Death as a Way of Life

Open Letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

October 1996

Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud Party, won the general elections of May 29, 1996 by a razor-thin margin of 51 percent to Shimon Peres of Labor’s 49 percent. The election results clearly reflected Israel’s deep division on the issue of national security. After initially declaring that he would not convene with Arafat, Netanyahu met the Palestinian leader at the Erez roadblock in the Gaza Strip on October 6, 1996.

Mr Prime Minister, the moment of truth has arrived, like it or not. The talks that will commence in a few hours will ostensibly address only specific points of disagreement. But in the new state of affairs that you have created, these talks might well be the last opportunity to get the peace process back on track, without forcing us all, Israelis and Palestinians, to endure another lengthy bloodbath.

Reality lies before you — read it. Israel cannot long maintain a situation in which the Palestinians live in frustration and rage. Any solution that does not give the Palestinians hope for a state of their own, within a reasonable period of time, will intensify their frustration and rage. Do you perceive some new way to resolve this dilemma?

There is no other way but the way begun by the late Yitzhak Rabin and by Shimon Peres. We have no alternative reality, and there is no half-solution. Most of the world’s countries have recognized this, as has most of Palestinian society. Even most of the Israeli nation has already begun to adjust, if without great enthusiasm, to the idea of sharing the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Five or ten years in the future, after hundreds or thousands have lost their lives, there will be two countries here. They will not have great mutual trust, but they will fear the alternative. They won’t relinquish their dreams, but they will understand the clear advantages of accepting each other’s existence.

Is there really no other way? There is, of course. It’s the way of hostility and humiliation and occupation. But we’ve already tried that, and we’ve seen where it led us. If we go down that path again, we will find it to be more violent and horrible than ever before. We’ve already come to realize that the more time Israel tries to buy, the higher the price it has to pay in concessions, in blood, and in internal disintegration. For those who choose life, there is currently only one way — that of the great and painful concession, of the calculated risk.

Rarely does the world present us with such a drastic and clear choice. Any step that does not lead directly and uncompromisingly to this one road leads to the other. Convoluted words and phrases can no longer create a new condition. The writing is already on the wall, and it is written, as the poet Yehuda Amichai said (in another context), in three languages — Hebrew, Arabic, and Death.

Three days ago you issued a heartfelt and, in your words, sincere appeal to the Palestinians, and spoke of your desire for real peace. But in all honesty, Mr Prime Minister, if you were this morning a Palestinian who desired peace, would the offers that Israel has been making over the last three months seem like “real peace”?

I pose to you another question, which is the core of the matter, in my opinion. Does the vision that you are offering us Israelis today, really include our great and only chance of recovering, finally, from the historical error that has drawn our blood and all the good we could have within us? What is the point of aspiring to lead Israel at this time, in this situation, if you are not able to promise Israeli citizens the opportunity to end its occupation of another nation?

Mr Prime Minister, the late Yitzhak Rabin entered the Oslo process knowing that he also represented the half of the nation that feared this peace. The Oslo Accords actually reflect the anxieties of this half of the Israeli people. This morning, and in the days to come, when you brief your representatives, when you go to meet Yasir Arafat again, and when you face difficult decisions, please do not forget that you also represent those of the other half of the nation who, despite their trepidation, are not prepared to continue this way. For these people, the very desire to live is being taken from them because they have spent the last thirty years in circumstances that they view as deformed, immoral, unjust, and, especially, not safe. It’s this half of the nation that will have difficulty understanding why it is being called to fight, very soon, when the secure peace you have promised becomes a slaughtered peace.

You represent those millions of Israelis as well. You must give them voice; their hopes must be realized in your actions; their courage must beat within you.

If the peace that you intend to lay before the Palestinians and Israelis today is not substantially different from what you have proposed so far, there is no reason to even send your delegates to the Erez roadblock for negotiations. Better that you, too, remain in your office, to prepare the nation and the army for what lies ahead. But if you want true peace — not a peace of virtual, imaginary reality, not a compromise that answers only to your own needs — you must begin, at last, to work for it today.

The answer to all the questions I have raised here will be given in the next few days. It will be an unambiguous, definite answer, and we eagerly await it with anticipation and hope. We’ll know how to identify and decipher the answer no matter how you spin it. You have boasted that you have won thirty debating competitions in the American school you attended, but to answer the questions that the country’s majority puts to you this morning, you do not need convoluted rebuttals, neither for Israelis nor for Palestinians. You need only one word. Are you or are you not ushering in change, toward real peace? Is it or is it not a peace that will have a partner? Can you say, in all sincerity, that as the leader of this nation, you have this week chosen life?