We’ve Forgotten Our Own Sermon

The Palestinian state will come about — but Israel is prisoner to the trauma of the past.

The recent pictures of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to Washington could mark a turning point in the Middle East. I’m assuming Netanyahu and his entourage — never mind his followers in Israel — were deliriously happy about the honor with which they were received; all the adulation for personal and collective egos that naturally crave such praise.

But what did the Palestinians see? What did the young people in our neighboring Arab states see? Mainly, they saw an Israel that continues to present the world with the mirage that it is willing to negotiate just as though any of Netanyahu’s conditions had any chance of guaranteeing the creation of a viable Palestinian nation.

Netanyahu mentioned the word “peace” about 50 times in his address without ever trying to hide the word “no” between the lines. His “no” was always accompanied by a smug smile and a disturbing aura of self-assurance: No to a return to the 1967 borders as a starting point for negotiations; no to a Jerusalem that would be the capital city of both nations, Israeli and Palestinian. Netanyahu will undoubtedly continue to talk of peace while seeking to retain control of the occupied territories. But anyone with eyes can see that peace negotiations under the conditions he set in Washington would be impossible.

Then the Arabs saw a naïve, detached America that applauded a policy of stubbornness and was blind to the insulting behavior the guest directed toward his host. They saw how Congress celebrated Netanyahu’s claim that Jerusalem was forever indivisible and especially cheered Netanyahu’s statement that the peace process was dead. They saw how representatives of the American government honored the only democracy that still oppresses another nation, something it has now been doing for nearly half a century. In brief, they saw a United States that surrendered to the emotions of the past while refusing to recognize the opportunities of the future.

Most probably, however, the future will prove one thing: The old United States has lost the new Middle East. The political capital President Obama built up with his Cairo speech two years ago has long since been frittered away. What should the Palestinians think of a superpower that is supposedly acting as a neutral mediator in this conflict? This is the moment for Europe to step in. Europe should build a bridge between a distant Washington entangled in a trap of its own making and the awakening masses in the Middle East.

The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza will see its 24th anniversary shortly. During the time since the Six-Day War, Israel has unilaterally annexed the city of Jerusalem, built dozens of Jewish settlements, erected a security fence shutting out Palestinians and forcibly emptied the Gaza Strip. All the conferences in Europe and ceremonies on the White House lawn have failed to prevent Israel from its unilateral actions, many of which were fatal for the peace process in and of themselves.

Can we afford another 10 years waiting for negotiations? Haven’t we learned that the deep disappointments that have followed every meaningless conference have had tragic consequences for both Israelis and Palestinians?

I, along with many well-known Israelis, have personally appealed to the heads of European governments to support the peace process as a sign that a democratic Israel strives to prevent the worst from happening. Today, after years of stubbornness and mental fixation, Netanyahu is prepared to admit that Israel probably won’t be able to hang on to all its Jewish settlements. But how many years will it take and how many more lives will have to be lost until he agrees to take another step toward the inevitable? Sooner or later, there will be a Palestinian state.

Israeli consciousness is understandably at a critical point. We constantly fluctuate between the trauma of the past and post-traumatic stress disorder. We find it difficult to trust anyone. We are always mistrustful and we’ve become more aggressive than we need to be. We’re still paralyzed and therefore the solution to the problem will not come from Israel. That’s not political failure, it’s a psychological conditioning of our policy. We’ve long since forgotten the concepts we once preached. But now it appears that some Palestinians have come to an important realization, something that the Zionist movement had previously known: Civil negotiation and peaceful protest can achieve far more than war. Those are the tools the Palestinian leadership has now taken up. They are the means upon which thousands of young Palestinians are now relying.

The Palestinian strategy, the creation of governmental institutions while seeking recognition from the United Nations, is by no means the end of the peace process. On the contrary, it’s where we feel the winds of change currently blowing through the Middle East. But everyone is saying the Palestinians shouldn’t deal unilaterally; there must be direct negotiations with Israel. That sounds like the death throes of a political concept whose time is over. What is so unilateral about a people appealing directly to the nations of the world for recognition? Is there a more dignified approach to independence? There will certainly be a Palestinian state. Only if we recognize it immediately and welcome it into the family of nations with open arms will we someday be able to see two nations peacefully sharing a narrow country between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean as good neighbors.