ALSO SEE: Israel Says Its Forces Did Not Kill Palestinians Sheltering at U.N. School

I Have a Friend in Jerusalem

By Clancy Sigal, Reader Supported News

27 July 14

’m not using his name because he’s a Jewish “peacenik,” so has enough problems at home. ‘X’ is a former IDF Israeli soldier whose sons fought in the various post-’67 wars. For his work he has walked the entire length and breadth of Israel. Here’s (my edit of) what he tells me:

“Peace Now has always been centrist and does not make waves while the bombs are dropping…. Those further left, plus the Arabs, are being roughly treated by right-wing thugs when they demonstrate.

“Ever since the second intifada, which was in 2000, the Israeli left-liberal-peace camp lost its confidence. They felt the violence proved the Palestinians don’t really want peace. This, of course, is wrong, as we escalated the intifada, but it is very difficult to dislodge it from people’s hearts and minds – and of course the Palestinians play their part. Take the recent blowup: they kicked it off with the kidnap and murder of the three kids, and from there on it played out in classical escalation style.

“Despite Hamas, which is deplorable (although we boosted them in the 1990s as rivals to the PLO at that time!) I still apportion most of the blame for the past two decades on us, rather than them, although, as I say, they played their part ‘valiantly.’”

I asked him to expand a little.

“Right now it is difficult for an Israeli – even one sympathetic to the Palestinians – to feel much empathy for the population of Gaza, despite their manifest suffering. It is not so much that they refused to accept two Egyptian-sponsored ceasefire proposals, or that they continue to fire rockets into Israel indiscriminately, or that their ghastly kidnapping and murder of three Israeli students started off the this round of violence. One can just as easily point out Israeli over-reaction to the kidnappings by storming through the occupied West Bank, arresting anybody and everybody with a connection to Hamas, plus the utterly disproportionate bombing in response to the rockets …

“No. What is really appalling is the tunnels, created solely for the purpose of penetrating into Israel to commit murder. The tunnels were dug and fortified long before the outbreak of the current round of violence. Hundreds of people worked many months to construct them. What causes significant numbers of people to devote so much time and energy to so destructive an endeavor? I think the answer is the lack of any sort of hope: the members and supporters of Hamas in Gaza have nothing to lose.”

(He talks about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation going back to the Jewish immigration of the late nineteenth century, and the violent Arab response of the 1920.)

“I find myself returning to the assassination of Israel’s peace-making prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and the subsequent election of Benjamin Netanyahu. There is a Hebrew phrase, which continues to echo in my head: hanmachat tzipiyot – literally, ‘lowering of expectations.’ It was a motto of the first Netanyahu administration, endlessly repeated by his officials.

“It is fashionable nowadays to denounce the 1993 Oslo Accords reached by Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat ... but I cannot forget the incredible euphoria in the air at the time. Walking through East Jerusalem, or traveling in the West Bank, there was an uplifting atmosphere of hope and an optimism about the future that you could almost touch. It was in the faces of the people you saw and the words of the people you met.

“Today few Palestinians see a bright future, but the people of Gaza have good reason to despair. It is easy for us Israelis to point fingers at the residents of Gaza and ask them why they did not develop their territory when Israel withdrew its army and its settlers, instead of planning for war, but we should also ask ourselves why Gaza was in such a terrible state after four decades of Israeli occupation. I served in Gaza as an IDF soldier several times and I was witness to the initial improvement in the lives of the local inhabitants. I could see the tractors in the fields, the fruit on the trees, and the electricity in the homes.

“For all its shortcomings, Israel succeeded brilliantly in integrating Jewish immigrants from all over the world, and developing a thriving agriculture and a booming industry. When it came to the Palestinians of Gaza, however, although we started on the right foot, we fell short. Gaza remained a monstrous and hopeless slum. The Palestinians can take no pride in this, but we Israelis cannot evade responsibility either.

“However this current round ends, we somehow have to get together and create hope. We may need some outside help, but we have to do it. Otherwise the citizens of Gaza will once again invest their energy in constructing tunnels of death, and it will be only a relatively short time until the next round.”

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.