In the hope of hearing different voices on the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, we went to hear Dr. Sari Nusseibeh and Americans for Peace Now leader Dr. Menachem Brinker speak at Temple Sholom in Chicago on Oct. 1.
Nusseibeh is the Palestine Liberation Organization’s top representative in Jerusalem and president of Al-Quds University. He received his doctorate at Harvard University, and he took part in the first intifada.
Brinker, professor of philosophy and literature at the University of Chicago and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is the great-grandson of an Ashkenazi chief rabbi and one of the founders of Peace Now in Israel.
Nusseibeh shook the Palestinian world view in June when he published an appeal to halt attacks against civilians in Israel, an appeal that eventually attracted 650 prominent Palestinians to sign it. He then went on Arabic satellite TV talk shows to promote his view.
Now Nusseibeh is shaking the world views of both Jews and Arabs. He and Ami Ayalon, former chief of Israel’s Shin Bet security service, have published a historic statement of basic principles for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that includes several key Palestinian concessions:
• Unequivocal recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.
• Complete relinquishment of the right of return of Palestinians to Israel.
• Demilitarization of the Palestinian state.
• End of conflict; both peoples recognize the other’s historic rights to the same land while accepting the need to compromise, resulting in two states for two peoples.
• Jerusalem will be an open city, the capital of two states; sovereignty will be by neighborhood; guardianship, not sovereignty, will be by Israel over Jewish holy sites, and by Palestine over Muslim holy sites.
• Permanent borders based on the 1967 lines with agreed upon equal land exchange modifications.
Both men believe that these principles express the will of the majority of both peoples. They are launching a massive signature campaign in Tel Aviv and Ramallah hoping that through this initiative they can influence their leaders and thereby open a new chapter in the region’s history.
Perhaps it is fear of a potential breakthrough that causes opponents of peace on both sides to be so frantic to discredit Nusseibeh and shut him down.
In Chicago, Nusseibeh spoke personally, almost intimately, of being born near Ramle, raised in East Jerusalem, and of one day walking across no-mans-land because he wanted to see how Palestinians looked through Israeli eyes.
He realized that one first must see the human in oneself to see the human in the other. That is where peace begins.
Brinker believes there is no military solution to the conflict and thus supports the plan.
There were a few shouts of protest at the lecture in Chicago — both Jews and Arabs angrily stating that the land was theirs, giving voice to old grievances and still raw wounds.
Yet in the eyes and the standing ovation of the vast majority of the audience there was a glimmer of a new hope that perhaps there was a way to reach the light at the end of the tunnel.
We hope to gain the support of both Jews and Arabs in Milwaukee for the Nusseibeh-Ayalon Agreement.
Let us begin discussions within and between our two communities to show Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that Milwaukeeans are committed to the reconciliation of our two peoples.
Bruce Fetter, Carol R. Lewensohn, Max Samson and Anne Steinberg are members of the Wisconsin chapter of Americans for Peace Now.
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