Most Israelis, Palestinians want peace, but peace means different things

The view that each side has of itself is extremely different from the view that the other side has of it.

By GERSHON BASKIN
EITAM HILL, on the outskirts of Efrat in Gush Etzion, last September. (photo credit: GERSHON ELINSON/FLASH90)
EITAM HILL, on the outskirts of Efrat in Gush Etzion, last September.
(photo credit: GERSHON ELINSON/FLASH90)
How can we imagine a genuine peace process in which people will not be forced to evacuate their homes? How could real peace exist if we are unable to live in the places we deeply identify with and view as part of our history and heritage? How can we imagine a genuine process of reconciliation without enabling all Jews and all Palestinians who desire to live in their homeland to be able to do so? Can there ever be peace with one side having control over the other?
Most of the 109 Israelis and Palestinians that I have held 30-minute consultations with over the past three weeks in my search for the road to a new Israeli-Palestinian vision have spoken about their true desire to live in peace. They weren’t just telling me what I wanted to hear; there was a high level of sincerity in their words. I have been deeply involved in the pursuit of peace for the past 40 years; there is little that I have not heard, and it is not easy to pull the wool over my eyes.
Living in peace has different meanings to different people, and the emphases that Israelis and Palestinians place on what peace looks like are different. Israelis, of course, speak first and foremost about security and then secondly about legitimacy. Palestinians speak first and foremost about freedom and equality, which includes being treated with dignity, and then legitimacy.
The view that each side has of itself is extremely different from the view that the other side has of it. Our life experience in this conflict shapes, to a large degree, how we perceive ourselves and how we perceive “the other.” Most Palestinians believe that they really want peace, but the Israelis do not. Most Israelis believe that they really want peace, but that the Palestinians do not.
I would like to share some of the real-life stories that I have heard and seen with my own eyes. I will begin with a Palestinian story.
H. IS a good friend. He is Palestinian, born and raised in a village that is adjacent to Efrat. In fact, he owns land that is today within Efrat’s expanding municipal boundaries.
H. believes deeply in peace and has always had Israeli friends and colleagues. He even spent a semester several years ago studying and living in Kibbutz Ketura at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies.
In full disclosure, H. and I have registered a joint Israeli-Palestinian company in Israel in the field of medical innovations and supplies.
H. is married to a Palestinian from east Jerusalem who has a blue Israeli ID card. They have an apartment in Shuafat. They have three young girls, their eldest with Down syndrome.
For more than five years, H. has tried to receive permission to live with his wife and daughters in Jerusalem. The education framework for his Down syndrome daughter is in Jerusalem, there is no such excellent facility in Ramallah, where he works and has an apartment which he has slept in for much of the last years. Until recently, the permit he received from the Israeli authorities allowed him to stay in Jerusalem until 10 p.m. Until recently, living together with his wife and daughters in Jerusalem was a crime. During the past months, in the post-corona world, he was once again forced to live in the West Bank and not with his family, because the permit that he held could not be used for much of the past months.
Last week, he took me to visit his family’s village, Wad Rahhal, known in Hebrew as Wadi Rachel. On the way there he told me a story that I have heard before, and H. said every Palestinian knows the story. It is called the story of the donkey. It goes like this:
One day a Jewish farmer asked his Palestinian neighbor if he could borrow his neighbor’s donkey. The Palestinian farmer responded graciously and brought the donkey to his neighbor. The following week the Jewish farmer asked his Palestinian neighbor once again “Can I borrow our donkey?” Once again, the Palestinian farmer graciously brought his donkey to his neighbor. Following one more week the Jewish farmer approached his Palestinian neighbor and asked him: “Would you like to use my donkey?”
He finished the story as we approached a large sign at the beginning of a dirt road on the outskirts of his village which leads to a plot of land that he owns. The sign in Hebrew says “Havat Eitam.”
H. told me that several years ago some nice people, Israelis, showed up hiking in the hills around Wad Rahhal. After a short period of time, H. saw on the top of one of the hills a tent and the same people were there. Then they came with some goats and sheep and started fencing in the area. Within a short period of time, the access road leading to H.’s land was fenced in with barbed wire. When he tried to get access to his land, his new neighbors started throwing stones at him.
Now this small outpost, Havat Eitam, has control, often violent control, of the entire area. Havat Eitam is planned to significantly increase the number of Israeli settlers in the area, at the same time that there are no building permits available for any of the Palestinians there.
This is but one small story, there are many like it. There are, of course, many stories that Israeli Jews can tell about their Palestinian neighbors using violence against them.
I write this story because one of the important issues that I raise in all of my consultations is that it seems that if peace will require forcing people to be uprooted from their homes, it probably will not work. Including east Jerusalem, there are more than 700,000 Israeli Jews now living over the Green Line.
H. says that he has no problem with Efrat – he even wants to build a horseback riding facility on his land that would enable Israeli and Palestinian kids to meet and to learn horseback riding together. Havat Eitam is another story, and unfortunately represents the way that most Palestinians see their immediate neighbors in the settlements that will probably remain where they are forever.
The writer is a political and social entrepreneur who has dedicated his life to the State of Israel and to peace between Israel and its neighbors. His latest book, In Pursuit of Peace in Israel and Palestine, was published by Vanderbilt University Press. It will soon appear in Arabic in Amman and Beirut.