Another Viewpoint

Next, we had the opportunity to meet a young Israeli man named Yahav Zohar, who had been a part of a group called "Combatants for Peace" made up of Israeli soldiers and Palestinian "combatants" who had decided that war and killing were not the way to solve the conflicts between them. They often go out into the schools in Israel and Palestine with a member from "each side" and tell their stories of how fighting has not seemed to make anyone safer and certainly not brought the two peoples closer to a peaceful solution. For the children, it is often revolutionary to see the two kinds of "soldiers" coming together in friendship. Most Palestinian kids have never met an Israeli that hasn't been in a uniform with a gun–and sometimes their experiences have ended in violence or killing of someone they know and love. The majority of the Israeli kids–who most likely have never been in "The Palestinian Territories" unless they live in "The Settlements" and are driven on the special roads that are "off-limits" to Palestinians–have probably never really had a conversation with a Palestinian on a personal basis. So the work of "Combatants for Peace" is pretty ground-breaking and mind-blowing to kids on each side, who have been taught something different from what they are seeing, both in terms of the glory of manhood, fighting and dying for one's cause and by the fact that two men who might have clashed with guns, could now be good friends, working together as a team!

Yahav, is a trained and licensed Israeli Tour Guide, and he is involved with an "alternative" tour company called: Green Olive Tours (www.GreenOliveTours.com), which attempts to provide a balanced point of view about what is going on in Israel and Palestine. I felt that Yahav was especially skilled at presenting the facts of the "occupation" and how they were affecting both sides.

First he took us to the outskirts of Eastern Jerusalem to see how the various land laws continue to "eat up" the land that by agreement of the international community, is expected to be on the Palestinian side of the "Green Line"–if and when a Peace Plan ever comes into affect. These Israeli laws include creating "green spaces" where no Palestinian can build anything–which "looks nice" but adds to the terribly overcrowded areas of current housing. In addition, almost no one is given legal building permits, so anyone with a growing family is increasingly squeezed.

If anything is built without the coveted building permit, they are often sited with a "Demolition Order" which means that you either take down your building or it will be bulldozed, when your time comes. The trick is that demolition orders are acted on in either an arbitrary way or by "lottery"–so that of the 20,000 homes that may have been cited as "illegal" and posted  for demolition at any particular time, your house might be bulldozed down with perhaps less than an hour's notice! Whatever you don't get out during that time, is gone to you forever–unless you can pull it out from under tons of rubble–which was your home a few hours ago! And since you "illegally built" there are no services for you to find shelter for the night or help in finding alternative long-term housing, "You've lost your house–Too Bad! Hope you have a family member or neighbor who might want to take you and your family of 5, 10, 15 in for the duration! Good luck!"

As an example: A well-known and beloved Palestinian PeaceMaker, whose family has lived on the Mount of Olives for hundreds of years has been faced with a Demolition and/or or massive fines for adding a small addition to his family home (in which he has openly invited visitors to came and stay with him for years now).  Just today I got the notice that in his last court hearing, he was given permission to stay, as long as he gets the legal permit and pays 1/2 of the original fine–which amounts to $72,000!

 And sometimes, homes, stores, shops, etc. have been torn down in order to build "The Separation Wall" which suddenly makes it impossible to walk across the street, visit your grandmother, get to the hospital in an emergency, go to your school, keep your job, or get to your olive groves or other crops. Obviously, one would expect that this 18 meter wall–called various things, but often the "Apartheid Wall" by the Palestinians would follow along the agree-upon "Green Line" which was the established division between Israel and the Palestinian Territories–but guess what? It almost never does, and most generally is again cutting into the territory assigned to the Palestinians. If you happen to be "on the other side" you may need to drive more than 45 minutes to get "across the street" because you need to get to a "check point" where you may or may not be allowed to enter and then come back again on the opposite side.


One can see from the graffiti on the wall, that it is definitely not an appreciated feature on the land of the Palestinians. (When I was here in the winter of 2003-4, the wall was actively being built around Jerusalem and I saw cases where Palestinian homes where actually being cut in half by the "temporary wall"–with the bedrooms on one side and the kitchen on the other! Now all of those homes have been demolished to make sure that the wall had space on either side–for security purposes!

 As we sat and heard these stories, many of us became very sad. I thought about Jesus' saying in the bible: "Love your neighbor as yourself."



We moved around the outskirts of Jerusalem to the north, we came upon a Muslim neighborhood called "Shekh Jarah" which is one of the sites of another tactic currently being used by the Israeli government to "liberate" land and homes from the Palestinian people.


Here, people whose homes have been owned by Palestinian/"Arab" families for generations and perhaps much more, are visited one morning by squads of police and military and told to evacuate with all their things, which are then dumped on the street, and Jewish Israeli families are helped to move in, the same day and then are guarded to protect against any "problems" caused by the evicted
 family and their neighbors.

 We visited the street where one of Yael's friends had been evicted, which had become a site of weekly protests by both Palestinians and Israeli Jews who feel that this is just too overtly unjust to stomach. The elder woman of the Muslim family happened to be back at the site and exchanged greetings with Yael, while watching from the other side of the street while the "new family" of probably immigrant Jews, came in two cars and a handful of kids dragging bags of groceries up the stairs to "her" house.



 Across the street, where another eviction had taken place, one could see the graffiti of hatred created by this policy.

It was a traumatic day for some of us to realize the extent of the "reality on the ground" which is taking place around even Jerusalem, but we felt fortunate to be able to observe with our own eyes, these things that are rarely seen or reported in North American news media.

One Israeli Perspective

Part of the theory of the Compassionate Listening Project is to have the opportunity to hear the various “narratives” and personal stories of a wide variety of perspectives across both Israel and Palestine. We began this practice with a visit to the young founder of an organization called: “Im Tirtzu” which is attempting to revitalize the Zionist movement within Israel. 

Ronan Shoval (photo by Ada)

His name was Ronen Shoval, and he has written a book called: Hertzel’s Vision 2.0 (Hertzel was considered the original founder of Zionism in the late 1800’s). Ronen seemed very dedicated to the idea that Zionism was mainly about the Jews as a people vs being about a religion. On the other hand, he said that the Bible predicted that the Jews would return to this whole land (Israel, West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights, etc.) as its sovereigns and here they will survive and flourish as a people.

He stated that he was open to having “Arabs” living within the State of Israel–but only if they were willing to support the state as citizens with equal “civil rights” but no “national rights”–meaning that they should not have any rights to become a nation or have a flag of their own or any other rights as a group of people. He stated that the Torah teaches that if a stranger (the Arab) respects you, he should be given rights, but if he is not respecting you (as the Jewish State), he has two choices: to leave or to die!

He acknowledged that sometimes Israel has fallen short of its very high vision, and it is appropriate for insiders to give corrective criticisms, but that people (or nations) outside of Israel should not criticize, especially if Israel is being held to a higher standard than other countries who have far worse records–for example on human rights issues. Ronan said he is “optimistic in seeing his vision fulfilled in the long term, but not in the short term. It is a long-term fight.”

 
Most days, as a group, we would take time to process what we had experienced and what we thought and felt about it. After Ronan's presentation, we had lunch together in a nearby mall. Clearly,
we each had lots of thoughts and feelings about this presentation, and many of us had self-assessments about how well we were able to listen with compassion and with open hearts. For me, Ronan's talk gave a new perspective, which helped me understand some of the statements and actions which I find so perplexing in the situation here.