Understanding the path to Mideast peace
Although Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor by the American-born Israeli writer and journalist Yossi Klein Halevi is said to be available in Arabic, at least on the internet and apparently for free, it’s not certain that many Palestinians will read it. And, as far as I know, there’s as yet no Hebrew translation.
Written in English, the book will be read by some Israelis and Palestinians, but, above all, by many others around the world. It’s already on the New York Times bestseller list.
Readers will find the book compelling because it describes vividly — indeed, dramatically — the dilemmas of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as articulated by a sensitive, liberal Jewish Israeli committed to his faith and its history, yet appreciative of the aspirations and needs of his Palestinian neighbours. The author acknowledges the contradictory yet compelling narratives by the two sides. Peace can only happen when both stories are understood and appre- ciated. The Jewish narrative has it, as history attests, that Jews have lived in the Land of Israel since biblical times. The State of Israel exists today, Halevi writes, “because it never stopped existing, even if only in prayer.” Zionism, the movement that created modern Israel, “was the meeting point between need and longing.”
The Palestinian narrative rejects all that. It sees Israel as the illegitimate effort by Holocaust survivors and their supporters to compensate for the crimes committed by the Nazis against the Jews of Europe at the expense of the indigenous Arab population. Some go as far as to blatantly deny the Holocaust ever happened. They view Zionism as another version of Western colonialism. Though deeply committed to the Jewish narrative, the history and the faith that shaped it, Yossi Klein Halevi recognizes the devastating effects on the Palestinians caused by the Jews’ return to their land. Already on page 8 of the book he admits to being “open to the Palestinian tragedy: the shattering of a people whose organizing principle is now dislocation and whose most significant anniversaries are humiliating defeats.”
He cites with approval the description of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by A.B. Yehoshua, the distinguished Israeli novelist, as the struggle between “right and right.” Therefore, it can only be resolved by painful compromises on both sides.
The founders of the State of Israel were prepared to make them. Thus, already in 1947, when the United Nations decreed a partition of the country and the creation of a Palestinian and a Jewish state, the Palestinians rejected it and, together with several Arab states, went to war. There have been other wars since. The next one may be on the horizon.
Each Israeli victory has led to more Palestinian suffering. Therefore, compromises that spell sacrifices on both sides offer the only viable solution. Palestinians won’t rescind their claims. Jews won’t give up the land they know is theirs. But both sides can yield enough to bring about peace.
Halevi writes: “Neither side can implement the totality of its claim without erasing the claim of the other. The moral argument of partition is simply this: For the sake of allowing the other side to achieve some measure of justice, each side needs to impose on itself some measure of injustice.”
Mercifully, Halevi doesn’t come up with another “peace plan.” There have been many of those over the years and yet another is on its way, this time on behalf of U.S. President Donald Trump and his team. Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor does better: It tries to help us understand what’s at stake. Peace will only come about when both sides acknowledge the other’s narrative and are prepared to revise their own.