Talking Towards a Two-State Solution
Kol Nidre Sermon, 5768
by Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah
Have you ever made a phone call and got a crossed line? Dialled the right number and been put through to someone else? Annoying isn’t it? Imagine you were an Israeli woman, making a local call, and just after saying, ‘Shalom, mah sh’lomcha?’ – ‘Hello, how are you?’ – you found yourself speaking to a Palestinian man in Gaza; and he proceeded to tell you exactly how he was. What would you do? Well, that’s what happened to a young Israeli one day; and instead of saying, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I seem to have got the wrong number’ – or, rather, the less verbose Israeli equivalent – and hanging up, she listened….
She had never spoken with a Palestinian before – and if that conversation had only changed her perspective on her life as an Israeli and transformed her attitude to the Palestinians, it would have been worthwhile. But it did much more than that: That accidental exchange inspired the ‘Hello Peace’ phone-line that has facilitated nearly a million phone conversations between Israelis and Palestinians in recent years.
‘Hello Peace’: The word Shalom in Hebrew means both ‘Peace’ and ‘Hello’. So, now conjure up an image of all those Israelis and Palestinians, living in their separate worlds, whose lives never intersect, speaking with one another, saying ‘hello’ to one another, and so, ‘hello’, also, to peace. That’s not to say that their conversations are simply cordial. Imagine anger and silence and tears: voices hoarse with shouting; hollow with despair; breaking with grief. And yet, as frequent callers get to know one another, imagine fragile bonds of friendship emerging, as thin, perhaps, as the phone wires crackling between them – but, nevertheless, strengthened by each call – so that, over time, the callers not only know each other’s stories, they also have a real sense of each other’s daily lives, and, just like ordinary friends, ask about each other’s families, share hopes and fears.
I found out about ‘Hello Peace’ – like that momentous first accidental call – quite by accident. It was a Wednesday in mid-August. I was just making myself a cup of coffee at 11am, when I switched on to Radio 4, and found myself listening to the testimony of some of the Israeli and Palestinian callers, who are in touch with one another (‘Calls across the Wall’. Producer, Jeremy Grange, 11-11.30am, 15.08.07). To say that it was moving was the least of it. It was real: Palestinians and Israelis simply talking about their lives and commenting on the experience of speaking with one another.
‘It’s good to talk’. The catchy BT advertising slogan, encouraging us to use the phone – and so, of course, keep the phone company going – happens to be true. It’s good to talk – and phone lines accomplish something very special, which still feels to me like a bit of a miracle: they enable people who are physically separated to speak with one another. We all know from our own experience how important this is. How much more so, when the people on either end of the phone line are separated not only by geography, but also by politics, by religion, by the conflict raging between their two peoples, by a wall of hatred, fear and mistrust that has now become concrete in a way that that pours scorn on that over-used metaphor: concrete, indeed; concrete eight meters high in some places, plus barbed wire.
So, that crossed line has led to something remarkable – but before exploring the implications further, I want to tell you about another little known initiative in Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, which was also discussed on that Radio 4 programme: The Parents Circle Family Forum. Every Israeli and every Palestinian is deeply affected by the conflict between their two peoples. Everyone’s life has been touched – and scarred. But not everyone has become a bereaved parent; not everyone knows that singular horror. The Parents Circle Family Forum is made up of bereaved parents – Israeli and Palestinian, and encompasses more than 500 Israeli and Palestinian families who have lost loved ones. The purpose of the circle is both simple and complex: the parents don’t know one another, so they have to work to know one another. In the words of one of the Israelis involved, the aim of the circle is: ‘to humanise the image of the other after years of demonising each other.’ A laudable aim, of course, but as soon as we think about the two parties involved – bereaved parents – and imagine them speaking with one another, that aim seems impossible. How? Any parent, whose child has died, experiences agonising grief. How do parents, whose child has been blown to pieces, talk with parents whose child blew themselves to pieces in the process of killing other people’s children? How do parents whose child felt such despair that he or she saw no other option but to kill and die in the act, talk with parents, who managed to get on with their lives as if the Palestinians didn’t exist until their child was killed? Those are the questions we need to pose ourselves if we are going to have even the glimmer of a sense of what it means for Israeli and Palestinian bereaved parents to sit together and talk.
How are they doing it? They just are: Perhaps, because unlike everyone else, they aren’t facing an abyss; there already in it. Why not talk? What more do they have to lose? One Israeli parent got to the heart of the matter: ‘The issue is not forgiveness. You cannot forgive the killing of the innocents. But in a spectrum, with hatred at one end and forgiveness at the other, there has to be something between: a process of reconciliation.’ The Parents Circle is engaging Palestinian and Israeli parents in a process of reconciliation that is of immense significance: As one Palestinian parent put it: ‘If we can talk to each other, then anyone can.’ That’s right – and that’s not all: The most extraordinary comment came from another Palestinian parent: ‘I now feel I’m not just carrying Palestine on my back, but two peoples – if we all take that responsibility, peace will come.’ Think of it: A bereaved Palestinian parent, who, having shared his grief and rage with Israeli bereaved parents, now feels that he carries Israel on his back as well as Palestine! And he meant it.
The meeting of bereaved Israeli and Palestinian parents is important enough, but the Parents Circle has now expanded their activities. They go into schools – both Palestinian and Israeli schools – including those in Israeli settlements, and have facilitated over one thousand classroom dialogues. In a session at one particular settler school, it took over four hours to persuade an Israeli to shake hands with a Palestinian – but, eventually, the Israeli did shake the Palestinian’s hand.
Try to imagine the scene: A settler school; Israeli settlers meeting Palestinians face to face; an encounter lasting hours, and finally, a handshake. Why did that Israeli finally feel able to extend his hand and to clasp the hand of the Palestinian before him? Again: as one of the Israelis involved in the bereaved parents circle put it, the aim of the circle is: ‘to humanise the image of the other after years of demonising each other.’ So, perhaps, somehow, in that encounter, the Israeli settler, for whom Palestinians are a threat, a menace, the enemy that must be defeated, realised that the Palestinian before him was a person, just like himself – a person, who felt fear and pain and anguish. Perhaps he realised that they had something in common: they both wanted a home, security for their families, prosperity and peace.
The Torah portion we shall be reading during the Yom Kippur afternoon service is taken from Leviticus chapter 19, and is known as the ‘Holiness Code’. The Holiness Code includes some of the most important ethical injunctions in the Torah. Among them, these two verses, which are familiar to many of us (:33-34):
And if a stranger dwells with you in your land, you shall not wrong him. / The stranger that dwells with you shall be to you as the home-born among you; and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt; I am the Eternal your God.
If we apply these verses to the Israelis and Palestinians, it is apparent that both peoples are the home-born and both peoples are strangers – to one another – but the essential message for both peoples is clear: ‘The stranger that dwells with you shall be to you as the home-born among you; and you shall love him as yourself.’ Both the Israelis and the Palestinians are challenged to acknowledge that ‘the stranger’ and the ‘home-born’ are one. Perhaps, it was this awareness that not only enabled the Israeli to shake the Palestinian’s hand, but also enabled the Palestinian to extend his hand towards the Israeli in the first place. A few verses earlier in Leviticus 19, we read a verse that, lying exactly in the centre of the chapter, is the fulcrum point of the text (:18):
You shall love your neighbour as yourself; I am the Eternal.
V’ahavta l’rei’acha kamocha; Ani Adonai.
The reality is that Israelis and Palestinians, still strangers to one another, are neighbours – or could be. It is not easy to love someone who seems so different – a stranger – it is not easy to love your neighbour; the one who is basically like you, and lives right on your doorstep. Indeed, as we all know good neighbourliness depends on maintaining good and recognised boundaries, and making sure we don’t trespass on one another’s space or disturb one another’s peace.
Good neighbourliness involves recognising that our neighbours have similar needs to our own. But before people can set about acting like good neighbours, the basic requirements of being a neighbour – full-stop – need to be in place: To be any one’s neighbour, you need to have a piece of space you can call your own. And that’s the source of the asymmetry between the Israelis and the Palestinians: The land belongs to both peoples but as yet, only Israelis have a piece of the land they can call their own. The solution to the conflict between them lies in that simple fact: All that Palestinians need is Palestine; and then the rigours of good neighbourliness can begin in earnest.
All that Palestinians need is Palestine; but sixty years after the United Nation’s partition plan that would have led to the creation of two states, failed; forty years after Israel defeated the marshalled forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan in a fight for its very existence, and began to occupy the West Bank – it still feels that it will be some time before the State of Palestine is established alongside the State of Israel. The Palestinians are divided; Israel is wary; the violence on both sides continues – and the Separation Barrier erected unilaterally by Israel serves as a daily reminder to both Palestinians and Israelis that a negotiated settlement between equals – between could-be neighbours – remains a pipe-dream.
And yet, while the visible facts on the ground continue to thwart the possibilities for the two-state solution to become a reality in the near future, Israelis and Palestinians continue to make those ‘Hello Peace’ phone calls and The Parents Circle Family Forum continues to meet, and to take their dialogue into both Israeli and Palestinian schools. And these are not the only projects involving encounter and co-operation between Israelis and Palestinians. There are many, many more – and they embrace every sector of life. To give you an idea, let me give you a just few examples – lack of time prevents me from mentioning more than one project from each sector, but if you do an Internet search on ‘Palestinians and Israelis Building Peace Together’, you will find a wealth of initiatives (or, see: www.bpf/html/whats_now/2006/israel_peace.html):
Neve Shalom/Wahat El Salaam – meaning ‘Oasis of Peace’ – the village of Jewish and Palestinian Israelis in Israel established in 1970;
Ta’ayush – meaning ‘life in common’ in Arabic, a group of Palestinian and Jewish Israelis, who undertake practical tasks like organising convoys to bring food and other necessities to Palestinian villages;
The Center for Jewish Arab Economic Development – dedicated to prosperity for both peoples;
The PRIME curriculum Project – involving West Bank Palestinian and Israeli history teachers, who are developing texts for Palestinian and Israeli 15-16 year olds, which present both the Palestinian and Israeli narratives;
Good Water Neighbours – an initiative that uses interdependency of shared water resources as a basis for co-operation;
Bridges – the first Palestinian-Israeli Public Health magazine, written and run by Palestinian and Israeli academics and health professionals;
B’zelem – a Human Rights watch that uses Palestinian and Israeli researchers to document human rights violations in the occupied territories;
The Interfaith Encounter Association – promoting co-existence through cross-cultural and interfaith study;
All for Peace – a radio station that broadcasts from East Jerusalem with half-Palestinian, half-Israeli staff;
The Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Co-operation – a think-tank of Palestinians and Israelis devoted to developing practical solutions to the conflict;
Soccer-Camp Co-existence – a project for Palestinian and Jewish Israeli 10-12 year olds run by the Jewish-Arab Centre for Peace at Givat Haviva in Central Israel;
Bat Shalom – a network of Jewish and Palestinian Israeli women, who work together on a just resolution to the conflict in co-operation with the Jerusalem Centre for Women, a Palestinian women’s group;
Peace Child – a project that uses theatre to foster dialogue between Jewish and Palestinian teenagers throughout Israel and East Jerusalem, who perform their pieces in both Arabic and Hebrew;
Finally: The Arab-Hebrew Theatre of Jaffa – which also performs in both Arabic and Hebrew.
A long list – and I’ve only mentioned one project from each sector. All these examples of co-operation – and many, many more – in the face of the continuing daily realities that keep the two peoples locked in conflict. Of course, the political status quo remains, but something is happening despite the impasse: Israelis and Palestinians are meeting together and working together; they can’t and won’t become neighbours until Palestine is established as an independent state, but thousands of strangers are nevertheless becoming less strange to one another, and some of them are even becoming friends.
On this unique day, when Jews throughout the world gather together to confess our personal failings and complete our journeys towards atonement, may our prayers for renewal expand to embrace Israelis and Palestinians and all those who struggle to make a new beginning. And let us say: Amen.
Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah
Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue – Adat Shalom Verei’ut
Kol Nidre , 10th Tishri 5768 – 22nd September 2006
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