Less than twenty minutes after news of Yahya Sinwar’s death was made public, I received the first request to write a column explaining how Sinwar’s death would affect the regional war. It was from a German newspaper – the Germans are always the fastest – and it was soon followed by a barrage of other requests. After all, everyone knows that the scene in which the supervillain dies always comes just before the movie’s happy ending. Personally, I’m not convinced that the closing credits of this cruel war are about to start rolling. Just as the pager attack in Lebanon and the killing of Nasrallah haven’t resulted in a treaty with Lebanon and the return of evacuated Israelis to their homes on the northern border, the death of Sinwar won’t necessarily lead to the Israeli hostages being released and the war ending.
Bringing the hostages home and ending the war are not going to happen by themselves. The video clip showing the dying Sinwar tossing a stick at a drone will automatically stop playing on your Instagram feed at some point, but wars? Wars only end when people really want to end them and are willing to make the effort that requires. So far, that will doesn’t seem to exist in Benjamin Netanyahu, who knows that a hostage deal ending the war will mean the collapse of his right-wing messianic government and perhaps even the end of his political path.
This situation, in which a better future seems within arm’s reach and yet, somehow, the arm refuses to extend, is an old familiar experience, just like the illusory hope that in the end something will happen. Israeli society has always been very good at fervently longing for that deus ex machina to emerge on the horizon or out of the depths and save us all from our destiny. Well, I’m sorry to be a bummer, but it’s not going to happen.
A decade ago, moments before another Gaza war broke out, I wrote a column for Haaretz and the Los Angeles Times, expressing my frustration at the cognitive trap that prevents us from telling the story of the conflict in a different way. Ten years later, we’re still trapped in the same loop: more victims, more bombings, more vague promises for a rosy future and total victory.
As the cliché goes: the more things change, the more they stay the same.
I sat down to write this piece for the first time a few weeks ago. Three Israeli teenagers now buried in the ground were still smiling and laughing then, and a 16-year-old Palestinian boy whose scorched corpse has since been buried in the ground too was doubtlessly hanging out with his friends at the time. Haaretz newspaper commissioned the article for the Israel Conference on Peace it had organized.
In honor of that important event, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas wrote an awesome piece and President Obama sent an emotional text, so of course I quickly agreed to write something. After all, like everyone else, I have yearned for peace for a long time now, and during those bleak weeks, when it seemed further away than ever, the only thing left to do was write about it.
But when I tried to write something, I found that this time, unlike the good days when I could turn out those longing-for-peace texts at the rate of one every two months for every newspaper that wanted to instill in its readers a bit of hope about the future of the region, nothing came to me.
On the surface, the security situation was stable, but with the peace talks canceled and the general sense of despair that had infected even naive America, which apparently had also given up on the idea of a diplomatic solution, it was clearly only a matter of time before a murderous act would take place, to be countered by another equally murderous act. And during those depressing, humid days, I found it hard to write an article on peace without feeling like an idiot, or at the very least, like someone completely cut off from reality.
Meanwhile, summer vacation and the soccer World Cup games had begun. A few days later, the familiar regional madness began, managing to be shocking and, at the same time, totally predictable. As the cannons roared and members of the Israeli government made fiery speeches, the peace conference opened and I listened to the speeches and read the writings of many eloquent, resolute people who continued to talk about the same longed-for peace without blinking an eye, even though, or maybe because now, the earth was shaking beneath our feet.
What is it about that elusive peace so many people love to talk about, though no one has managed to bring us even a single millimeter closer to it?
A few months ago, my 8-year-old son took part in a ceremony in which all the pupils in his class were given a Bible to mark the beginning of their Bible studies. When the ceremony was over, all the pupils climbed onto the stage and sang a popular song about — what else — the yearning for peace. And at the end of the song, “God Gave You a Gift,” the children asked God to give them only one small gift: peace on Earth.
On the way home I thought a bit about that song. Unlike the other songs my son sings on Independence Day and Hanukkah commemorating battles fought fearlessly and the darkness driven away with a flaming torch, peace wasn’t something he wanted to achieve through sweat and blood; he wanted it to be given to him. As a gift, no less. And that, it seems, is the peace we long for: something we’d be very, very happy to receive as a gift free of charge. But contrary to the proven idea that we alone are responsible for our survival, peace depends on divine providence.
I think that my son is the second generation, if not the third, to be indoctrinated with the view that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been imposed on us from above. A bit like terrible weather, which we can talk about, cry about, even write songs about, but which we can’t do anything to change.
About two years ago, as part of a special writers project initiated by Haaretz, I interviewed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. During the interview, I asked him what he was doing to resolve the Middle East conflict. Netanyahu answered at length, discussing the Iranian threat and the instability of other governments in the region. But when I insisted, almost childishly, in getting an answer to my original question, he admitted that he wasn’t doing anything to resolve the conflict because the conflict was unresolvable.
It turned out that Netanyahu, a courageous former officer in an elite combat unit who had faced impossible odds in battle, thinks like my son and his classmates do when it comes to peace. I don’t want to spoil the mood of my prime minister or a class of second-grade kids, but I have a strong gut feeling that God won’t be giving us peace any time soon; we’re going to have to make an effort to achieve it on our own. And if we succeed, neither we nor the Palestinians will receive it free of charge.
Peace, by definition, is compromise between sides, and in that kind of compromise, each side has to pay a genuine, heavy price, not just in territories or money but also in a true change of worldview.
That’s why the first step might be to stop using the debilitating word “peace,” which has long since taken on transcendental and messianic meanings in both the political left and right wings, and replace it immediately with the word “compromise.” It might be a less rousing word, but at least it reminds us that the solution we are so eager for can’t be found in our prayers to God but in our insistence on a grueling, not always perfect dialogue with the other side.
True, it’s more difficult to write songs about compromise, especially the kind my son and other kids can sing in their angelic voices. And it doesn’t have the same cool look on T-shirts. But in contrast to the lovely word that demands nothing of the person saying it, the word “compromise” insists on the same preconditions from all those who use it: They must first agree to concessions, maybe even more — they must be willing to accept the assumption that beyond the just and absolute truth they believe in, another truth may exist. And in the racist and violent part of the world I live in, that’s nothing to scoff at.
This piece was first published by Los Angeles Times on July 14, 2014
Thank you for reminding me of that uncool word "compromise", which doesn't evoke quite the same heart flutter. But in the English hidden in plain sight is another word, "promise". Hope lives within that word as well as reality...living into and up to a promise requires quite a lot of individuals as well as groups and communities. You are so correct. Everything is a gift actually...life, beauty, relationships, art, music, love...unquantifiable, which does not suit a world built upon balance sheets that "prove" the worth and worthiness of this or that whether object or person. And when a person or group is objectified, well, the seeds are sown for what will follow. The last paragraph of the reprint from 14 July 2014 caught me...my 42 wedding anniversary! Now of course it is 10 years on.
"But in contrast to the lovely word that demands nothing of the person saying it, the word “compromise” insists on the same preconditions from all those who use it: They must first agree to concessions, maybe even more — they must be willing to accept the assumption that beyond the just and absolute truth they believe in, another truth may exist. And in the racist and violent part of the world I live in, that’s nothing to scoff at."
No relationship just happens. It never just comes fully formed. If you hope to enjoy the promise of it, you will have to come along into a space that is open to challenging set ways of being, it seems to me.
It is deeply true that my truth may not be the same as yours. This is as true of individuals as of communities. I keep wondering when the full history of the agony of the Near East region, from European colonialism, to world wars, to partition and all that has followed will finally be known and dealt with in the humane way it should be?
Like you I live in a deeply racist, white supremacist, leaning into christo-fascist space. We have learned these ways of being. Unlearning them is the work of a lifetime. That too seems part of the promise in engaging the hard work of compromise.
It’s not yet 7am here in Montreal and here I am crying. Thank you Etgar… I grew up (in Israel) with the same belief of this “gift” of peace. You’ve described it so well. My heart breaks seeing no hope of this compromise you speak of. At least not from greedy and power hungry politicians. But people like you give me hope. I don’t care if my family (who supports Netanyahu) continues to accuse me of being “naive”, I will continue to speak of this compromise. We must never lose our humanity. Thank you for reminding me that it exists!