Death as a Way of Life

Arafat Arrives in Gaza

June 1994

In accordance with the May 1994. Cairo Agreement on the Gaza Strip and the Jericho Area, Israeli forces withdrew from Jericho and most of the Gaza Strip. On July 1, 1994, Yasir Arafat returned to Gaza for the first time in thirty-three years. He crossed the border from Egypt and was welcomed by a large, cheering Palestinian crowd. The picture of Arafat, wearing his usual army uniform, kaffiyah, and a gun, flashing a victory sign, was a difficult sight for many Israelis. About 100,000 Israeli right-wing supporters demonstrated in Jerusalem, calling for death to Rabin and to Arafat.

Arafat arrives in Gaza, and half the Israeli nation jumps up shouting, “It’s defeat, the beginning of the end of the Jewish state, what will become of us, how humiliating!”

Indeed, in the “old order,” the equation was clear — if one side gains, the other side loses. Every gain comes at the other’s expense. But since the Yom Kippur War of 1973, this perception of reality has been called into question. We won the war with the Egyptians, but the Egyptians didn’t lose. In the peace negotiations, the Egyptians ostensibly won by receiving the entire Sinai Peninsula. But we didn’t lose, because we created a state of peace and began the very long process of being accepted in the Middle East.

The Palestinians began an Intifada in 1987 and won, because they forced us to realize what we were doing to them, but the truth is that we did not lose, because, finally, the Intifada opened the way for us to save ourselves from what the occupation had done to us.

The same is true today. Arafat arrives in Gaza. The Palestinians in the territories will surely be drunk with joy. One can presume that their very happiness will irk many of us. One may also presume that the television cameras will do their best to bring into our homes Palestinians who get carried away by euphoria and say precisely those things that all of us fear, giving voice to their subliminal hope to return to Jaffa and Haifa. There will also be expressions of contempt for Israel, and there will be many Israelis who will feel the humiliation of defeat.

But the victory of the Palestinians is not our defeat. They have made a great gain, for which they have fought and paid a great price. They are beginning to make real a dream of many years. But thanks to the new consciousness that arose in September 1993—which will expunge the dichotomy of “either us or them”—we Israelis can also feel a sense of achievement today. Because today it is us and them.

The tragedy is that both “us” and “them” come into this new partnership scarred and wounded, crippled in body and soul. All of us, Israelis and Palestinians, are the children of this conflict, which has bequeathed us all the deformities of hatred and violence. Both sides require almost superhuman strength to break out of the spiral of murder and reprisal. As a result, it is sometimes difficult to remember what our basic interest is, and to take joy in their joy, and wish them, for our own sakes, success. May they overcome all those among them who seek to turn the wheel back, those who have become so accustomed to the deformities war has imposed on them that they refuse, with all their might, to be healed of them. They even try to persuade others not to undergo the surgery that, while painful, will heal them in the end.

Despite all this, Arafat will come to Gaza, and we may also permit ourselves to feel admiration for the climax of the struggle conducted by this man and the entire Palestinian people. The fact that it has been directed against us need not blind us. A struggle for independence, self-sacrifice, and courage are values we were educated in, and in which we educate our children. Some of the methods the Palestinians used in their struggle were despicable and cruel, but the acts we committed against them do not give us a standing to preach to them. There was a war, and it still causes us pain, but now some sort of doorway to peace has opened, and one part of our growing pains in this new situation is the need to acknowledge our rival’s courage and determination. The Palestinian people, so derided, so mistreated during the last hundred years, are today standing before their first-ever chance for a life of honor and independence. Instead of hysterical demonstrations by Israelis who are too cowardly for peace, we should today be offering generosity, to ourselves as well, and we should understand that, together, we have made another important step ahead. Together — the two of us — we have won something that is much greater than either the Palestinians or the Israelis alone.