The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine (35 page)

“The settlements will be removed one day and peace will be achieved through partition,” Rami insisted.

“Rami, this is like Jews waiting for the Messiah and knowing full well that he will never actually come. Every so-called ‘peace plan’ has only made things worse for Palestinians, and now we have the two people living in one state but governed by very different laws.” It was like what the police chief at the Kiryat Arba police station said to me the first time I was arrested in Beit Ummar: “He is an Israeli citizen and he has rights, he is not a Palestinian that I can just throw in jail.” No argument I could possibly make demonstrates better than the words of this police station chief that indeed there exist different laws for different people.

Israel created an entire bureaucracy with the sole purpose of making the lives of Palestinians unlivable, so that they will ultimately have no choice but to leave. Israeli human rights attorney Michael Sfard describes it as, “Mountains of movement prohibitions and preventions, and an ocean of walls.”
³

But as Einstein said, the answers have changed. The answer known as the two-state solution belongs to a reality that no longer exists. The West Bank is riddled with cities and shopping malls, industry and highways designated for Jews only and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are prohibited from enjoying any of the development that took place on their land. There is no political will within Israel to give Palestinians their freedom—all of which means that clearly the answers have changed.

The answer to the difficult question of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be drawn from the reality that Israel created. By ruling over two nations, Israel has chosen to be a bi-national state. All that remains now is to replace the current system whereby only Israeli Jews enjoy the freedoms and rights of full citizenship, with one that will allow Palestinians to enjoy those rights as well.

Rami was not the only one hurt by my views and my actions. As more and more Israeli friends and acquaintances realized that I supported the call for sanctions and boycotts against Israel, I could see the sadness and pain in their faces. Israelis who live in the United States love finding coffee or pickles or olive oil made in Israel, and they relish the taste of home, as every immigrant does. I remember that feeling myself, finding a piece of home in a supermarket. Young Israelis who are liberal leaning and abhor the treatment of Palestinians by Israel also argue with me,
particularly when I tell them they should refuse to serve in the IDF—an organization I began referring to as a terrorist organization. “Are you suggesting that we refuse to serve in the same army that your father helped to build? The first Jewish armed force to protect Jews in over two thousand years?”

“This is very hard for me,” Gila would tell me repeatedly. When other Israelis and Jewish friends would ask her what I speak and write about, she’d cringe right along with them as she told them about my views and measures I have taken.

My response is: “If you knew what I know, if you saw what I saw, you would do the same. The pain of knowing what I know is a pain so sharp that sitting around and doing nothing stopped being an option for me a long time ago.” Still, Israeli and most Jewish friends look at me with a combination of sadness and uneasiness that is hard to mask.

Rami and I continued talking for hours and we did not notice the time until my mother called, wondering where we were. “The utopian dream,” I said to Rami in the end, “is not the one secular democracy in which we all live as equals. What is naïve is the belief, the insistent belief, that Israel can change, that we can have a Jewish democracy in a country that is inhabited by another nation. That is utopian. Struggling to end the segregation and create a secular democracy where two nations live as equals, while difficult, is not naïve, nor is it utopian. Demanding freedom and equality for our friends in Anata, and Bil’in and for the children in Deheishe, and indeed expecting it, is tough but realistic.”

One question that hangs in the air and can never be answered is: What would my father have said? My best guess is that since he was always ahead of his time, and he never hesitated to slaughter sacred cows, he would call for a single democracy with equal rights. He would have preferred that, I think, to the Israel that exists today, where racism and violence against Palestinians prevail. I know my mother has said on several occasions that Zionism failed, and there is no reason why we can’t all live as equals in one democratic state.

In any case, I don’t think Rami was convinced. I think he and I will always find something about which we will argue and raise our voices.

It’s what happens when you care so much that it hurts.

1
  
http://electronicintifada.net/people/miko-peled?page=1

2
  Yael Lerer, “Is it Possible to Crack the Cultural Separation Wall?”,
Kedma
, July 2, 2006.
http://www.kedma.co.il/index.php?id=1061&t=pages
.

3
  Michael Sfard, “Devil’s Island: The Transfer of Palestinian Detainees into Prisons within Israel” in
Threat: Palestinian Political Prisoners in Israel
, ed. Abeer Baker and Anat Matar (London: Pluto Press, 2011), 188.

I learned a great deal from writing this book and I am thankful for all that I learned and to all those who helped me along the way. Iris Keltz who planted the seed, Heidi Schulmann who lovingly helped me to get the writing off the ground. Landrum Bolling for his tireless work for peace and for introducing me to Helena Cobban of Just World Books; and to Helena Cobban for taking on this project with me. I want to thank Pamela Olson for her excellent, tireless work with me on the manuscript. I also want to thank Mike Sirota for helping me with the manuscript, which could not have been easy for him. And I must thank Samar Fitzgerald for her excellent editing and for getting more out of me than I thought I had.

I thank the Foundation for Middle East Peace for their generous grant, without which this book would not have been possible.

Finally, I must thank my family and friends for their inspiration and patience.

—M.P.

The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for the occupied Palestinian territory has an excellent collection of regularly updated maps on their website. The portal to their ‘Reference Maps’ is at <
http://bit.ly/P86uUD
>. Two Israeli organizations have mapping centers that track Israel’s building of settlements and other rights abuses in the occupied territories: Peace Now maps the situation in the West Bank: <
http://bit.ly/MV3w9z
>; and Btselem has an interactive map with a lot of good information about the West Bank and Gaza: <
http://bit.ly/NPArLC
>. The Palestinian organization Applied Research Institute, Jerusalem (ARIJ) has many maps describing the situation of Palestinians over time, including in the occupied territories, inside Israel, and in the broad Palestinian diaspora. They can be accessed here: <
http://bit.ly/Q2kXpx
>.

One informative depiction of the transfer of control over land and resources since 1946 is this one, distributed by <
[email protected]
>: