Until this week, I was probably one of the few members of the community still wearing a thin, blue thread on my wrist from last December’s community solidarity gathering for Israel. Event organizers asked people to help one another tie the thread on their wrists “to symbolize how we must work together toward peace.” When the string falls off, they wrote, “may peace finally be upon us!”
My thread fell off this past weekend, accompanied by the feeling that peace is definitely not upon us. I spent many a moment last week glancing at it, as the news from the Middle East deteriorated into a series of unfolding horrors: Scores of Israelis were murdered, some on their way to work, others in their homes and beds. A 22-year-old Arab stonecutter was murdered, allegedly by enraged settlers of Itamar who had just buried a mother, her three children and a neighbor murdered by terrorists.
By the end of the weekend, death seemed to be everywhere in Israel and the West Bank, as innocents on all sides continued to pay the price of terror and trauma.
Unfortunately, the stonecutter murder’s may encourage some in the Jewish community to paint all settlers as rabid militants happy to kill any Arab who crosses their path.
As horrific and demeaning as this crime was, it would do us well to remember that many settlers live in the West Bank not for ideological reasons but for economic ones, and, as we have reported in this newspaper, would leave their homes tomorrow if they could figure out a way to do that without incurring financial ruin. Most others who moved there for ideological reasons do not advocate taking the lives of innocents either.
At the same time, others in the Jewish and Israeli community are calling for harsher military measures in the West Bank to stem the terrorism that has so disrupted Israelis’ lives. Indeed, as of Sunday morning, Israel was reported poised to take “decisive and crushing” military action and to remain in West Bank cities for as long as necessary.
Although this move is well within Israel’s right and capability of self-defense, Israeli analysts agree it would be untenable to maintain from financial and military perspectives.
But listen carefully for the voices of those who truly matter in all this — the Israeli people who actually ride the buses, shop in the open air markets and face terrorism every day. As recently as last weekend, you hear in them the eternal hope for peace and the wisdom of knowing that diplomacy, though tried before, may make for a better future if the right people and conditions are involved.
According to a poll conducted last week by the Israeli newspaper Maariv and reported in Sunday’s New York Times, a majority of Israelis (52 percent) favor “separating themselves from the Palestinians and evacuating all settlements in the Gaza Strip and some in the West Bank.” A similar majority (54 percent) no longer believes Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has a solution to the problem of terrorism, and a plurality (47 percent compared to 34 percent) said “Israel should hasten diplomatic ties with the Palestinian Authority rather than declare war on it.” Even after last week’s events, an astounding 49 percent still support establishing a Palestinian state.
Many people — realists or cynics, depending on your preference — will say that any hope for peace is worthless if a suitable peace partner at best and non-terrorist neighbor at worst cannot be found. These same people are likely to say that last week’s advertisement by 55 Palestinian intellectuals urging a halt to attacks on Israeli civilians is meaningless, since the ad condemned more the effectiveness than the morality of the attacks.
By Monday, President Bush’s Mideast policy statement calling for new leadership and reform in the Palestianian Authority had entered the mix. I’d like to think that it is not a coincidence that my blue thread fell off the night before the plan was announced, but I have no illusions that without vital implementation details, the road ahead will be easy.
Even so, the plan joins the voices of the Israelis longing for normalcy and the return of their loved ones from extended tours of army duty, and the signs of discontent that seem to be growing among some Palestinians, in giving me hope.
May those yearning for peace on both sides come to the fore as we continue to pray for the safety, both physical and emotional, of those living on Israel’s front lines, which today, means everywhere. Let us all remember that, as embodied in our national anthem “Hatikvah,” it is hope that has sustained the Jewish people for thousands of years.
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