My dream of peace for Jews and Arabs in the Middle East

Two tragic peoples. One land. To one, the laurels of Independence. To the other, shame and displacement. 

How often have you wondered if it could all have been handled differently, from the beginning? And yet if you look at the history of Israel and Palestine, how could it have been? The Jews were a broken people emerging in pieces from the displacement camps of Europe after the Holocaust. They could not go back to their homes. And even those who did were rudely turned away from their own doors by strangers who had moved in and shouted abuse at them –  or worse.  Only the stolpersteine (memory stones engraved with their names on the pavement outside) now recall their former presence.

Israel was literally the promised land, but it was a country to be fought over, its desert gradually blooming under the hands of scientists and intellectuals; a land of industry and creativity and a burgeoning technology to rival the world. It was a land promised if not by God, at least by the United Nations on the understanding it would be a federation of Israel and Palestine, a safe haven for Jews and Arabs.

But  Palestinians will forever blame the colonial powers who exiled them from their homes – with help from Arab neighbours who swore they would return victorious after fighting off the Jews. This was the ‘Naqba’, their disaster. And they could not forget. They could not move on.

The other day I read the story of a paediatric consultant in Gaza desperately trying to save the life of a baby brought into the emergency room at al-Aqsa hospital. She cannot save her. And she cannot erase the chubby face that glides into focus in her darkest memory. The doctor speaks of her shame that she cannot save this tiny life. In the midst of the Gaza war the doctor sees the child’s face everywhere she goes.

I mourn with her. How can I not? And then I think of Shiri Bibas and her two red-headed babies – kidnapped by cruel gunmen. Are they alive, and if so, why haven’t they been released? Or are they dead, victims, Hamas like to allege without evidence, of an IDF strike?

And then I see the smirk on Netanyahu’s face, as he sits beside Donald Trump hearing him voice his American dream of a Gaza riviera minus Palestinians, and I scream inwardly. However delighted Bibi is at the American President’s unrealistic and definitely illegal offer – while Israeli hostages continue to languish in Hamas’ tunnels, while exhausted Israeli soldiers die, while Gaza itself is shredded to the ground – this is really not a time for an obsequious grin.

But now I watch the released hostages forced to run the gauntlet of masked Hamas terrorists during the handover to Israel and I become enraged again. So much so that for a fraction of a second I feel I almost empathise with the Smotrichs and Ben Gvirs of Israel’s extreme right wing. But then I come to my senses because I feel they bear considerable responsibility for destroying Palestinian lives and Israel’s reputation in the world, which has led to a hike in antisemitism. So, no. I won’t go there.

Every week Israelis, joined spiritually, I am sure, by supporters everywhere, wait in mortal anguish for the release or not of the next few hostages. Please God, cry the families who gather in Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square, let it be my father, mother, son or daughter this time.  And those released are few indeed, when you compare them with the vast numbers of dangerous terrorists released from Israeli prisons in exchange. It is the deal. We know that and we can’t quibble.

Presidents offer bleak or self-aggrandising answers, but no-one can solve the real issue behind this tragedy. Two displacements. Two people wishing to own the same small piece of land. Sometimes I try to imagine the future – not ten, 20 or even 50 years ahead – but perhaps several generations. What will the country look like? Will these battles for ownership and recognition really be forever wars – they have already lasted nearly a century – or will the hold of religion itself finally waver and relinquish its iron grip? Imagine – a federation of Israel and Palestine, as was first envisaged, not a two-state solution but one state in which the religions of both peoples are respected for themselves, not as theocratic powers. When Arabs can celebrate Jewish bar mitzvahs and weddings, and Jews will join Palestinians celebrating Eid following the Ramadan fast.

You will laugh, Of course, you will. But what is the real meaning of freedom if it is not to dream? Enmity may be made of steel. But friendship, as Shakespeare said, is made of something still stronger – “the tough fibres of the human heart.”