as it’s concerned, October 7 can go on forever. Neither the strategy nor the slogans have changed at all in the past six months, and feeble Israeli leadership continues to give us vague promises of a “decisive victory” instead of setting realistic goals and trying to meet them.

For months, Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant has been insisting that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is trembling in his underground hiding place while Israel’s tanks roll overhead, and Netanyahu has been assuring us that IDF troops will be entering Rafah any minute now. The government seems content to go on making empty promises indefinitely, while we citizens shelter in the warm cradle of this never-ending catastrophe. Any consideration of how Gaza will be rebuilt, any step toward a clear and stable future—these are  taboo. And yet there is regular talk of renewed Jewish settlement in Gaza and “voluntary transfer” of the Palestinians, both in the Knesset and at the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

“After what they did on October 7,” declared Netanyahu’s office, “we must not give them the gift of a state.” To which I would like to offer a small comment: a state is not something you receive as a gift or as punishment. Statehood is a basic right of every nation. The October 7 massacre was horrifying, but the Palestinians’ right to elect their own leaders and control their own destiny has existed – and been withheld – for over 50 years, and it has no expiration date. In order to prevent the Palestinians from realizing these rights, Netanyahu long ago developed a doctrine that views Hamas as an asset. And indeed, in terms of their basic worldview, there is complete alignment between Hamas and the messianic rightwing that sets the agenda in Netanyahu’s government: both sides agree that there is room for only one nation in this land; their only quarrel is which one. For Netanyahu and his extremist ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, Hamas is infinitely preferable to any other Palestinian enemy that might be equally cruel and determined but is willing to compromise on a two-state solution.

I’m not planning to leave my home willingly any time soon, and my Palestinian neighbors are also here to stay. People are generally not eager to give up their land or their freedom. And this is something neither Netanyahu nor Sinwar can change. The only feasible change is to replace this disastrous leadership with one that has tired of the chaotic reality in which we are trapped, and is not afraid to strive for a better tomorrow.

Translated by Jessica Cohen