By Anton Goodman
Summary: Peacemaking is a stratified process with each level an essential part of the integrated whole. When the political level is detached from the societal level, the popular support needed is lost. When society is more engaged in the process than the government, there is a lack of agency. When neither society nor political leaders are engaged in the process, there is intractable conflict.
In Israel-Palestine, there has been no formal peace process for over twenty years. The conflict has become ingrained in the psyches of both peoples, with loss of life, terrorism, and the military occupation of over 4.5 million Palestinians seen as a fact of life. Within this desperate situation, there are Israelis and Palestinians working together for peace and to end the occupation. But their numbers are few and their impact is limited. This article presents a personal perspective of working for peace within an intractable conflict, and the lessons that this might teach us all.
“In all my writings, my starting point has always been what I know, my own experience of this world I live in, my experience of myself… However, it has always been my hope in my writing that, by bearing witness to certain specific experiences of the world, I will be able to disclose something universally human, specific experience only being a way and a means of saying something about being in general, about people in today’s world, about the crisis of modern-day humanity—in other words, those matters that concern us all.” – Václav Havel
Documenting peace is easiest when peace has been reached, or at least is in sight; when agreements have been signed, or at least written; and when hatchets are being buried and the process of reconciliation has begun. In these cases, we can look back with the wisdom of hindsight and with the buoying justification that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” (1). We can isolate defining factors, events, and people who were seminal in achieving progress, and we can draw broader lessons for humanity in replicating these successes.
But what can we document when peace is in retreat, when agreements have been shredded, and when hatchets are being sharpened around us? (2). Such is the situation that we find ourselves in in Israel-Palestine, the world’s most intractable conflict. In this context, and as a peace activist on the ground, how can I document anything but bloodshed, the daily trampling of human rights, and ever-growing fanaticism and hatred? Certainly, this tends to be the main focus of documentation surrounding the conflict, bringing data to drive home the hopeless reality.
In the face of escalating violence, we must seek out humanity—like the pink cyclamen that flower in between rocks, surprising us with their beauty and radiating hope for the future. And so, inspired by the words of the great Václav Havel, who went from a playwright and political prisoner under Soviet rule to the first President of the Czech Republic: instead of documenting peace, I offer a story. Or rather, I share a specific experience, which might draw light on the impact of conflict on our humanity and the process of germinating peace in the unkindest climate.
The Pumpkin
My colleague at work comes from a rural Palestinian town inside Israel. Her family are farmers, and each season brings different produce. She has arrived late to our staff retreat, straight from her father’s hospital bed, but bearing a slew of pumpkins of prize-winning size. She arrives as we finish an awkward introduction to the idyllic Kibbutz hosting our meeting (3). Our Palestinian co-director notes the olive trees on the Kibbutz immediately. The gnarly, massive trunks are clearly much older than the Kibbutz. “What was here before the Kibbutz?” he asks, already knowing the answer. There was a group of small Palestinian villages in this area, in the invisible but not-to-distant past of 1948. “We moved the olive trees from our yard into the public space,” says our host, a local entrepreneur advancing Jewish-Arab partnerships. “I’m allergic to olive blossom.”
He goes on to tell us that the Kibbutz has developed a tradition around the olive trees. Every olive season the kids on the Kibbutz go out and harvest the olives. Well-coordinated and with access to the Kibbutz’s equipment, they pick hundreds of kilograms, enough to produce a small-run of their own olive oil. The oil is then packaged and sold locally. But the real pride of the Kibbutz is that the sales cover the costs of their youth who participate in the Journey to Poland: a study tour of Holocaust sites, attended by around 25,000 Israeli high school students yearly. There is an uncomfortable silence as this sinks in, and then our Palestinian co-director explodes, caught between the injustice and the surrealism that surrounds us.
“I’ll take two pumpkins,” I tell my colleague. “One for me and one for a Palestinian friend.” They must be over eight kilos each, maybe even ten, and I explain to her that I will take one to a family who lives in a farming village but doesn’t own land. Or to be more precise, they don’t have access to their lands, which have been gradually appropriated for Jewish settlements and army bases over the last thirty years, until they have been left with nothing. Farming is a slim source of income, but in Palestinian farming villages, it provides a foothold and a constant source of food, which can make or break a family. Without land, life is even more precarious.
Taking a pumpkin into a Palestinian village is nothing short of planning an undercover operation. My friend has adamantly refused for me to visit his home for many years, worrying for my safety and not wanting to draw attention to himself. His son, on the other hand, has more spirit and has been inviting me for many months to pay him a visit. I decide that this is the perfect opportunity. “We will tell anyone who asks that you are a foreigner,” the son says as I put the pumpkin in the back of his car at a neutral meeting ground. “And we will only speak in English.”
Tatbia, or anti-normalization, has become a social norm across Palestine, making Israeli-Palestinian activities and interaction almost impossible (4). While the ideology of tatbia is clear—refusing to fig-leaf our relations, while ignoring human rights abuses—the practice is murky. There are instances of neighbors reporting on each other to the authorities, using tatbia as a tool in local blood feuds and squabbles (5). “You shouldn’t drive through here,” my friend’s son tells me as we cut through a neighboring town into his. “It is dangerous these days.” “I know,” I respond carefully. The stone throwing has increased in recent weeks, with local youths offered 50 Shekel to throw stones and 100 Shekel to throw Molotov cocktails at passing Israeli cars, by different wings of Palestinian militia. Lacking its own currency, even terrorism in Palestine is pegged to the Israeli Shekel.
The car journey of all of five minutes takes us into a Palestinian town that is less than four kilometers from my house but virtually inaccessible. It is, however, more accessible than my town for my Palestinian friend’s son. “They won’t give me an entry permit,” he begins in a familiar conversation that we have been having for months, even years. “I don’t know why. What have I done?” When we reach my friend’s home and I surprise him with the pumpkin, he grows upset with his son. “If you could have told me you were coming, we would have made a meal.” He puts biscuits in my arms, while his wife prepares a bag containing homemade olive oil, jam, and Coke bottles packed with dried grape leaves. Palestinian hospitality is intense, with hosts unsatisfied until the guest is completely overwhelmed. Children and grandchildren pop around to visit, and each is shown the massive pumpkin in the kitchen.
When it is time to go, my friend decides to ride back with us. We reach the main junction of the village, covered in large murals of Palestinian liberation and a monument to the fallen. When we stop the car to get out and take a look, my friend is wracked with a fear I don’t think is justifiable. “Don’t get out of the car,” he implores me. The murals carry the classic images of a traditionally dressed Palestinian woman holding a key, a giant map of what once was, and the alAqsa mosque standing proudly above it all. It is the monument that interests me most. “It is commemorating the massacre in our town,” I am told.
Upon returning home, I sit on the internet reading news reports from 1989, during the First Intifada (6), detailing how the Israeli border police units carried out an indiscriminate massacre of Palestinians following a stone throwing incident. There are eyewitness accounts of the police intimidating and provoking the Palestinian residents of the town in the days building up to the stone throwing (7), after which the border police responded with unrestrained violence and live fire. The Israeli army launched a report into the events, ultimately moving the commanding officer to a different posting (8). Those killed in the massacre carry the same family name as my friend’s family.
“My parents don’t know what to do with the pumpkin,” the son calls me the next day. I try to understand if this is because they are unused to pumpkin or if it’s just the intimidating size. “Don’t worry,” he says. “My wife is going to them this evening and she will cook it with my mother. They will make food for all of us.”
Through my work, I meet and speak to many groups, from young Israeli Jews soon-to-be conscripted into the army to senior diplomats with perspectives informed by global affairs. No matter who I am speaking with, there is always a question about what a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might look like. This is often accompanied by thoughts about the lack of suitability of any of the known options and the lack of trust that typifies Israeli-Palestinian relations.
Such is the nature of an intractable conflict: that those involved are well-versed in the obstacles to peace and illiterate on the steps needed to extricate themselves. In response to these questions, I reiterate my belief in a two-state solution, which is now hanging by a thin thread. More importantly, I try to focus the conversation on the human reality, the implication of conflict and occupation on people’s lives, and the bruised humanity you find in these communities. There is certainly despair in these stories, but I believe that despair and hope are not diametrically opposed—rather, they are two sides of the same coin. The solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may eventually be defined by lines on a map, but it must originate in the values of human rights and justice.
About the Author
Anton Goodman is a professional activist working for peace, equality, and integration in Israeli society by helping to build connections between Israelis and Palestinians on a grassroots level. He is the Director of Partnerships at Rabbis for Human Rights and serves on the board of Oz VeShalom, the Orthodox Jewish Peace Movement in Israel. Anton has worked to promote partnership and equality for Arab citizens of Israel at the Abraham Initiatives and has led national efforts to counter the rise of the Jewish extreme right.
References
Photo Caption: The author next to a mural in a Palestinian village
1. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.” Speech given at the National Cathedral, March 31, 1968.
2. https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/11/1131112
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz
4. https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5039152,00.html
5. Tatbia is also the reason that no names of people or places are used in this story, for while we might learn more from the experience, there is a small risk that they might pay a high price.
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Intifada
7. https://www.wrmea.org/1989-june/the-boarder-guards-and-the-massacre-in-nahalin.html
8. https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files2/dvkh_shnty_-_1989_hprvt_zkvyvt_hdm_shtkhym.pdf