For the last few months, under the auspices of local interfaith association, my wife and I along with other Israelis have been participating on Zoom in mifgashim (meetings) with Palestinians.
They are a continuation of face-to-face gatherings that we’ve been part of for years between Israelis from the Jerusalem area and Palestinians from the surrounding towns like Azariya. In-person came to a standstill during the pandemic, naturally, but the option of online meetings – though not as desirable as flesh and blood encounters – has enabled the geographic scope to broaden, with Israelis from around the country and Palestinians from Jericho, Ramallah and Bethlehem now able to participate.
Politics are off-limits for the meetings – as difficult as that may sound – with the goal to learn more about each other’s lives, customs, holidays, backgrounds and families. Connections are made through that familiarity, and the common themes we share being parents, employees, tenants – and human beings – begins to compete with the canyon of cultural gaps, and of course the elephant in the room: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But when we gathered online this week for the first time since the recent war, the elephant was too big to ignore. Instead of focusing on wedding customs, Passover, Ramadan or family histories, the Jewish and Muslim coordinators of the group decided that this session would focus on “feelings” – how the two sides were dealing emotionally after two weeks of massive rocket fire on Israel and massive destruction and loss of life in Gaza.
It was a decision that could have led to raised voices and mutual recriminations, but the alternative would have made a mockery of the efforts to build dialogue from different viewpoints, between two peoples who just lived through a major conflict.
From Samih in Bethlehem to Ala in Ramallah and Muhammad in Jericho, all spoke passionately of the loss of life in Gaza, and the pain they felt. They also mentioned the rockets fired at Israel, but it was done in a vacuum of “Yes, both peoples have suffered.”
In today’s politically correct world, it’s frowned upon to bring up who started a conflict or blame one side over the other. In the group, all the more so. That’s why it would have been futile and potentially volatile to suggest: Hey guys, perhaps if Hamas hadn’t fired rockets at Jerusalem then Israel would not have started precision bombing in Gaza. And if Hamas hadn’t responded with 4,000 more rocket attacks aimed at Israel, then the IDF might not have leveled buildings and killed civilians while conducting specific targeted attacks on Hamas members and installations.
It was within bounds, however, for the Palestinians to bring up the Sheikh Jarrah eviction saga, and Israeli “aggression” on the Temple Mount.
The Israelis on the forum let the Palestinians vent, and I’m sure more than a few, like myself, held their tongues. For our part, we also lamented the loss of life on both sides, without laying blame, and talked about how to rebuild trust and ties that have been frayed over the last month. Despite venturing out of the safety zone of parve topics, the meeting remained civil, with talk ending on a positive note about trying to renew face-to-face gatherings in the near future.
Reviewing the hour-long encounter, however, I became more and more troubled by what had gone down.
Here in Israel we have more opinions than people. We have right-wing hardliners and we have peace movements, those who feel Israel is 100% in the right on all moves made regarding the Palestinian issue and the many people who put as much blame, if not more, on Israeli policies as the underlying reason for this war against Hamas.
Thousands of protesters have been gathering for months outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence on Saturday nights calling for him to step down. Those who don’t care for the way he leads the country have actually gone to the polls four times to try to replace him with a “change” government. And if efforts to form that coalition don’t succeed, Israel will soon enough hold a fifth election. It’s called civil action and it’s called democracy.
We can see nuances and shades of gray in the situation we find ourselves in with the Palestinians, which enable us on the one hand to defend Israel’s actions in Gaza while at the same time criticize our government.
On the Palestinians side, there’s a stark lack of that kind of indignation against their leadership. The Palestinian members of the interfaith group decried the innocent Gazans killed and the massive destruction, but they never consider looking inward and coming to the conclusion that, just maybe, their own Hamas and Palestinian Authority leadership is partially culpable – at least – for the dire situation in Gaza and in the West Bank.
The concept of self-awareness and looking at an issue broadly seems lost on them. Or maybe they’re just scared to challenge the reality they’ve grown up with. Two years ago, during one of our in-person meetings, two young Palestinians from Jebl Mukaber near Jerusalem’s East Talpiot neighborhood were complaining about the lack of employment, the living conditions in their village, and the lack of help they receive from the PA.
So, why don’t you go out and protest and demand change, we asked, reminding them of Israeli economic-led upheavals like the cottage cheese revolution. Their answer? “We don’t want to end up in jail.”
That’s a valid reason to stay mute and docile. But whether it’s due to fear, or whether their ability to think critically has been numbed by decades of blindly following corrupt and ineffective leaders, believing insidious propaganda about Israel, and yes, living under Israel’s oppressive rule, Palestinians seems unable to look beyond their own victimhood to weigh alternative narratives as to how they ended up where they are.
Israelis of all walks are able to agree that the loss of life in Gaza was heartbreaking. We can blame Hamas and their international enablers or we can point to Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Jerusalem as contributing to the war; we can take to the streets and protest the policies of our government, and we can go to the polls and try to change the system ourselves.
But until the same is true for the other side, until a Palestinian peace movement stands up to the status quo – in Gaza and in the West Bank – with the same strength that the Israeli shinui movement does, until we see the Palestinians question their own leadership and stop solely blaming “the occupiers” for the dead-end of destruction, frustration and despair they’ve been led down, there’s little hope that anything will change for them, or for us.
Chances are we’ll be gathering again in a couple years, neighbors in our war-torn land separated by suspicion and distrust, trying to take the first tentative steps toward understanding each other and reaching some tentative form of reconciliation after another round of war that could have been prevented.