They shall prosper that love thee

 

We were in Galilee this time ten years ago, on a trip half way through our Sabbatical Term at the Tantur Institute itself within walking distance of the centres of both Bethelehem and Jerusalem.  It was as important an experience for Deborah as for me, which has made tracking the ten year old Blog posts a sad experience; it was here that she developed her interest in Palestinian embroidery which was to be such a feature of the rest of her life.

One of the things I remember in particular was the language of ‘dual narrative’, the same history and the same current context being experienced and expressed in mutually contradictory ways.  I still have a school text book developed by Israeli and Palestinian teachers telling diametrically different versions of the same stories on opposite pages.  And being told how even the most committed reconciliation-minded developers of that book went on finding it difficult teaching the opposite pages to their own.

So listening to the debates going on in the most responsible parts of the media today has felt so difficult.  One ‘side of the page’ spoke of how the idea of Israeli apartheid was Soviet propaganda about an American ally before the first West Bank settlements had even happened, how many Arab citizens of Israel flourish today.  On the ‘opposite page’ was spelt out how internationally agreed definitions of apartheid map across onto many features of life in the West Bank, how many Arab citizens of East Jerusalem do not find equal access to legal status and opportunity.

What is it to live beneath the shadow of centuries of murderous anti-Semitism, with memories of suicide bombers, alongside frequent recourse to panic rooms in one’s home?  What is it to live in dispossession, corralled behind a separation wall, unable to resist even the destruction of one’s trees?

And now Hamas breaks out into war-crime scale violence, unjustifiable acts of terrorism which revolt the world, and which tragically cannot possibly enhance its cause.  Nothing less than ‘We stand by Israel’ needs to be said, even knowing it to be a slogan of some who deny the possibility of any Palestinian having any rights of any sort at all.

There will be huge numbers of people in Gaza (and, say, Iran) who are committed to Hamas, to the very idea that the state of Israel should not exist.  There will be huge numbers of people across Israel (and, say, the United States) who are committed to settler ideology, to undisputed Jewish ownership of the lands occupied in 1967.  Does either group actually represent a majority position in its own community?  What chance is there that those who do not do so finding a single narrative, a single future, any time soon?