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Created: January 31, 2002
Latest Update: March 23, 2002
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An Israeli Who Remains Committed to Peace Activism Responds to A Colleague Who Now Supports War
By Yuval Yonay
Copyright: Yuval Yonay, April 2002.
"Fair use" encouraged.Since Yuval wrote this in response a colleague's op ed in the Washington Post, the IOF's incursions have happened, as Yuval's colleague, Professor Raphael Cohen-Almagor, had hoped they would. But they are not the solution he'd wished for. They can only cause reprisals. The destruction the incursions performed were for the sake of ethnic cleansing. Their proported purpose, i.e., catching 'terrorists,' does not require turning a refugee camp into rubble and utterly demolishing the infrastructure and records of much of the Palestinian authority--acts that promote hatred and anger that will boomerang on us. Yuval's response below, though written prior to the incursions, is now even more timely. Unfortunately, the Washington Post did not publish it, leaving its readership instead with one typical Israeli opinion only. DorothyAn Israeli Who Remains Committed to Peace Activism Responds to A Colleague Who Now Supports War By Yuval Yonay A few minutes ago I read a report in the Washington Post (March 31, 2002) by Professor Raphael Cohen-Almagor, a colleague of mine at the University of Haifa. He wrote about his shift from support for peace to support for war. Moments after reading his words I learned that there had been an explosion in an Arab-owned restaurant about a mile from my home, here in Haifa. I am still trying to cope with this last explosion that hit so close. Just last Friday I was there buying food for the following day, in which I participated in a protest against the occupation and against the same war that Cohen-Almagor is backing. He and I live and work near to one another, and our fields of expertise are also quite close to each other. Yet the conclusions that I draw from the recent developments, including the explosion less than two hours ago in Haifa, are quite different from those that he has reached. Cohen-Almagor wants Israel “to go deeper into the territories, to do radical surgery.” But we cannot go deeper than we have. We have repeatedly tried military solutions, losing in the process our own humanity and civility, and gaining nothing but more terror. The last three suicide bombers committed their murderous acts in the middle of a sweeping military mission; that operation, like all previous ones, not only did not achieve more security; it achieved the opposite. Numerous Israelis, including many of my colleagues, interpret the chain of explosions as proof that there is no chance for peace with the Palestinians. Such Israelis believe that Israel offered reasonable concessions to the Palestinians in exchange for peace, which the Palestinians rejected. Yet even though these people agree that Israel should depart from the occupied territories, they have failed to see that their elected governments have continued day after day, year after year to expropriate Palestinian lands, uproot Palestinian trees, demolish Palestinian houses, and build settlements with spacious red-roofed villas surrounded by green grass just opposite the dense and poverty-stricken Palestinian refugee camps. The Oslo agreement did not end these practices. In some instances it exacerbated them. Palestinian villages have remained under closure; degradation and harassment have continued for many years. Indeed, terrorism since Oslo has become more severe. The fruit of hatred of many years of war and occupation could not be undone by one stroke of the pen. But the solution should have been to accelerate the negotiations and to make viable offers to the Palestinians. Instead, Israel has bargained for each mile, using its power to dictate solutions that benefit solely its own interests, while at the same time continuing to make life in the territories harder and less bearable for Palestinians. In the whole seven years of the Oslo process not one single Jewish settler--not even one of the most extreme that live amid Palestinians in their residential areas--has been moved. In fact, the number of settlers has more than doubled. Cohen-Almagor does not see all this. He has good intentions. He is not a fanatic. And he believes in the moral integrity of every soldier that has to decide whether or not to let an ambulance go past the checkpoint. Yet, had he attended the symposium two weeks ago organized on campus by peace activists, he would have heard the moral remorse of one of our students. He related how he, as an officer in the military, had to resist the pleas of a Palestinian father to permit his daughter to cross the checkpoint into Israel to receive urgent medical treatment. This occurred several years before the onset of the second Intifadah, at the height of the Oslo days, when such moral infractions passed by the board as being of no interest. The outcome of the explosions in Netanya, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and elsewhere are horrible. And it is frightening to think that I might know one of the victims of the blast, and it is frustrating to wait for hours to hear the names of those killed and injured. But while I am praying that all my friends and their loved ones have not been hurt, my demands are not directed to Yasser Arafat but to my own government: stop all delays and drop all excuses that keep us from sincere negotiations; let Israel show its intention to make peace by withdrawing immediately from all the territories under the Palestinian authority and by allowing international forces to monitor a cease fire; start negotiating with Arafat unconditionally and without ceasing negotiations every time a Palestinian extremist who opposes the peace process manages to kill more of us. End the occupation now, not as a concession to the Palestinians but because this is the right thing to do. Now, not tomorrow. Yuval Yonay Department of Sociology and Anthropology University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, 31905 Haifa