A lament for a land consumed in violence

DISPATCHES by Hank Kalet: Thoughts on Israel, Palestine and the tragedy of the Holy Land.

   It is the land, a connection to the hardscrabble soil. It is the land that is the basis for identity, for history, a shared connection to the land, to the holy places that creates this opposing history, these parallel Diasporas that cannot be reconciled without casting one, the other or both into the desert.
   That’s how I see it, sitting here in front of the television watching the violence consume a land I was taught from my first moment of consciousness was my spiritual birthright.
   We were driven from Israel, cast to wander, ever looking to Israel, hoping.
   "Next year in Jerusalem," we always chanted as the Passover Seder came to a close. "Next year in Jerusalem."

* * *

   The Palestinians wander, too, cast from their homes, from the land they called home for generations.
   And they look to what is now Israel, to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, look there with hope that they can return.
   That is what this is about.
* * *

   There is a sense of betrayal at the heart of the recent violence, a sense of betrayal on both sides that has engulfed the region, led the Israelis to take up arms and the Palestinians to take up stones. It is a sense of betrayal at the heart of the peace process, and one that could derail it indefinitely.
   Simply put, the Israelis want peace, but are unwilling to give up land, unwilling to give the Palestinians anything more than the legal responsibility for policing their own people. The Palestinians, however, want independence and an end to the construction of Jewish settlements on Palestinian property.
   But the settlements kept growing, angering the Palestinians and periodic episodes of violence would anger the Israelis until the most recent negotiations broke down and the region ignited like a match to dry leaves.
   Israel deserves the lion’s share of blame. It has openly disregarded the most important concerns of the Palestinians, choosing instead to clamp down on Palestinian descent and to narrow negotiations over peace to such a degree that the Palestinian people no longer feel themselves equal partners at the table.
   So Palestinians throw stones at Israelis, wounding a 6-month-old boy; a car bomb explodes seriously wounding a Palestinian activist, an Israeli Arab civilian is wounded when his car is shot at and numerous Palestinians are arrested and jailed. The violence follows a suicide bombing of a Tel Aviv disco Friday and is a continuation of the violence that has wracked Israel and the occupied territories since October when Ariel Sharon made a visit to what Muslims call al-Haram al-Sharif or the Noble Sanctuary and Jews call the Temple Mount.
   Muhammed Tull, director of curriculum development for vocational training for the Palestinian Ministry of Labor, wrote in The Washington Post in October of the Sharon visit that it "was a humiliating show of force and disrespect to our national and religious aspirations, because we consider Sharon to be a war criminal responsible for killing hundreds of innocent Palestinians in Lebanese refugee camps in 1982."
   As the mistrust of Israelis by the Palestinians grows, so grows suspicion on the part of Israelis. Amoz Oz, the Israeli novelist and founder of Peace Now, writing in the Toronto Globe & Mail, describes a scene in which average Israelis question how Mr. Oz can remain committed to a peace with the Palestinians. "Do you still trust your Arabs?" the Israelis ask.
* * *

   I am reminded of a poem by the Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai, that speaks of the bonds of land and culture, that lives in the implicit contradiction of two people tied so tightly, so emotionally to the same land, but so opposed to each other. It is as if this tie, this connection strangles the chances for peace, prolongs the talks, the process, teases us with its incremental steps to nowhere and the violence spirals upward and out of control.
   "They throw stones, /throw this land, one at the other," Amichai writes in "Temporary Poem of My Time," "but the land always falls back to the land." He says "Semites throw at Semites and anti-Semites at anti-Semites, /evil men throw and just men throw, /sinners throw and tempters throw" and so on and all the stones "fall on the present."
   Can a stone be found that has not been used, been thrown in anger or built into a house or grave? Amichai asks. The implied answer is no, Israel is too old, the Jews and Arabs too long wandering its dry and sandy soil for any stone not be overturned.
   He asks that the throwing cease, that the combatants cease "moving the land," cease "moving it to the sea," that the combatants exchange their stones for dirt and air and keep throwing until their arms tire, their bodies tire and "the war is weary/and even peace will be weary and will be."
   And one can only hope, though it is difficult to maintain that hope. It is difficult to escape the weight of history, though we must continue to try.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of The South Brunswick Post. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected]