Israel’s veteran strategic-affairs commentator Ze’ev Schiff had an intriguing piece in Ha’Aretz today. In it, he wrote quite movingly about a recently retired PA intelligence colonel whom he called Abed Alun, who was killed in one of the recent hotel blasts in Jordan.
Firstly, it was very decent of Ze’ev to write about Alun. Even more decent that, as he wrote, he made the trip to the north-Jerusalem suburb of Beit Hanina to convey his personal condolence’s to the man’s family. (Most Jewish Israelis really hate going into the Palestinian-peopled parts of Jerusalem. That may be partly fear of the unknown. It may also be because to visit families living in such places brings vividly home the deeply apartheidized nature of the holy city despite its alleged “unification” under Israeli rule.)
Anyway, what really struck me about Ze’ev’s piece was this:
- As part of his work for Palestinian intelligence, he met about 18 months ago – as part of a small group to which I also belonged – with a very senior official in the Iranian government. The man described how he saw a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: First Israel must accept the majority of Palestinian refugees, then there will be general elections and Tehran will recognize the new government formed in Israel. Abed, who was sitting beside him, immediately responded that that was not the solution the PA wanted. We support the two-state solution and the Iranian proposal replaces it. The Iranian attacked him and accused the Palestinians of treachery.
All parts of that description ring true to me. But interesting to hear it from that particular source…
I agree that the conversation with the three players also strikes me as true.
What does not strike me as true is the gratuitous, and somewhat puzzling statement:
Most Jewish Israelis really hate going into the Palestinian-peopled parts of Jerusalem. That may be partly fear of the unknown. It may also be because to visit families living in such places brings vividly home the deeply apartheidized nature of the holy city despite its alleged “unification” under Israeli rule.
On what do you base such a sweeping statement?
My friendships with many Jewish Israelis, including people in the peace movement, and my observations of the fear or unease they express about making such visits…
Of course there are exceptions. (That’s why i said, “most” not “all”.)
The nasty conditions under which most Palestinian Jerusalemites live due to huge disparities in public spending, etc., are certainly something for people of conscience to feel disquieted by, don’t you think?
Nor was it gratuitous. I was underlining the essential humanity and decency of my friend Ze’ev.
Fear, yes Helena. I think that’s reasonable, considering that a number of Israelis who used to feel quite at ease five years ago going to the territories, including East Jerusalem, to shop, or eat or visit friends have been summerily executed. I can tell you, having lived here for nearly three decades that, prior to the intifada, thousands of Israelis felt quite at ease visiting friends in the occupied territories.
Uneasiness? Perhaps for some. I think that there are certainly some Israelis who feel uncomfortable by definition. Uri Avneri is a good example. He relaxes at home by listening to German martial music, and I think that in large measure his guilt and uneasiness is the price he has agreed to pay for the “foreigness” of the “oom-pah-pahs”.
I would be interested in knowing if Ze’ev Schiff feels such “uneasiness”. I doubt it, but I could be wrong.
I can tell you, having lived here for nearly three decades that, prior to the intifada, thousands of Israelis felt quite at ease visiting friends, or otherwise spending time, in the occupied territories.
If anything, Schiff is a maverick, a mainstream, still “Zionist” commentator who is totally fluent in Arabic and totally comfortable with Israel’s position in the Middle East, and linked (though perhaps not as much as Yitzhak Laor, for example) to the Palestinians, both officials and artists. This is odd because the Israelis who really stand out for their links to the Palestinians are extreme anti-Zionists like Yitzhak Laor and Juliano Mer Khamis. The point is not that he is like Avneri, but how much of a Zionist Schiff still is, since he is even more part of the Zionist mainstream than Avneri of Peace Now, a “two-stater”, may still be.