It seems odd to me now, that growing up I never knew any Arabs.
I grew up in Jerusalem, which is a ‘mixed’ city, but I never had an Arab friend, or even an Arab acquaintance (Israelis growing up in the 60's and early 70's had never heard of Palestinians so we just called them Arabs.) There were never any attempts to integrate Israeli and Arab children in Jerusalem, nothing organized by the schools, no mutual cultural events, not even sporting events. The two communities were and still are completely segregated.
My father (the famous Israeli General Matti Peled, hero of the 1948 and 1967 wars who shocked the country when he began a dialogue with Palestinian leaders in the early 1970's) spoke Arabic, and even taught Arabic language and literature, but I never learned Arabic in school. And although my father had a few Arab acquaintances, he had no Arab friends. He would travel to the Galilee to Nazareth and other places in what we called the alilee Triangle’, where ‘Israeli-Arabs’ live, as part of his political and academic work. But for the most part for us Israelis, Arabs were different, they were a minority and all we felt towards them was fear, mistrust and contempt.
I became familiar with the term ‘Palestinian’ in the late 70's only because my father was involved in Israeli Palestinian peace efforts. Until then they were always called Arabs, or Al Fatah, or Fedayin, or terrorists depending on the time and context. The first time I met and talked with Palestinians was in California in the year 2000. I was 39 years old.
For years, the Israeli Palestinian conflict had been a source of great frustration for me. It set me apart from my Israeli friends and I could find no peace inside me. After the 2000 Camp David peace talks fell apart I was completely beside myself. So much hope and in the end it all came to nothing. This prompted me to look for other people to talk to and I eventually found a Jewish Palestinian dialogue group in San Diego. Someone recommended that I contact George Majeed Khoury, a Palestinian from Jerusalem, and he invited me to a dialogue meeting at his home in Rancho Bernardo. It was obvious to me that with my background, I knew everything, or at least more than anyone else about the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
The meetings of the San Diego Jewish Palestinian Dialogue Group were held once a month. I learned that the purpose of dialogue is to eliminate the barriers between the two sides through listening and empathy, an objective that is easier to set than it is to achieve. It wasn't easy for me to accept that I did not have full possession of the truth. It takes a serious personal breakthrough to give up one's long held beliefs and move towards the unknown territory of trust. For the most part I was close in my opinions to the Palestinian members of the group: I was vehemently opposed to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and I was a firm believer in the Two State Solution as the only means to achieve a lasting peace. But I held on to myths on which I was raised and I can determine the exact moment when my own personal breakthrough began.
For me, the myths that we Israelis are taught regarding the war of 1948 and the establishment of the Jewish State were indisputable historical facts. They had to be so because my father fought and was wounded in 1948, fighting in the first Jewish army since the fall of Judea some 2000 years ago. I heard the stories directly from him and from my mother. My mother lived through the siege on Jerusalem, raising my older brother and sister on little bread and even less water. We were few and brave and they were many and intent on killing us. My mother often told us stories about what it was like trying to raise two young children when food and water were scarce and danger was lurking all around.
She also told us that after the fighting was over and the Arabs fled from their homes in West Jerusalem - (Arabs in West Jerusalem, that took a while to really sink in, I never knew there were Arabs living on our side of the city), their vacant homes were distributed to the Jews (by whom? I always wondered).
My mother Zika, was the wife of an officer in the young, heroic Israeli Defense Forces, and she was the daughter of Dr. Avram Katsnelson, a member of the ‘National Council’ which was the de facto Jewish government in Palestine. So it was only natural that she was offered one of these lovely Arab homes in Jerusalem. But she said it made her sick to see Jewish people move in to these homes that were still fully furnished. She said that the Palestinian residents had to flee in haste and when the Jews took over, they found breakfast still warm on the dinning room table. She said she could not and would not take a home that belonged to another family.
I admired my mother's decision, if only because I knew that by refusing an Arab house she had to go on living with her mother in a small apartment in Jerusalem - living with my grandmother should have earned her a medal for service above and beyond the call of duty. I admire her even more today, knowing as I do Palestinians who still have the keys to the homes that they were forced to leave behind. Still, Arabs in West Jerusalem - who knew? We learned about Jews building neighborhoods outside the walled city but not Arabs. There are many ‘Arab Houses’ in Western neighborhoods of the city, as there are all over Israel, but no connection is ever made between these homes and the homeless Palestinian refugees in the camps in and around Israel.
But I want to get back to dialogue. I can recall the day, the moment in fact when trust began to transform the way I saw the Israeli Palestinian reality. It was during a meeting at Majeed's house, and he said that the fighting forces of the Jews in 1948 amounted to about 30,000 fighters, while the Palestinians had around 10,000. I still remember the guttural reaction I had: Impossible, untrue, absurd! I should know because my father fought in that war. I remember stories of the sieges, the fierce attacks on civilians and battles where our forces were outnumbered and won because they had the wit and the moral high ground. But for some reason I trusted Majeed and I felt that he would not say this unless there was something to it. That was my moment of truth. That was the beginning of a breakthrough and that is the breakthrough without which dialogue is just talk.
I could have and perhaps should have said to myself that Majeed is a liar and an anti Semite, just like the rest of them. Why else would he be perpetuating this insane notion that we were not a ‘David’ defending ourselves against a ‘Goliath’? But the trust had been created and it moved everything in a totally different direction. It prompted me to do a little research, to question the myth and ultimately to learn that his numbers were accurate. Because of that trust I learned a great deal more about my identity as an Israeli, about the Palestinian people, and about myself.
Several years later I met Nader Elbanna at a dialogue meeting. He was very cold and reserved at first but with time he and I became close and closer, and with the passing of the years we became what we call ‘Peace Partners’. One year he and I ended up traveling to Israel at the same time. This was his first trip back home after 50 years of exile. For me it was yet another trip to see my family as I do once or twice each year. Nader invited Gila and I to Nazareth to meet his family. That was our first visit to Nazareth. Driving north from Jerusalem to the Galilee the scenery was very beautiful and familiar, but once we entered the Palestinian town of Nazareth we found ourselves in a world that was totally unfamiliar to us.
To begin with, everyone around us was an Arab. The street signs and the billboards were screaming at us in Arabic. Up on the hill is the Israeli town but we were going to see people in the Arab town, Palestinians. Who do we ask for directions? Is it safe for us to get out of the car and ask someone, after all everything that we saw in front of us spelled: D A N G E R! But, I said to myself, it is Nader, my dear friend and his family who we are going to see. Besides which, this is Nazareth not Baghdad. Finally we stopped to ask for directions and a kind local merchant pointed us in the right direction. I couldn't help thinking to myself ‘These people are nice.’ We made our way to the Elbanna family home and we spent a memorable day with them. When we returned home, to Jerusalem it was already dark. The next day Nader and his family came to visit us in Jerusalem.
The following year Gila and I were in Israel again and we traveled to see friends in Nazareth even though Nader was not there. Friends suggested that we stop at Umm al Fahm on the way to see the gallery there. Umm al Fahm is one of the largest Palestinian cities in the Galilee, known for political activism. It is associated with the kind of Arabs who are ‘trouble-makers.’ We pulled into the gas station at the intersection off the main road for breakfast before going into the town. The fear of having Arabs all around us hit us again. That deep fear that exists in the recesses of the mind and the heart, a fear over which you must exercise enormous control or it will consume you. Breakfast was terrific and the hospitality too - and to think that fear would have stopped us from enjoying all that.
Now we were in Umm Al Fahm. But where do we go? To ask for directions is to admit you are lost - and that is a frightful thought, but what can we do we have to trust somebody. And so we did, and again people were happy to help us, going out of their way in fact to help us.
Trust seems to build more trust, but you've got to meet it half way. That was certainly true in my case, as the following episode will demonstrate. Bil'in is a Palestinian village in the West Bank that has distinguished itself through a commitment to persistent non-violent resistance to the Israeli Occupation. For several years now, each Friday, local residents, Palestinians from the surrounding areas and Israeli peace activists gather in Bil'in to protest Israel's illegal confiscation of land, the development of illegal housing for Jews only on that land, and the construction of the separation wall on this land that belongs to the people of Bil'in.
A fellow Israeli peace activist suggested that I contact with Mohammad Al Khatib head of the council of Bil'in. I initially called him from the US and we spoke several times. On my visit to Israel in December 2005, I went to meet him in Bil'in. If Nazareth seemed like foreign land, the West Bank was enemy territory. Once you pass the last checkpoint and turn off the main road you know you are in the West Bank.
I was not sure where Mohammad was going to meet me (or what he looked like) and I assumed it was where I got off the main road right after the checkpoint. I was disappointed to learn that I was wrong. Instead, as I turned into the road that eventually leads to Bil'in I took a local day laborer who needed a ride to his village. He had a speech impediment and spoke very little Hebrew and that put us both in quite a predicament. He was able to utter the word Bil'in and to point me in the direction of the village.
As I drove through the windy hill roads I called Mohammad on my cell phone just to be reassured I was on the right path. Was I frightened out of my wits? I should have been. Everything I ever learned and knew to be true said that this could be my last day on earth: I was driving alone in a rented car with Israeli license plates through an area populated by Arabs who hate Israelis. It seemed to me this road was leading me nowhere - but I was wrong.
Finally I stopped by a small house where an elderly couple was sitting in the front yard. ‘Bil'in?’ I ask. Hadha Bil'in’ the old man replied, this is Bil'in. I call Mohammad again and he says to keep going until I reach the mosque. On the way I see posters of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and the green flags of Hamas that seemed threatening to me at the time as well as more comforting pictures of Abu 'Ammar (who ever thought that a photo of Yasser Arafat could be comforting?) and lots of graffiti.
I found Mohammad near his home. He is a young man, a father of three children. No sooner did I arrive than his mother brought out a fresh pastry baked with vegetables for me to eat. He and I talked for a while, and then we drove to meet two of his friends, fellow peace activists. The main road in Bil'in is more like a narrow alley in a refugee camp: Potholes, concrete and graffiti. Children were coming home from school, backpacks on their shoulders.
We drove off the main road and into some unpaved alley when out of nowhere come two young Palestinians. Young, unshaven - picture perfect ‘terrorists’. We walked together to see the construction of the separation wall and the huge apartment complexes being built for Jews only on land that belongs to Bil'in. Since there was no army presence, we ventured beyond the confines of where they as Palestinians are permitted to go and we got a close look at the apartments and even spoke to a few orthodox Jews who were just moving in.
When we returned to Mohammad's house one of his friends asked to use my car to go buy groceries. I gave him the car keys without a second thought and he returned with it loaded with groceries from which a real Palestinian feast was prepared. I have found that Palestinian hospitality and cooking are not compromised under any circumstances. I had not realized this until months later, but here too my trust was being put to the test left and right. Lending a rented car with Israeli plates to a couple of young Palestinians in the West Bank who I had just met could and perhaps should have been considered a serious risk. But here again, there was no risk just an issue of trust.
I spent the entire day with these young, committed freedom activists. They are all fathers of young children, and they refuse to engage in violence but will not give up their resistance to the Israeli Occupation.
It was getting dark and I still had to drive home to Jerusalem. They pointed me in the right direction and off I went, scared to death once again but trusting deep inside that these people would not put me at risk. I knew that they knew I was safe or they would not have let me drive alone. I picked up a couple of young school age boys who asked for a ride. They rode with me for a couple of miles and thanked me as they got out of the car. I rode through the potholes in the empty streets and all I had to comfort me was the greeting of these boys and the trust I had in Mohammad and his friends.
The following week I took Nader to see Bil'in. We drove through the Jewish Settlement because the Israeli army closed the road to the village that day. I introduced Nader to Mohammad and his other Palestinian brothers who brave the assaults of Israeli military and remain dedicated to non-violent resistance.
For Israeli - Palestinian dialogue to succeed trust is a major ingredient. Without trust there can be no progress. Like a baby learning to walk, we have to trust that it's ok to let go of the comfort of holding on to what we know to be true. Once we take a few steps into the unknown we find that there is something even more secure on which we can rely. That thing is trust.
The meaningful dialogue I have had with Palestinians, and the deep friendships we have formed together, would not have happened without trust. When Nader tells the story of our first meeting, he says he thought I was an Israeli spy and that he felt he had to be on the alert in case I attacked him. This was at the home of our friends Doris and Jim, here in San Diego. Since then his children spent the night at my home and mine at his. He and I have been to Bil'in and back, we visited Nazareth and Jerusalem together, we traveled to Israel and Jordan together and we met one another's extended family.
In the end, human contact is the only way to eliminate our fears and build trust. That is why I am sorry that growing up I never knew any Arabs.
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