Israel, Palestine and Peace

Essays

Amos Oz

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 1995
• ISBN:
  9780547564043
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

"Powerful" essays from a founder of the Peace Now movement and advocate for a two-state solution ( Library Journal ). The haunting poetry of [Oz's] prose and the stunning logic of his testimony make a potent mixture." — Washington Post Book World Amos Oz was one of the first voices of conscience to advocate for a two-state solution. As a founding member of the Peace Now movement, Oz has spent over thirty-five years speaking out on this issue, and these powerful essays and speeches span an important and formative period for understanding today's tension and crises. Whether he is discoursing on the role of writers in society or recalling his grandmother's death in the context of the language's veracity; examining the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a tragicomedy or questioning the Zionist dream, Oz remains trenchant and unflinching in this moving portrait of a divided land. "[Oz is] the modern prophet of Israel." — Sunday Telegraph (UK)

Between Europe and the Negev Desert

HERE IN ISRAEL, writers pretty much enjoy (or should I say suffer?) the social status which film stars have in other countries. This is both a Jewish and Eastern European tradition. People look upon writers as pseudo-prophets, although of course the writers can never come up with the goods. Writers are the ones who are supposed to have all the answers. Israel is probably the only country in the world where a top newspaper’s leader pages will attack the hero or heroine of a novel because he or she has fallen in love with an Arab at the wrong time. The point here being that this would be in a leader, not in the books pages.

Israel is a country where the Prime Minister will often invite a poet or a writer to a personal late-night tète-à-tète in order to discuss an important matter of conscience. Indeed, I have done this myself several times. The Prime Minister will ask the writer what’s gone wrong with the nation and where it should be heading. He will admire the writer’s reply but of course ignore it just as readily. The reality is that poets and writers do not have a major impact on politicians. Israel is traditionally the land of prophets but even they were never particularly successful in influencing politicians, so it would be unrealistic to expect that present-day writers should do better than the prophets.

Even so, writers do have a certain degree of significance, and people pay attention to what they have to say. If, tomor row, I were to comment on the state of Israel’s roads, it would become a talking-point in the newspapers. Am I an expert on infrastructure? On transport? No—it’s simply because it was a writer who made the comment. Everyone here knows the names of the more important writers, and it’s highly likely that a taxi-driver will have read your books.

The Peace Now movement, to which I belong, is not a party but rather a voice, and it expands and contracts according to the current climate. When there is a clear prospect of peace, then Peace Now becomes active: we hold meetings and demonstrations, and the whole country hears about it. Equally when there is a threat of war, we come to life. There are no membership lists, nor is there an elected leadership. Peace Now is a think-tank which unites left-wing radicals, liberals from the centre, conventional Zionists, religious people and everyone else of the view that Israel should never attempt to annex the Occupied Territories, even in the event that suddenly, overnight, the Arab countries discovered deep down in their hearts that they were really Zionists and decided to offer us these Territories on a silver platter: ‘Take them, they are yours’. Even then we would be saying ‘No thank you’, because these Territories are densely inhabited by human beings who do not want to be Israelis. And there is no point in forcing people to be Israelis if they simply are not interested.

Our movement holds another belief: we are only prepared to go to war if the life of the nation is at stake. Only a threat to the existence of Israel can justify a full-scale war. Of course, there is debate as to how one assesses the prevalent danger to Israel and what the actual threat to her existence is. But no one debates the fact that the wars we led in 1948, 1967 and 1973 were a matter of life and death. Had we lost these wars, Israel would not exist today. By contrast, the Lebanon War was optional. Begin, the then Prime Minister, introduced the term ‘optional wars’ as opposed to those wars which are carried out with your back against the wall. Even the hawks and their supporters are agreed that the Lebanon War was not a matter of life and death, although they do say that the danger may have increased with time and that it was therefore right to initiate that war. This, clearly, is a dubious argument because in that case we should also declare war on Iran which might one day also be a danger to us, and in fact we would have to fight against all those who wish us dead.

One can’t compare Peace Now with the European peace movements. We are ‘peaceniks’, but we’re no pacifists: most of us involved in Peace Now have at one time or another been on the battlefield—and if the very worst were to happen and we found ourselves again with our backs to the wall we might fight again. We do not share the Western attitude of ‘make love, not war’, or the sentiment that, during the Vietnam War, led the American peace movement to view the Vietcong as the ‘good guys’, and their own countrymen as the ‘bad guys’. Virtually no one in Peace Now believes that the Palestinians in the Arab-Israeli conflict are the ‘good guys’. They are entitled to self-determination and their national independence, but they are not entitled to a medal for good behaviour. Personally, I’ve never believed that independence is something which only well-behaved people may have. If that was the case, then three-quarters of the nations of the world should have their independence confiscated, and Germany and Austria perhaps for ever.

But it’s not a question of good or bad conduct. It’s a question of survival, of the survival of everyone.

Peace Now, therefore, is not a pro-Palestinian movement, and neither is it a pacifist movement. It is, rather, a group of people who believe that the only solution to our conflict with the Palestinian people is in a calmly and fairly thought-out separation, like a separation after a failed marriage. Separation means that we have to split up our home. And since this is a small country, we have to decide who gets which bedroom, and agree on a cleaning rota for the lavatory. After this separation—and by separation I mean the setting up of two independent states—it will perhaps be possible to talk over a cup of coffee. Perhaps, after sufficient time has passed, we will be able to laugh together about the past. We might even one day be able to set up a Middle Eastern Common Market, even some kind of federation. But it won’t be possible to do that straightaway. To tear down the Berlin Wall and hug each other is not so easy in our country. Here it isn’t a question of a people divided by a wall, but rather a question of two peoples, two communities, who have been spilling each other’s blood for seventy years. There is mistrust and frustration, and both communities must spend some time alone, at least for an initial period.

It’s difficult to say how big an influence on society Peace Now has. It certainly isn’t negligible. If we take a public standpoint this does not have a direct political effect. But the emergence of Peace Now in 1978 did make it possible for, the first time, for Begin to sign the Camp David Agreement with Egypt. All in all, Peace Now represents the opinion of about half the population.

Yitzhak Shamir had indirect talks with the PLO throughout 1991: he would go to the Americans and ask them to pass things on to the PLO, and the PLO would go back to the Americans and relay their ideas to Shamir, and so on. This was crazy, since in this way a local call merely becomes a long-distance call and has little effect. Why telephone from Jerusalem to Jerusalem via Washington DC? Of course, it was a question of principle for Shamir, but a principle I can neither share nor support.

Although I have a reputation in some circles in Israel for being a dangerous radical, I’ve never considered myself to be a radical but rather a political evolutionist. I believe in gradual solutions. We should come to an agreement with the Palestinians over the division of land. Over a period of five or ten years, they could obtain their independence. During this period emotions could cool off and various Israeli fears prove unfounded. I do not believe for one minute that Jerusalem should be divided by walls and barbed wire. In Jerusalem, each individual would be able to choose his nationality, perhaps through the setting-up of half a dozen sub-districts: for ultra-Orthodox Jews, for Armenians, and so on, but the city must remain united. I have already suggested this solution to Israelis, Palestinians, Europeans and Americans, and since all were so opposed to the idea, perhaps it might work.

At the moment, there is anger and frustration rather than real hatred between Jews and Arabs. Again, it is this Western sentimentalism, rooted in Christianity, which holds that the first step should be to dissolve the anger and the second step to make peace. Normally it is the other way round. First a political agreement is made and only then do the stereotypes begin to disappear and the hatred begin to die. This is exactly what has been happening in Europe. It is not a sudden outbreak of love between the peoples of Europe which has in recent years made this continent a relatively peaceful place, but the other way round. First there was a political agreement between countries, and only then did the economic reality remove instinctive behaviour.

What you also have to consider is that the Middle East is a highly volatile part of the world where emotions run high amongst Jews and Arabs alike. It doesn’t take much to ignite passion. Only months before President Sadat visited Jerusalem in 1977, the Egyptians were saying they would never agree peace with the ‘Zionist entity’. Most Israelis were saying they would never hand back the whole of Sinai, not even for the sake of any peace accord. This ‘never’ and ‘for ever’ lasted a few months. So I’ve realized that when people in the Middle East say ‘never’ or ‘for ever’, they mean something between six months and thirty years.

Until five years ago, a solution to this conflict did not depend on us. Now, after seventy years, fifty per cent of the onus lies on Israel to resolve it, because the Palestinian position has changed. For seventy years they were saying that there should not be an Israel. They really did believe that they only had to rub their eyes and Israel would vanish like a bad dream. Now they are saying that they would be willing to consider entering into a form of co-existence with Israel. The conditions are very tough, but it is now time to do deals. The anger, the frustration and also the fanaticism of us Israelis are rooted in the fact that, for seventy years, we have been under a kind of collective death sentence. Under these circumstances there was not much one could do besides defend oneself or prevent the conflict from escalating. However, now that some Arab countries are in favour of a co-existence with Israel, we have to talk to them.

There are too many clocks ticking here at the same time. Arab fundamentalism is one of them. Perhaps the present fairly moderate stance of the Arab governments is a reaction to fundamentalism. Perhaps Arafat could now be elected, but the only way this can be tested is by free elections. Since at the moment he would most likely be elected into office, such elections should be organized as soon as possible. But whomsoever the Palestinians do elect would be Israel’s partner at any talks, whether we like him or not.

I haven’t belonged to a political party for ages now. I have often supported the Labour Party or other left-wing parties. I go to demonstrations, give lectures, write articles and essays. But I was never a professional politician, I have never stood for office. I’m not qualified for that because I would not be able to pronounce the words ‘no comment’. When I get very angry I make a sudden guerrilla-style attack from the bush and then disappear just as quickly. But I could never be a regular soldier. I’m unable to spend my life in meetings discussing tactics. Political parties are like forms of transport to me: as long as they are going in the same direction as me, I’ll use them. But I don’t have any emotional attachment to any of them.

By contrast, I have a very deep-seated attachment to the early Zionist socialists, and my intellectual and emotional views are rooted in their ideology. They had a much better grip on things than the Marxists and other European social ists. The seventy-year-long disagreement with the Arabs caused so many rifts, and it wasn’t possible to make the early Zionists’ dream of turning Israel into ‘a light unto the nations’ a reality. They had a very stark view of human nature, not a particularly optimistic one. Unlike the European socialists, they never assumed that when social conditions change, people immediately become better, and that greed, ambition or selfishness automatically disappear. On the other hand, they never allowed themselves to be seduced by Marxist simplification: that you must open people’s eyes by force in order for them to see the light. They believed that not all people are created equally, but that all have an equal right to be different. They also believed in the importance of founding small voluntary social cells, rather like extended families, in which people would operate on the basis of decency and pride, rather than achievement and material reward. If people know who they are working for, if they are working for friends in an immediate social environment, then they’d be ashamed if they exploited them and be proud when they made a contribution. Hence the early Zionist socialists’ belief that shame and pride could be more important in social life than material reward. And they were no ascetics. They never believed that one person should be as poor as the next. Why not all be equally rich? They never believed that socialism need come from above, from the state authorities and state bodies. To some extent, these people were anarchists. I would describe them, or at least some of the founding fathers of Zionist socialism, as quasi-religious social anarchists.

One of them, Aharon David Gordon, wrote that the two most satisfying human experiences are creation and responsibility, regardless of on how small or big a scale. A human being who is deprived of these satisfactions will become a monster. The Zionist socialists were very sceptical about any romantic notions that all human beings are innately good. Instead they warned that the suppressed and exploited people of the world do not simply yearn to be free but yearn also to become the suppressors and the exploiters. Admittedly, the concept of social realism has been contaminated by the Soviet Union. Were this not the case, however, then I would say that these early Zionist socialists were realistic socialists. They have a special place in my heart even though I know that their vision is, at the moment, such a far-off dream.

Israel today is an incomplete democracy, like any democracy faced with an obvious enemy, like the British or the Americans during the Second World War. And in some respects, Israel is more an anarchic state than a democracy. It’s a country in which every individual wishes not only to change or influence the country, but also to rule it him- or herself. It is a nation of four million prime ministers and each of its four million people is a self-appointed Messiah or prophet. Each individual knows best. Politics in the west usually go hand in hand with the standard of living, with the price of beer. Here in Israel, politics is a matter of life and death. It’s not something that happens somewhere on the distant horizon and that perhaps might have a moderate impact on our lives. Here, one bad decision we make could leave us dead. Not poor—dead. This is why our people are so politicized, so emotional and so involved.

Israel is a deeply democratic country because nobody accepts orders and nobody obeys automatically. But there are many holes in this democracy. Human rights are not what they should be. And when I talk of democracy in Israel, I’m not including the Occupied Territories: they are not part of Israel. To put it legalistically, they are under a military administration, and there is no such thing as a democratic military administration. In the West Bank or in Gaza there is not even the façade of democracy.

I am not Israel’s Solzhenitsyn. I’ve never run into difficulty for having spoken my mind, although people have criticized me heavily and even sent threatening letters. There is no censorship and no government pressure on me to change my views.

It’s not the army which shapes the nation, but rather the nation which shapes the army. Let me tell you a story. In June 1967 I was called up as a Reservist, and on the night before the Six Day War began, I was sitting beside the campfire with my comrades, all Reservists of different ages, and we talked about the imminent battle. At one point, the General emerged from the darkness and we fell silent. He began to tell us how he envisaged the battle. After some four sentences, he was interrupted by a plump, middle-aged corporal with glasses. Very politely, he said ‘Excuse me, General, but have you read Tolstoy’s War and Peace?’ The General replied: ‘What do you mean? Of course I’ve read it.’ ‘Are you aware that you’re about to make the same mistake which, according to Tolstoy, the Russians made in the Battle of Borodino?’ asked the Corporal. Within seconds, the whole group had entered a heated and noisy debate about Tolstoy, War and Peace, history, strategy and ethics. It turned out that the Corporal was a professor of Russian literature in Tel Aviv, while the General had a degree in philosophy from the University of Jerusalem. This is what I meant earlier when I said that it’s the nation and its sense of anarchy which forms the army. Even today, this army frequently operates like a youth movement, dependent far more on argument and debate than on carrying out orders.

The Jews from ninety-six different countries of origin, would not have come here had they not shared a common literary, liturgical and cultural tradition with other Jews. Books are what have brought them here. Oppression might just as easily have forced them to take refuge in other countries, so why was it so natural for the Ethiopians to make their home in Israel? One need spend only a couple of minutes on any street here to discover that there is no such thing as a Jewish race. Jews are not an ethnic group and the only unifying force is in their heads. What does a German Jewish intellectual who settled here in the thirties have in common with an Ethiopian Jewish villager? Certainly not a preference for Bach, Goethe or interior design. But both will have read and studied certain books, and they will both have been persecuted for being Jewish.

Modern Hebrew is currently evolving in the way that English did under Elizabeth I. Language is like molten lava, by which I mean that a writer or a poet can take huge liberties, inventing new words and forms. When I say that Hebrew is like Elizabethan English, I am not saying of course, that every writer is a new Shakespeare. At the moment, we certainly don’t have more than half a dozen Shakespeares in Tel Aviv. But there is a very great temptation to re-shape the language, to take liberties with it. It’s a great responsibility. Like any other language, Hebrew has a certain integrity which I’m keen to preserve and protect from modernization. For example, in Hebrew, the verb usually sits at the beginning of a sentence. This reflects a form of cognitive hierarchy. What’s more important? Ever since the Bible, actions have taken priority: before we discuss where, why, to what end and to whom you have done something, let’s first establish what you actually did. Languages reflect in a very profound way a certain cultural ethos, a system of values. I believe that the Hebraic value system is a good one and I’d like to preserve it. This system is under threat not only of modernization and from foreign languages. Hebrew is like a person with loose morals: it has slept around and been influenced by Aramaic, Arabic, Russian, German, Yiddish, English, Polish and whatnot. And all these influences have the effect of giving it enormous flexibility. One can put the verb almost anywhere in the statement and it would remain good, correct Hebrew, though it could suggest the linguistic background of the speaker. I often write such sentences, in dialogues, which removes the necessity of stating explicitly that a particular person comes from, say, Russia or the Middle East. When I write dialogue, I’m just a bystander and I always try to be a truthful bystander. But when it comes to a description or a philosophical or narrative passage, then I feel responsible for using and preserving the integrity of the Hebrew language because of the values which I believe are inherent in her deeper structure. I often end up feeling like a kind of Don Quixote trying to defend something which no longer exists.

The verb is only one example among many. In Hebrew there is no verb for ‘to have’. If I wanted to say that I have a wife or a packet of cigarettes I would have to say, quite literally, ‘there is a wife with me’, or ‘there is a packet of cigarettes with me’. This might reflect a rather archaic or nomadic attitude. Someone or something is with you today but tomorrow they may be with someone else. Nothing really belongs to you. You cannot be an owner. This too is beginning to change under the influence of foreign languages. And this structure is also something I would like to preserve. I’m not a traditionalist. I’m not rejecting slang, I’m not against the introduction of new words or of giving new meanings to old words; I’ve even invented some of my own. When I need a word which doesn’t exist, I can create one by adding a prefix or a suffix to a biblical word. Once a taxi-driver, someone who had no idea who I was, used a word I had invented in a conversation with me. That is the nearest to immortality anyone is ever likely to get. My books might be forgotten tomorrow, but this word will quite possibly survive for as long as the language itself does.

Every new wave of immigrants brings its own literary tradition with its own values. If you went to a certain literary cafe in Tel Aviv, until a few years ago, you would have come across the John Donne, the Lord Byron and the Allen Ginsberg of Hebrew literature all sitting at a table arguing with each other. All the literary traditions which have emerged out of Europe over many centuries have appeared here in just a few decades: Romanticism, Classicism, Social Realism and Surrealism. Franz Kakfa is a contemporary of Goethe here. But I would say that the influence of Russian literature has been the most significant, perhaps because the Russian immigrants were here first. I would therefore define my roots as being Hebrew and Russian. Although I can only read Russian literature in translation, I was influenced by my family and read the Russians first, becoming familiar with Western literature only later on. There are people only ten or fifteen years younger than me whose chief influence has been English or American.

I sometimes have to leave my country in order to gain some distance from the politics, the language and the literary scene. ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Integrity
• Has Israel Altered its Visions?
• The Real Cause of My Grandmother’s Death
• From Jerusalem to Cairo
• Between Europe and the Negev Desert
• Peace and Love and Compromise
• Whose Holy Land?
• Telling Stories under Siege
• The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Tragedy, Comedy and Cognitive Block
• At the Bridge
• Hizbollah in a Skullcap
• Clearing the Minefields of the Heart
• Read More from Amos Oz
• About the Author