Death as a Way of Life: From Oslo to the Geneva Agreement
224
Death as a Way of Life: From Oslo to the Geneva Agreement
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781250116192 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Picador |
| Publication date: | 03/22/2016 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Sales rank: | 361,961 |
| File size: | 414 KB |
About the Author
David Grossman has received several international awards for his writing, including the Premio Grinzane and the Premio Mondelo for The Zigzag Kid. He is the author of several novels and children's books, and a play. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife and children.
Read an Excerpt
Death as a Way of Life
From Oslo to the Geneva Agreement
By David Grossman, Efrat Lev, Haim Watzman
Picador
Copyright © 2004 David GrossmanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-11619-2
CHAPTER 1
Suddenly, Human Contact
SEPTEMBER 1993
Following secret negotiations in Norway, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasir Arafat signed, in the White House on September 13, 1993, a Declaration of Principles — known as the Oslo Accords. The sides "agree that it is time to put an end to decades of confrontation and conflict, recognize their mutual legitimate and political rights, and strive to live in peaceful coexistence and mutual dignity and security, and achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement and historic reconciliation through the agreed political process." The Oslo Accords provided only a framework for a solution rather than a final determination of all conditions of peace, including borders and relations between the two peoples.
I
"And now," the newscaster chortled, "they're shaking hands!" And then he added, in a hushed and astonished whisper, "They're simply — shaking hands."
Through nearly one hundred years of conflict, the two peoples have been in physical contact untold times, especially during the last sixty years. There have been thousands of moments in which body brushed body. For the most part, these have been violent encounters. The aspirations, anger, and distress of one people drained suddenly into the blade of a knife, or crystallized into a flying rock. And the aspirations of the other people, with their anger and fears, would transmogrify into lead bullets, clubs, police handcuffs, and soldiers.
On the face of it, the contact in the ceremony on the White House lawn was really the contact of two symbols. For many of his countrymen, Yitzhak Rabin is the prototypical Israeli. He symbolizes, almost stereotypically, the Sabra, the new Israeli Jew. He's native-born, fought in the War of Independence, rose to the rank of chief of staff, and led the army to its great victory in the Six-Day War. He's the salt of the land of Israel.
To the Palestinians, Rabin symbolizes the evil of the Israeli occupation. They cannot forget his order at the beginning of the Intifada to "break their bones." They see him as the essence of Israeli militarism, cruelty, and callousness to their suffering.
Arafat, to many Israelis, is the ultimate enemy. To them he's crafty, slippery, and can't be trusted. If you turn your back on him, they fear, he'll stab you. For thirty years, Israel's leaders have taught their people to view Arafat as a two-legged beast, Hitler's heir, a creature not fit for human society, who under no circumstances can be a partner in a dialogue.
But most Palestinians see Arafat as a symbol of the Palestinian life force. He represents survival in the face of hardship and persecution. For them, Arafat is the oppressed and wretched refugee who finally — thanks to his patience, courage, and determination — will win what he has demanded from his powerful and heartless enemy.
Two symbols shook hands, and the contact suddenly became human. It is a kind of contact consisting of reluctance and revulsion, as well as instinctive curiosity, and even a smile. Contact between two flesh-and-blood human beings.
The two made painful concessions in the Declaration of Principles. On each side there are individuals who oppose the agreement and who see it as a defeat for their leader. But none of the opponents — not among us and not among the Palestinians — can offer an alternative course of action that has any real value.
Rabin knows deep in his heart that he has, with his own hands, established the Palestinian state he has so feared. Arafat understands that he has given up his dream of establishing a greater Palestine that would include the territory on which Israel stands. Israel will have to accept armed Palestinian police forces, the Palestinians an Israeli military presence on the border between Israel and Jordan. Israel has made an immediate and concrete concession of territories and security assets. The Palestinians have, for the time being, conceded mostly aspirations and dreams. Yet I do not really know which side has made the more painful concession.
II
For many long years the Palestinians stood outside history. They lived within larger-than-life mythical memories of the past and aspirations for a heroic future. Like children embroidering fantasies of comfort and revenge out of the threads of their pain, they sought to flee the oppressive and humiliating present. In such unrealism, such conditions of weightlessness, hopes become entirely disconnected from the possible. For years the Palestinians cultivated illusions and believed in them. It has been embarrassing and galling to read the Palestinian National Covenant, its definition of the "Palestinian identity," the statement of the Palestinian state's goals, and to compare them to reality and to the geopolitical balance of power in the region.
The agreement made with the Palestinians will bring them back to history. If a people receive a place of their own, they can also return to time, to the natural progress of history. With such a people, one can begin to conduct negotiations between equals and to establish tolerable neighborly relations.
I don't wish for anything more than that, but also not for anything less. Unlike many Israelis — including many on the left — I do not seek a "let's make up and never see each other again" kind of peace, or a high and impenetrable wall between Israel and Palestine.
I believe that the best thing for the two peoples is to maintain as many connections of different kinds as possible. Economic, commercial, cultural, touristic, and athletic ties, in order to peg the new tent we've erected to the ground of reality with thousands of ropes and tent pins.
We should keep in mind that these are two industrious, ambitious nations, quick to adjust to new situations. Although we have ignored and dismissed each other as nations for many years, on the individual level it has been possible to sense that we have here two people with a natural ability to talk with each other. There are similarities of character and temperament, even sense of humor.
I should stress that I am not speaking of love between the nations. There is no place here for idealization. Not for the Palestine Liberation Organization, which has committed especially repulsive acts in its years of struggle (one entry requirement has been proof that the candidate has murdered a Jewish child and abused the body), and certainly not for the Palestinians as a people, whose culture, values, and very being have been worn down by decades of oppression by the Turks, the Jordanians, and the Israelis. It is not only power that corrupts. Weakness can be no less corrupting. Even the Intifada, which began as a heroic initiative of a nation seeking liberty, became in the space of only two years a welter of mutual killings, a rebellion run by religious extremists and common criminals. Yet despite it all, we would not have reached the current agreement without the Intifada.
I can certainly understand that the Palestinians loathe Israel, which to them looks like a militaristic, cruel, oppressive state. Despite Israel's attempt to conduct an "enlightened occupation" (a conceit at best — no such thing is possible), the behavior of the Israeli Defense Forces during twenty-six years of occupation has left major scars in the Palestinian collective memory. The state of occupation has been debilitating for Israeli democracy and for the rule of law. Violence has permeated our lives. I don't know how many years will pass before children on both sides cease being afflicted at birth with hatred.
But who can hope for love between nations? Who really loves anyone in this world? (Of course, I'm referring not to people but to nations.) Do the English love the French? Do the Germans love the Russians? Perhaps we should even ask: Do the West Germans and East Germans love each other?
"Interests" is the key word, and it is the guarantee that the agreement will work. The two peoples have signed on to the agreement because they understand that they have no other choice. After decades of mutual bloodletting, they have come to terms with the idea that if they do not live side by side they will perish together, in a maelstrom that will engulf the entire region. It is existential interest that pushed these two reluctant peoples into each other's arms. The United States and Japan, and the Europeans led by Germany, now have to turn peace into a practical and enticing option for both sides. A flourishing economy, new jobs, a sense of freedom, reinforcement of everything in life that was damaged or paralyzed during the years of occupation and Intifada — all these can significantly strengthen those Palestinians who want peace. Similarly, the right-wing extremists in Israel will have difficulty arguing with a concrete improvement in the economy, in the quality of life, in the sense of security. The fundamentalists of Hamas will fight a war of despair and no quarter. They will try to create a nightmare atmosphere. Only a robust creative reality, full of life and hope, will succeed in withstanding them. We need to begin creating that reality now, immediately.
Neither romantic love, then, nor a high wall. I dream of two countries separated by a distinct border. A border that will make clear to each state the space in which it exists as a political entity, as a national identity. If there's a border, there is an identity. There is a new living reality in which this identity can bleed out the poison of illusions and begin to heal.
One more important thing: This is a condition in which — years from now — the two sides will be able to give themselves a new kind of definition — not one contrasted with an enemy, but one that turns inward. One dependent not on the fear that they might be destroyed but instead on the natural development of a nation, on its system of values and the various facets of its character. This is a decisive change. For years, both sides have suspended the internal dialogue that each must have. The state of continual conflict was a reason and an excuse for not addressing their fundamental, authentic problems, a reason for just trying to survive one more violent conflagration. I can definitely see that such a new process of defining ourselves, the Israelis, will bring about tremors and changes. It will require a painful assessment of our definition of ourselves today in relation to our Jewish heritage. It will force us to confront our complicated history anew, and to consider the possibility of choosing a new way of relating to the world outside us.
If peace is established between us and all the Arab countries, we will also be able, finally, to internalize the fact that we are part of the Middle East. We will comprehend that our presence here is not the result of some bureaucratic-geographical error, but rather that this is the place in which our lives will henceforth be conducted, and it would be well for us to open ourselves to the world and to the culture of our neighbors. Clearly, such a step can be taken only if we have partners, if the Arab countries no longer view Israel as "a cancerous growth of imperialism" (as Israel has been termed on many an occasion in the Arab press) but rather as an integral, stimulating, and vital part of the Middle East.
If we can reach and live with this vision of the end of days, we Israelis may well permit ourselves — after years of instinctive self-denial — to believe that we have a future. That we may dare to believe that we will finally have continuity and prospects. That death will not cast its shadow on everything in our lives. Perhaps we will be able to free ourselves from that sense of doom that lies deep down in our collective consciousnesses — that, for us, life is only latent death.
This is the true meaning of self-determination. I have always believed that when Israel agrees to grant this right to the Palestinians, it will also win it for itself. Now the moment has come for the Israelis, for the Palestinians, and for the other sane nations in the region. Here it is now: the Future.
CHAPTER 2Arafat Arrives in Gaza
JUNE 1994
In accordance with the May 1994 Cairo Agreement on the Gaza Strip and the Jericho Area, Israeli forces withdrew from Jericho and most of the Gaza Strip. On July 1, 1994, Yasir Arafat returned to Gaza for the first time in thirty-three years. He crossed the border from Egypt and was welcomed by a large, cheering Palestinian crowd. The picture of Arafat, wearing his usual army uniform and kaffiyah and carrying a gun, flashing a victory sign, was a difficult sight for many Israelis. About one hundred thousand Israeli right-wing supporters demonstrated in Jerusalem, calling for death to Rabin and to Arafat.
Arafat arrives in Gaza, and half the Israeli nation jumps up shouting, "It's defeat, the beginning of the end of the Jewish state, what will become of us, how humiliating!"
Indeed, in the "old order," the equation was clear — if one side gains, the other side loses. Every gain comes at the other's expense. But since the Yom Kippur War of 1973, this perception of reality has been called into question. We won the war with the Egyptians, but the Egyptians didn't lose. In the peace negotiations, the Egyptians ostensibly won by receiving the entire Sinai Peninsula. But we didn't lose, because we created a state of peace and began the very long process of being accepted in the Middle East.
The Palestinians began an Intifada in 1987 and won, because they forced us to realize what we were doing to them, but the truth is that we did not lose, because, finally, the Intifada opened the way for us to save ourselves from what the occupation had done to us.
The same is true today. Arafat arrived in Gaza. The Palestinians in the territories will surely be drunk with joy. One can presume that their very happiness will irk many of us. One may also presume that the television cameras will do their best to bring into our homes Palestinians who get carried away by euphoria and say precisely those things that all of us fear, giving voice to their subliminal hope to return to Jaffa and Haifa. There will also be expressions of contempt for Israel, and there will be many Israelis who will feel the humiliation of defeat.
But the victory of the Palestinians is not our defeat. They have made a great gain, for which they have fought and paid a great price. They are beginning to make real a dream of many years. But thanks to the new consciousness that arose in September 1993 — which will expunge the dichotomy of "either us or them" — we Israelis can also feel a sense of achievement today. Because today it is us and them.
The tragedy is that both "us" and "them" come into this new partnership scarred and wounded, crippled in body and soul. All of us, Israelis and Palestinians, are the children of this conflict, which has bequeathed us all the deformities of hatred and violence. Both sides require almost superhuman strength to break out of the spiral of murder and reprisal. As a result, it is sometimes difficult to remember what our basic interest is, and to take joy in their joy, and wish them, for our own sakes, success. May they overcome all those among them who seek to turn the wheel back, those who have become so accustomed to the deformities war has imposed on them that they refuse, with all their might, to be healed of them. They even try to persuade others not to undergo the surgery that, while painful, will heal them in the end.
Despite all this, Arafat will come to Gaza, and we may also permit ourselves to feel admiration for the climax of the struggle conducted by this man and the entire Palestinian people. The fact that it has been directed against us need not blind us. A struggle for independence, self-sacrifice, and courage are values we were educated in, and in which we educate our children. Some of the methods the Palestinians used in their struggle were despicable and cruel, but the acts we committed against them do not give us a standing to preach to them. There was a war, and we still feel its convulsions, but now some sort of doorway to peace has opened, and one part of our growing pains in this new situation is the need to acknowledge our rival's courage and determination. The Palestinian people, so derided, so mistreated during the last hundred years, are today standing before their first-ever chance for a life of honor and independence. Instead of hysterical demonstrations by Israelis who are too cowardly for peace, we should today be offering generosity, to ourselves as well, and we should understand that, together, we have made another important step ahead. Together — the two of us — we have won something that is much greater than either the Palestinians or the Israelis alone.
CHAPTER 3The Holocaust Carrier Pigeon
JANUARY 1995
This article was written specifically for German readers and was published in the German newspaper Die Zeit in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet Army, on January 27, 1945.
I
It has been reported here that Germany is hoping that the ceremonies marking the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of the death camps will also symbolize a historic reconciliation between the German and Jewish peoples. Holocaust survivors in Israel were outraged and protested. The approach of this significant date has again raised, with great intensity, questions about the relations between the two peoples, and about the need for, and the possibility of, reconciliation.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Death as a Way of Life by David Grossman, Efrat Lev, Haim Watzman. Copyright © 2004 David Grossman. Excerpted by permission of Picador.
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