Death as a Way of Life

Reality Check, March 2002

April 2002

Following the most grisly terrorist attack since the Intifada began, on Passover evening at the Park Hotel in Netanya — in a month of daily terrorist attacks that killed over eighty civilians — the Israeli army invaded Ramallah and other cities in the West Bank on March 27, 2002. Despite international condemnation, the operation received widespread support, as a terrorized Israel rallied behind the army and the government. Voices and acts of protest were criticized and many Israelis regarded any opposition to the operation as treason. Long curfews were imposed on the Palestinian population, freedom of movement almost completely denied. Complaints of violations of human rights reached the world and Israel despite the army’s frequent refusal to allow access to journalists and aid workers. Most major Israeli media outlets complied with the restrictions. The Palestinians accused the Israelis of committing a massacre in the city of Jenin, but international reports later confirmed Israel’s denial. Nevertheless, an Amnesty International report, published in November 2002, condemned the Israeli government and army for committing war crimes against civilians.

Seven days ago, as Israel was celebrating Passover, one of the Jewish people’s most meaningful holidays, more than a score of Israelis were murdered by a Palestinian suicide bomber who planted himself in the center of the hall where they were seated around their holiday tables. Survivors relate that the man took a long, slow look around, examining their faces, and then calmly detonated himself.

In response to this, and to three other deadly attacks that happened soon afterward, the Israeli government ordered its army to mobilize 20,000 reservists and to launch a large-scale campaign against the Palestinian Authority, known as Operation Defensive Shield. Today, Israeli tanks are surrounding Yasir Arafat’s compound in Ramallah in an act that lacks any political rationale. Suddenly one bullet, accidental or deliberate, can change the face of the Middle East and catapult all of us into war. Every day, meanwhile, Palestinians are exploding in the streets of Israel, killing dozens.

There is not an Israeli who does not feel that his life is in danger, and the despondency and dread that this insecurity causes are again exposing the odd paradox of Israel’s position. On the one hand, militarily and economically it is one of the strongest countries in the Middle East. Its citizens strongly feel that they share a common fate; they are firmly determined to defend their homeland. On the other hand, Israel is also a surprisingly fragile country, profoundly, almost tragically, unsure of itself, of its own ability to survive, of the possibility of a future for itself in this region. These two characteristics are on prominent display right now — Israel is today a clenched fist, but also a hand whose fingers are spread wide in despair.

Excuse my dramatic exaggeration, but I’m writing this from the front lines. Meaning, I’m sitting in the neighborhood café, in the shopping center near my house, in a suburb of Jerusalem. I’m the only customer in the place, which until a few months ago was bustling around the clock. A few shoppers scurry past, their expressions indicating that they would rather be at home. They look from one side to the other, constantly checking their surroundings. Any of the people nearby could be their murderer. That man over there, for example, who has been standing motionless for several seconds at the top of the escalator leading to the second floor. He’s putting his hand in his pants pocket now, and I notice that around me other pairs of eyes are watching him nervously. Without even realizing that they are doing it, people step back, toward the walls. What am I supposed to do? What does one do when it happens? What should I be thinking about? The man draws a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, that’s all, just a little colored pack, self-destruction of a normal, comprehensible kind. The film that stopped in freeze-frame for a second continues to roll, until the next scary part.

There is, of course, a clear imbalance of power between the two peoples, Israeli and Palestinian. But there is symmetry in their fear of each other and in their ability to send themselves and their neighbors sliding into an abyss.

Without minimizing Israel’s responsibility for the deterioration and without ignoring the immense suffering that Israel has inflicted on the Palestinians during thirty-five years of occupation, I feel today that it is the Palestinians who have brought about the current intolerable escalation. It is the outcome of their choice to use the weapon of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians.

We must recognize this in order to be able to deal with the new situation we are facing. The suicide bombings have injected into an already complex conflict an element that is irrational, insane, inhuman from any perspective, immoral in a way that we have never yet seen, even in this grubby conflict. Suicide bombings are a weapon that no one in the world knows how to confront. Its use, on such a large scale as to make it almost routine, is liable to lead to extremely dangerous Israeli responses.

Today, as the Israeli army besieges Arafat’s office, as another terrorist makes his way — of this we can be certain — to an Israeli street, to another bus or shopping mall. At this very hour, as in a scene from a convoluted epic novel, full of reversals, two men face off against each other. These are the leaders of the two nations, Ariel Sharon and Yasir Arafat, two cunning old men, ultimate survivors, and grand masters of a strange game of chess in which they cause the most damage and loss to their own pieces.

Twenty years after Sharon trapped Arafat in Beirut in the Lebanon War of 1982, and after Arafat slipped away to Tunis — striding along the dock at Beirut, on the crosshairs of an Israeli sniper forbidden to shoot him — the two are facing off again.

The sordid reality that the two of them have created for their public is in their own image. Each of them has “succeeded”—each in his own way, each in accordance with the influence he has wielded over the years — in fanning the flames of violence, hatred, and despair among their peoples. Their opponents say that they have no policy and no vision beyond the will to survive. But look how today’s situation is the inevitable outcome of their chosen paths, their deeds, their aspirations, and how much the present state of affairs reflects their warlike, suspicious, and aggressive view of the world. For them it confirms, in a hermetic, circular way, just how right they have always been.

Sharon and Arafat have together, in a collaboration that makes the skin crawl, complicated politics to the point that it has turned to war, have spread despondency of any possibility of dialogue, have brought the situation to such an extreme that their people will be seduced into believing that there really is no choice but to fight against and kill each other.

Now each of them plays the role he has perfected over decades. One is the superwarrior, a sort of gigantic military relic of the new Jewish history. The other is the persecuted, isolated, besieged martyr, wallowing in the desolation from which he knows how to draw a startling strength and forcefulness.

Both of them will fail, apparently, just as they have failed in the past. Sharon won’t succeed in eradicating terrorism. Even if he captures all its planners and strategists, even if he confiscates all the large quantities of weapons that the Palestinians now possess, he will not succeed in excising from the hearts of the Palestinians the impetus to act violently. That is their despair, their sense of humiliation, and their hatred of Israel. His measures will only enhance all these and encourage further waves of terror that will make Israel’s position even more precarious.

Arafat will not, apparently, get what he wants, which is to draw the Arab countries into the conflict. They fear, no less than Israel, the internal unrest that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict causes, and fear even more the Islamic religious extremism that Arafat encourages and that is liable to harm them from within. The world will, apparently, continue to abandon Israel and the Palestinians to kill each other.

More seriously, Arafat’s gambits, the encouragement he gives to the suicide bombers, his grotesque hope, as he recently stated, to himself be “a suicide bomber, a martyr, on the way to Jerusalem,” only pushes the establishment of a Palestinian state further into the distance.

Evil things are happening to both peoples. Fear causes no less damage to the soul than explosives cause to the body. Israeli society is becoming more violent, aggressive, and racist, and less democratic. Palestinian society is undergoing an even more dangerous process. A society that becomes accustomed to sending its young men and women on suicide operations aimed at murdering innocent civilians, a society that encourages such actions and glorifies their perpetrators, will pay a price in the future. Its coin will be their attitude toward life itself, life as an inalienable sacred value. It will also be paid in a more practical way — the minute the possibility of such a horrifying action is formulating in the consciousness of a nation, it will not disappear. It will rear its head again in the people’s internal affairs. It is not at all surprising that moderate Palestinians are no less alarmed by the suicide bombers than Israelis are. They know the bitter truth — the weapon of suicide, which has proved itself so effective against the Israelis, is liable to be used against them as well, when the Palestinians have a state and commence their internecine struggles over the character and image of that state.

That’s the way things are right now. It’s a situation of despair and disintegration. How can we get out of it? Palestinian terrorist attacks will, unfortunately, continue for a long time to come. But if there is also, concurrently, a move toward peace, a process of concessions, of ending the occupation, of conciliation and recognition of the suffering incurred by the other side, there is room for the hope that the Palestinian public’s support for terror will decline, and the Israeli public’s confidence in a peaceful resolution of the conflict will grow. Is there a chance that this might happen? Every thinking person realizes that Arafat and Sharon are incapable of creating this opportunity. What remains? To live through this nightmare to its end, to go from funeral to funeral, and to try to survive each passing moment. Thoughts of peace, of mutual understanding, of coexistence between the two peoples now sound like the last signals of life from a ship that has already sunk.