Writing in the Dark: Essays on Literature and Politics

Contemplations on Peace

Peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and between Israel and the entire Arab world, is unfortunately still a matter for hopes, speculations, and conjectures. In recent years it seems only to be growing more distant. But even now — and perhaps now all the more vigorously — we must constantly think about the image of this remote peace, and regularly “massage” the way we envision it.

Since the collapse of the Oslo peace process, roughly a decade ago, only a few have had the emotional strength to extract themselves from the hell of daily life, on the streets of Israel and Palestine, and to remember that there is even a possibility for a different life, a life of peace between these rigid enemies. If we do not remind ourselves of the possible faces of peace, if we do not continuously endeavor to imagine it as a realistic option, as an alternative to the existing condition, we will remain with nothing but the desperation caused by war and occupation and terror — the desperation that causes war and occupation and terror.

This evening I would like to discuss one aspect of the possible ramifications of peace between Israel and its neighbors: the question of how such peace may help Israel heal from the wounds and the distortions that currently ail it and hinder its normal development as a state and as a society. Since my time is limited, I will not dwell on certain equally weighty questions, such as the effect of possible peace on the entire Middle East, on the Arab states, and on the Palestinians. Nor will I be able to touch upon a topic that I hold dear to my heart: the future of the relationship between the Jewish majority and the Arab minority within the State of Israel. I will try to focus on issues seldom addressed in the attempts to describe and imagine a future peace.

First, I feel that the very ability and willingness to imagine a state of peace means, primarily, believing that we, the Israelis, have a future. I am not even speaking of a good future or a bad future at this point, but of the mere possibility of there being a future. Of a solid faith in the idea that Israel will exist for many years to come, a prospect that is by no means certain in the minds of many Israelis.

Perhaps the root of the almost unconscious affinity between “peace” and “future” in the Hebrew language lies in the fact that the short history of the State of Israel, and the much longer history of the Jewish people, comprises almost no prolonged periods of absolute peace, of being in a state of unthreatened tranquillity and security. And so, in Jewish and Israeli consciousness, the word “peace” is always deeply connected with a wish, a hope, not necessarily an existing, concrete state. The Hebrew word for “peace” (shalom) seems to be unique: it is a noun, but hiding within it, like a stowaway, is a verb that is always conjugated in the future tense.

The hope for peace is also a primary element in Jewish prayer and in the biblical prophecies of consolation. Only in the future, and in fact only at the end of days, “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more,” as prophesied by Isaiah. And only at the end of days, David promises Jerusalem, will “peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.”

“And I will rejoice in Jerusalem,” continues Isaiah, “and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying. There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man, that hath not filled his days; for the youngest shall die a hundred years old.” (You can surely imagine how these words echo in the current Israeli reality, in which so many parents bury their children, “the youngest.”) There is hope and beauty in this affinity between “peace” and “the end of days,” yet because the end of days is usually perceived in Jewish-Israeli consciousness as an abstract, utopian, even unattainable point in time, peace too is seen as abstract, utopian, and unattainable: a horizon that grows ever more distant as one approaches it.

When we allow ourselves to seriously contemplate the hope that we will have peace, this inherently contains the possibility that we will have a future. A future as a people, a future as a state. This is no trivial matter. For most Israelis the possibility of a future cannot be taken for granted. I do not believe there are many other nations with such a skeptical view of the likelihood that they will indeed have a future, and continuity, and an ongoing existence in the place where they live. When we read in an American newspaper, for example, that the United States is planning its wheat crops for 2025, it sounds completely rational and natural. But what Israeli would dare to speak nonchalantly about the forecast milk production from cows in Israel twenty-one years from now? I myself can attest that when I think about Israel in such future-tense terms, I immediately feel a pang of guilt, as if I had violated some taboo — as if I had allowed myself too large a dose of future.

It is interesting to note that although the Jewish people is so ancient, with such continuity of historical consciousness and identity, it seems that a significant element in its self-definition is the sense of impending annihilation, of the calamity hovering over its head. This is the feeling to which every Jew gives voice at Passover, when he reads in the Haggadah: “That in every generation they rise up to destroy us.” This feeling did not, of course, arise out of paranoid delusions, but due to verified historical reasons. But the question that interests us today is whether life in a continued state of peace and existential security might ever alter this feeling, this bitter worldview so deeply ingrained in the Jewish soul, this self-perception that essentially dictates a conditional, fragile existence, a rare state of being among other nations.

Another question follows the previous one, grasping at its heels: What is it like to live without an enemy?

I imagine that to some, particularly those born after the Second World War, this may seem a peculiar query. But like any Israeli, I myself have never known a life without an enemy. I do not know what it means to live my life without the constant presence of an existential threat. Without the urge to fortify ourselves, to protect ourselves, and to act aggressively against those who threaten our homes and sometimes our lives.

I imagine that even if a peace agreement were reached soon, it would be — at least during the first years — fragile and extremely weak, and paved with acts of terror and violence on both sides. We will therefore not have to face the “problem” of living without an enemy anytime soon. But I hope that future generations will have to contend with it.

It will be a huge challenge: to learn to live a life that is not defined by hostility, anxiety, and violence. To foresee a continuum of existence and a constant future. To educate children based on views and beliefs that are not shaped inevitably by the fear of death. To raise our children not based on the daily fear that they may be taken from us at any moment. Perhaps then we may slowly discover that together with the forgoing of anxieties, we can begin to forgo certain elements of the Israeli ethos, a large part of which was forged through military conflict. We may forgo the perception of power as a value in and of itself, and the excessive admiration of power and its agents — the army and the military commanders — an admiration that results in the recurrent election of glorified militarists to lead the country, thereby sentencing it to act according to a narrow military frame of mind, and essentially within a never-ending war.

(In other words: It is highly rational for a nation always in a state of war to elect combatants as its leaders. But could it be possible that the fact that these combatants are the nation’s leaders decrees that the nation be in a constant state of war?)

Perhaps, if we know a life of peace, we may also let go of the obsessive need, shared by so many of us, for some artificial “unity,” which is viewed as sacred and is supposedly meant to strengthen our standing against anything that may undermine our stability as a society and as a people. Except that in a state of existential anxiety like the one we live in, even a new challenge, a new chance, a new hope, is often perceived as a threat to stability, even if that stability is a fairly dismal one; consider, for example, the panicked refusal with which Israel reacts to the repeated signals of peace coming recently from Syria.

The sense of besiegement and the fear of what is being plotted against us beyond the borders inevitably create an eagerness for internal consensus at any cost — a consensus that sometimes seems like the frightened convergence instinct of a threatened herd of cattle. But if the day comes when we do not have to define ourselves in terms of war and besiegement, if we allow ourselves to gradually let go of rigid, narrow-minded, and one-dimensional definitions of those who are “with us” and those who are “against us,” of those who are one of “us” and those who are foreigners (and as such, suspected as enemies), perhaps we will slowly learn to be more tolerant of diverse opinions and different voices in politics, art, gender roles, relations between men and women, and, not least, the tense and volatile relationship between Arabs and Jews within the State of Israel.

If we ever achieve a state in which we have no enemies, perhaps we will be able to break free from the all-too-familiar Israeli tendency to approach reality with the mind-set of a sworn survivor, who is practically programmed—condemned—to define the situations he encounters primarily in terms of threat, danger, and entrapment, or a daring rescue from all these. The survivor ignores anything that may complicate his worldview or delay his reactions, and so he tends to ignore the gray areas, the nuances, without truly facing the complex and contradictory nature of reality, with all the chances and promises it offers. He thereby all but dooms himself to exist forever within this partial, distorted, suspicious, and frightened picture of reality, and is therefore tragically fated to make his anxieties and nightmares come true time and time again.

Will we finally be able to break free from the paralyzing existential paradox of the Jewish people, a people that throughout its entire history has survived in order to live, and now finds itself, at least in Israel, living in order to survive and not much more? These aggressive, survivor-like tendencies are working their ill effect within Israeli society. It seems that after more than a century of ceaseless military and political struggles, of wars and combat operations, of self-defense and endless cycles of revenge and retaliation, the suspicion and hostility with which Israelis have become accustomed to viewing the Other, the enemy, have become almost habitual ways of thinking and acting toward any other, even if he is “one of the family,” even if he is a brother.

How little understanding and sympathy we Israelis have toward other Israelis who do not belong to our “group” or “tribe.” With what fury or belittlement we treat the real, authentic pain felt by Israelis who are not “us.” As if our continual and automatic refusal to recognize, even ever so slightly, the suffering of the Palestinians, lest this detract from our justness in some way, has now completely disrupted our common sense and our natural familial instinct. Thus, gradually, the sense of affinity and solidarity felt by many Israelis with other groups in our society has waned. Thus a deep hostility is developing between secular and religious; between new immigrants, older immigrants, and native Israelis; between rich and poor; between Jewish Israelis and Arab Israelis. Thus the social and civic cohesion and the personal identification with the state and its goals are wavering. Thus the very fundamental Jewish value of mutual responsibility is eroding. Thus Israelis are gradually losing one of the most important assets of a people — the sense of national identity itself.

I shall say a few words about security. I am not an expert, and security professionals may dismiss my thoughts as the speculations of an amateur. Still, I will try to talk about the things that even a layman like myself can understand.

Security means more than just having a strong military force. In its broader sense, security also means a strong and stable economy; fewer social gaps and greater domestic unity; good education; a strong rule of law; the identification of disparate social groups with the state and its objectives; the commitment of elites to remaining in Israel and contributing their skills for its benefit; and more.

Today, Israel has a commanding army, which is a good thing. The Middle East is still a violent and volatile neighborhood. Even if it achieves peace, Israel will always have to be on guard and be prepared for surprises. Israel’s army is becoming increasingly fatigued, partly in the moral sense, since a significant proportion of its operations are carried out against civilians, including women and children, in the occupied Palestinian territories. But the army is still able to perform its role of defending the country. Most of the state’s other security components, however, are lacking: four years after the outbreak of the intifada, the Israeli economy is in a recession unlike any since the 1950s. The cost incurred by Israel in these four years is estimated at roughly ninety billion shekels. Poverty, hunger, unemployment, and crime are growing at an alarming rate, attesting to the depletion of the welfare and aid systems and the damaged status of the rule of law. The income disparity between the upper and the lower percentiles in Israel is one of the highest in the world. The worse the security situation gets, the larger the weight of security expenditures becomes, and the government’s power to reduce social gaps decreases. For the first time in Israel, there have been public warnings against a widespread violent social uprising.

But the cracks in the sense of security are deeper and more fundamental: in recent years, the years of the second intifada, Israelis have been living in a world in which people are, quite literally, being ripped apart. Entire families are killed in the blink of an eye, human limbs severed in cafés, shopping malls, and buses. These are the materials of Israeli reality and the nightmares of every Israeli, and the two are inseparably mingled. Much of daily life in Israel now occurs in the pre-cultural, primitive, animalistic regions of terror. Fierce violence is employed against the Israelis, and they respond with equal ruthlessness against the Palestinians. To be an Israeli today means to live with the perception that we have lost our path and that we are living in a dismantled state, in every sense — the dismantling of the private, human body, whose fragility is exposed over and over again, and the dismantling of the public, general body. Deep fault lines have emerged in recent years in the various branches of government, in the authority of law and of the courts, in the credibility of the army and the police, and in the trust that the public affords its leaders and its faith in their integrity.

A survey conducted over the last Jewish New Year found that the majority of the public does not believe Israel can ensure its younger generation a better future. Approximately one-quarter of the respondents said they were seriously considering emigration. Hundreds of Israelis gather at the Polish embassy in Tel Aviv every week to obtain Polish citizenship. (Think of the terrible irony — Poland!) They want foreign passports so that it will be easier for themselves and their children to move to European Union countries, possibly for work reasons but also, certainly, to hold on to an option of refuge and escape from Israel.

Because even after fifty-six years of independent sovereignty, still the earth trembles beneath Israelis’ feet. Israel has not yet managed to establish among its citizens the sense that this place is their home. They may feel that Israel is their fortress, but still not truly their home. The State of Israel has failed to assuage in the hearts of many of its citizens the urge — so Jewish, so human and understandable — to constantly examine alternate ways of existing and possible places of refuge.

Of course the responsibility for this condition cannot be placed solely on Israel under any circumstances. Israeli fears are not merely the result of delusions or the fruit of Israeli mistakes alone. The Middle East has never internalized Israel as an integral component, as a state that exists there by right, not by grace. The Arab states have never demonstrated tolerance or understanding of Israel’s unique situation and the unique fate of the Jewish people, and they should not be absolved of responsibility for the tragedy of the Middle East. It is no wonder, then, that Israelis’ feeling of being at home among their neighbors, in their historical homeland, is deficient.

The lyrics of a popular Israeli song lament, “I have no other country,” and many Israelis do feel this way. Yet it seems that after almost six decades, Israelis overwhelmingly feel that they are not truly living in their own natural home, where they can be safe and unquestioned. Rather, they are still people inhabiting a territory fiercely contested by their neighbors, who may indeed have certain rights to it. Their place is still a disputed area, and not infrequently a disaster zone. It is a territory that perhaps one day, in the unforeseeable future, will become a real home and provide them with everything a home should give its dwellers.

Imagine how difficult such a feeling is. The primary purpose of Zionism — to say nothing of the religious and spiritual aspirations to Zion during the centuries preceding political Zionism — was that Jews could return home to create one place in the world where the Jewish individual and the Jewish nation would truly feel at home. It was to be a place where they would not be treated as guests or as strangers to be tolerated, and not as parasites, but as the inhabitants and the landlords of their home. And at this state of tranquillity and security we have not yet arrived.

I do not mean to minimize all the enormous accomplishments Israel has made. Despite an almost impossible starting point, and while fighting an endless war for existence, Israel has created a democratic regime, absorbed millions of immigrants, developed a culture, renewed a language, produced some of the most advanced agriculture in the world, established one of the strongest militaries in the world (and in a world of war, and in light of the fact that throughout most of history the Jewish people had no defense force, even a military is a source of pride), and become a leader in information technology. In short, a country with huge achievements, and more than that — huge potential, which has not yet been fully realized, partly because of the reasons I am discussing here today.

To elaborate further on the question of feeling at home, I believe that Israelis’ confidence in the definition of “home,” and in fact in the definition of their own national identity as Israelis, will be far greater after withdrawing from the Occupied Territories and separating from the occupied Palestinian people. I would like to clarify that I do not view the Occupation as the main reason for the Arab states’ hostility toward Israel. This hostility existed before the 1967 war, when the territories that are the subject of the conflict today were occupied, and even if the Occupation ends, I do not believe the conflict will be over quickly. But ending the Occupation may begin to unravel this knot of hostility and gradually diminish the flames of historical, national, and religious enmity toward Israel, consequently disentangling some of the imbroglios within Israeli society.

I think the severe rift in Israeli society today results partly from the fact that in the minds of most Jews in Israel, the Occupied Territories do not correspond, intellectually or emotionally, to the borders of Israeli identity. Certainly these territories are part of a religious Jew’s identity because they were included in God’s promise to Abraham. The Cave of Machpelah, where the biblical forefathers are buried, is in Hebron; Rachel’s tomb is in Bethlehem; the Ark of the Covenant was in Shiloh; and on the fields of Bethlehem, Joseph tended his father Jacob’s flock. Still it seems that the “flare” of Israeli identity, and of the authentic sense of home, for most Israelis, reaches as far as the Green Line and not beyond it. There is straightforward evidence of this: The governments of Israel have showered hundreds of millions of dollars on settlements and settlers in the past decades. What is known as the “settlement enterprise” is the largest and most wasteful national project Israel has undertaken since its inception. A massive mechanism of propaganda, enticement, and persuasion — ideological, religious, and national — was launched by all the governments of Israel, left and right, to impel Israelis to move to the Occupied Territories en masse. Scandalously excessive financial incentives were offered. But still, after almost forty years, fewer than 250,000 Israelis live in the settlements, and the vast majority of them are children who were born there. In other words, the settler population is approximately the size of one midsize city in Israel.

Surveys and polls taken regularly over the last eleven years, since the Oslo accords, show that some 70 percent of Israelis accept the need to partition the country into two states. They may not be enthusiastic about it, but they understand that there is no other choice. Moreover, every reasonable Israeli understands that the approval of Ariel Sharon’s “disengagement” plan in the Knesset last October was tantamount to the right wing’s admitting the failure of their ideology, which held that it was possible to control all areas of the biblical “Land of Israel.” And so I say once again that the “flare” of Israeli identity today, among the majority of Israelis, reaches as far as the Green Line and no farther. Beyond this line, the nature of the blaze changes: it either cools and melts away indifferently, alienated from what is occurring there, or becomes an exaggerated frenzy, among the settlers and the various messianic Jews.

In other words, an absurd and destructive state has emerged whereby a vast share of Israel’s national energies, financial and emotional and human assets, and political and national enthusiasm have been invested by the state’s official bodies, for almost four decades, in a territory that most Israelis do not feel belongs to them in any full, natural, or harmonious sense.

I would like to hope that relinquishing the Territories and ending the Occupation, with all these entail, will restore most Israelis to the authentic emotions of their identity. Then, for the first time in years, perhaps since the beginning of political Zionism, since the various borders were drawn for the soon-to-be state and then for the State of Israel, there will be an overlap between the geographical borders and the borders of identity.

This feeling is extremely elusive, and perhaps I find it difficult to put into words because it is one I have never experienced and can only dream of. It is the way a nation can feel itself, feel its identity, like a healthy body that maintains an emotional, “neural” connection to all its parts, all its areas, all its borders, after being released from the difficult conflicts, the dilemmas, and the struggles that related to its different limbs and organs, struggles that made its life such a misery that they threatened its very existence.

There is also the immense relief we will feel once we are released from the state of occupation itself. I believe that even most of the Israelis who wish to control “Greater Israel” do not want to be occupiers. They want the land, but they do not want the state of occupation, certainly not the contact with the occupied people, which arouses in any normal person — even one with extreme opinions — a sense of injustice and guilt. I have no doubt that most Israelis, even if their political views align them with the center or right, are aware of the moral dilemmas posed by the Occupation. Even if they justify the Occupation with sophisticated arguments, even if they efficiently sweep it under the rug of their awareness, they still feel the unease of the moral dilemma. They live in a continued state of conflict, not only with their enemy but also with themselves and their own values.

Because somewhere deep inside, every person knows when he is committing or colluding with an injustice. Somewhere deep in the heart of any “reasonable person” of sound mind, there is a place where he cannot delude himself regarding his acts and their implications. The burden created by the injustice — even if it is repressed — is there, and it has effects and it has a price. And what a relief, what a feeling of repair — of tikkun, in its deepest spiritual sense — there must be in a release from the state of occupation and from the open and hidden conflicts it engenders.

Perhaps it is pertinent to recall some of the disruptions not often mentioned when discussing the price Israel pays in its current state of occupation, with no peace and no hope for peace. There is a huge sense of missed opportunity, which is becoming increasingly widespread among those for whom Israel was a dream, those who had hoped to build a moral and just society, a society with a humanistic, spiritual vision, a society that would manage to integrate modern life with the ethics of the prophets and the finest Jewish values. I should also mention the disappointment with the fact that we, the Jews, who have always regarded power with suspicion, have become intoxicated with power ever since it was given us. Intoxicated with power and with authority, and afflicted with all the diseases that limitless power has brought to nations far stronger and more stable than Israel. Unlimited power brings unlimited authority and a virtually unhindered temptation to hurt the helpless, to exploit them economically, to humiliate them culturally, and to scorn them personally.

I must also talk of the price of life without hope. Of the rise of a fatalistic, defeatist frame of mind that has caused many Israelis to feel that the situation will never improve, that the sword shall devour forever, and that there is some sort of “divine decree” that dooms us to kill and be killed for eternity. Fifty or sixty years ago, the new Jewish settlement movement (the yishuv) in young Israel was prepared to make any sacrifice, because it felt that its purpose was singularly just. Whereas now, for significant components in Israel, the purpose no longer seems just; at times, it is not even clear what the purpose is. This lack of meaning, this lack of faith in our leadership and its ways, slowly gnaws at the heart of the matter: at the faith in the just existence of the State of Israel. This internal loss of faith strengthens the view, among certain circles, that the entire State of Israel — not only the settlements — is an act of colonial, capitalist injustice, carried out by an apartheid regime, detached from historical, national, and cultural motives, and therefore illegitimate.

Ending the Occupation could begin to heal some of these internal wounds. I do not believe that a decisive change will happen quickly, but even if it occurs in a generation or two, it can start to bring Israel back from the digressions it has taken from its own ethos. If this happens, there may also emerge a new possibility for the creation of a fascinating synthesis between two fundamental models of the Jewish people: on the one hand, the Jewish Israeli living in his own land, embedded in the earth and the landscapes, the rooted man whose daily reality encompasses all the contradictory layers of reality; and on the other hand, the universal, cosmopolitan Jew who aspires to fulfill a spiritual, moral mission, to be “a light unto the nations,” to be the voice of the weak and the oppressed everywhere, to represent a clear, firm value system that derives its strength from ideas, from contemplation, from ethical commitment, who sees in every person a great creation, unique and unrepeated, in the spirit of Isaiah’s prophecy and the prophecies of modern thinkers such as Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and George Steiner.

Think for a moment of the possible merging of these two models! Think of an Israel that manages to create for itself a new, unique place in the family of nations, becoming a self-confident sovereign state whose identity, heritage, and power derive from a universal human commitment, participation in the troubles of the world, and an insistence on taking a moral stand on questions of society, policy, and economics — an Israel that offers humanitarian aid anywhere it is needed. In other words, a State of Israel that fulfills the Jewish people’s historical and moral destiny within human history.

Sometimes a thought steals into one’s heart: What would have happened had Israel been able to emerge and live on as a unique national creation rather than, with remarkable speed, turn into a clumsy and awkward imitation of Western countries? What would have happened if Israel had made a national and social choice far more daring and far-reaching than the one in which it is currently stagnating? A choice that combined what is often called “the Jewish genius” with the loftiest universal and Jewish ideals, together with a humane economic and social system that centers on people and not on capital and competitiveness; a choice that had some unique, even genius spark — as did, for example, the kibbutz idea at its inception, before it eroded and crumbled, and as did the contributions of Judaism to many varied areas of human existence, in science and economics, in art and moral philosophy.

I know that these ideas sound utopian, perhaps even naive. But there is a shred of utopian thought and wishful thinking in everything I have said. It is certainly possible that part of my own private healing process — perhaps not only my own — from the almost-chronic disease of the “situation” is to once again believe that it is possible to escape from the shackling, desperate day-to-day, from the great mistake that looms over our every step and gradually stifles our souls, from the cynicism that tramples every hope.

I must also admit that I am a great believer in “acquired naïveté,” by which I mean a conscious and determined decision to be somewhat naive, precisely in a situation that is all but rotting away with sobriety and cynicism, that for years has been leading us astray. It is a naïveté that knows full well what it faces and what it contends with, but it also knows that despair creates more despair, hatred, and violence, while hope — even if it is the product of this “acquired naïveté”—may very slowly bring about the mechanisms of prospect, of faith in the possibility of change, of extricating oneself from an eternal victim mentality.

I have mentioned the sense of identity, and of being at home, which Israelis might derive from a peace agreement. But one cannot talk of a home without mentioning its walls, the borders. In the fifty-six years of Israel’s existence, there has not been a single decade during which the country had permanent and stable borders. In 1947 an international border was established, and immediately moved as a result of the 1948 war. In 1956 the southern border was altered following the war with Egypt and the occupation of the Sinai Peninsula, and its subsequent evacuation. The Six-Day War in 1967 expanded Israel’s area fivefold, unrecognizably altering its borders to the north, east, and south. The war of 1973 and peace with Egypt in 1977 once again redrew Israel’s borders, severing it from the Sinai Peninsula. The 1982 Lebanon War brought the Israeli army deep into Lebanese territory, and essentially pushed the border a few dozen kilometers to the north for eighteen years. The Oslo accords in 1993, and peace with Jordan in 1994, changed Israel’s eastern border with Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. This eastern border is utterly breached, illusory even, because of the massive presence of settlements in the heart of the Palestinian areas.

Incidentally, the only border that Israelis find instinctively clear and concrete is their western one — the sea. If I were to say this in Israel, everyone would nod understandingly, although the notion may not be very politically correct. (It is interesting that the sea, the most unstable, fluid, and deceptive natural element, is the one that in our perception is the only stable border.)

The citizens of Israel have no clear concept of a border. Living this way means living in a home where all the walls are constantly moving and open to invasion. A person whose home has no solid walls finds it very difficult to know where it “ends” and where the next home “begins.” The result of this ambiguity is that such a person’s identity is always on the defense, always “contra” to those who threaten him. This condition provokes in his neighbors a constant temptation to invade, and his own behavior is characterized by a tendency to be overly defensive — meaning aggressive. The choices he makes in moments of distress or doubt are virtually doomed to be hasty and belligerent. The lessons he is capable of learning from his own history are bound to be the most extreme, and therefore often the most simplistic, the least nuanced — lessons that often damage his perception of reality.

In a certain sense, the State of Israel is replaying one of the most problematic anomalies of the Jewish people in the Diaspora, and the root of its tragic existence over the past two thousand years: it is a nation living among other nations, most of whom are hostile, with no clearly defined borders. This means that every contact may be experienced, by both parties, as a dangerous infiltration into sensitive, loaded identity regions.

I dream of a time when the State of Israel finally has permanent, stable, defensible borders, recognized by the UN and by the entire world, including the Arab states, the United States, and Europe. Borders that will be negotiated with former enemies out of mutual agreement, rather than drawn unilaterally and coercively — as Israel is doing today with the wall it is building around itself. The meaning of the new borders will be security. It will be identity. It will be home.

The meaning of such borders will also be that the Jewish people can finally resolve the critical dilemma of its entire existence: the question of whether it is a “nation of place” or a “nation of time.” Are the Jewish people a “nation of eternity,” a “nation of the world,” unconnected and uncommitted to any one physical place, able to exist within the universal sphere of religion and culture and spirituality alone? Or is it now ripe to begin a new stage, a stage that will be the true and complete realization of the process begun in 1948, when the State of Israel was established?

In other words, an agreement on the borders of Israel, and a normalization of relations with all its neighbors, will gradually be able to answer the extremely complex and loaded question of whether the Jews are truly willing and able to live in a state with permanent, unambiguous borders, to live with a clear national definition. Or are they instead doomed — because of reasons I will not go into, and which are possibly more emotional than political — to continue their search for a “borderless” existence, in its deepest sense, for a state of constant motion, of intermittent exile and return, assimilation in other identities, and subsequent returns to Jewish identity? Such a condition persistently evades definition, impenetrable to all forces acting around it, forces that sometimes enrich and fertilize it, and sometimes, as has often occurred, try to annihilate it.

One can also hope that a peace agreement resulting in safe and stable borders will heal a deep deficiency in Israelis’ sense of acceptance into the political, international “normalcy” that has eluded them for hundreds of years, even though they have had their own state for much of that time. Because this, perhaps, is the greatest tragedy of the Jewish people: that throughout its history it has always been viewed by other peoples and religions, primarily Christianity and Islam, as a symbol or a metaphor for something else — a parable, a religious moral of retribution for a primordial sin. It has not been seen as “the thing itself,” as a nation among nations, as a person among persons.

For almost two thousand years, the Jew was distanced and exiled from the practical political reality of what is known as “the family of nations.” His humanity was denied through a variety of sophisticated means of dehumanization and, conversely, idealization — and these are two sides of the same coin. He was laden with fears and superstitions, treated as an anomalous, mysterious, metaphysical entity with an internal order that is different from others, and with hidden powers that are above nature — and sometimes beneath it, as the Nazis proclaimed when they defined the Jew as Untermensch.

Judas Iscariot, God killer, Antichrist, the Wandering Jew, the Eternal Jew, well-poisoners, spreaders of plagues, the Elders of Zion seeking world domination, and many other satanic and grotesque characters, Shylocks and Fagins, have trickled into folklore, religion, literature, and even science. Perhaps this is why the Jews found comfort in self-idealization, in viewing themselves as the chosen people, which is also, in and of itself, a problematic and obstructive perception, and one all the more isolating.

I am alluding here to a subtle and extremely delicate sense, a sense of profound foreignness in the world. An existential foreignness of the Jewish people among others. An existential loneliness that perhaps can only be understood by Jews. An aura of riddle and mystery that has encompassed the Jewish nation — and Jewish people — over the generations. A riddle that has spurred other nations to solve it in various ways, to ascribe racial and racist definitions to the Jews, to repeatedly delineate them with fences and ghettos, to restrict their living space, their professions, their rights, all culminating in the most definitive and terrible attempt to “solve” this Jewish riddle: the “final solution.”

If we look back a mere decade, to the days of the early Oslo process, we can recall what an important change occurred at that time in the worldview, and in the self-perception, of Israelis. In those days many Israelis began to taste the intoxicating flavor of a new way of belonging to the modern world, an acceptance of sorts into a progressive, civic, liberal, and essentially secular universalism. It seemed as though some sort of nation-among-nations normalcy was emerging. For a short while, very short, there was a chance to create a relationship that would be more mutual, more equal, less loaded, between Israel and “the rest of the world.” I will even dare to employ a somewhat “literary” or metaphorical description: there was a sense of acceptance into reality.

And then, over the past four years — as a result of the severe threat created by the intifada and the terrorist attacks, the overwhelming hostility around the world to Israel’s acts and at times to its very existence, the swell of anti-Semitism, and the increasing demonization of Israel — these same Israelis found themselves once again sucked into the tragic wound of Judaism, into the scars of its most painful and paralyzing memories. Israeliness itself, which was always directed at the future, comprising constant agitation and promise, seemed to shrink and seep back into the channels of trauma and pain that pervade Jewish history and memory. The result is that among “new” Israelis, the anxieties of the Jewish fate, the experience of persecution and victimhood, the sense of profound loneliness and existential alienation, are once again surfacing powerfully.

(In this context, it is interesting to note that Israel is still known, even among its citizens, as “the Promised Land.” Not “the land that was promised” or “the land of promise,” but, ostensibly, the land that is still in a permanent state of being “promised.” Even after the “return of Zion” and the establishment of a sovereign state, Israel is still perceived by its residents as not entirely realized, and certainly not having fulfilled all its potential. In a state of “eternal promise” there is of course the hope for momentum and the potential for great liberty — liberty of thought and creation, and a flexibility of viewpoints on things that have become set in their definitions. But this state is also afflicted by a curse of “eternal unfulfillment” that engenders a latent sense of inability to ever achieve full realization and full contact with all aspects of reality, and therefore an incapacity to normalize the fundamental questions of identity, of place, of clear borders, and of neighborly relations.)

Could real peace begin the Israeli-Jewish process of healing from those distresses and anomalies? Moreover, will “the world”—namely, the Christian and Muslim worlds, as well as regions dominated by other faiths and religions, and states where anti-Semitism prevails, whether openly or as an undercurrent — be able to heal itself of its distorted approach to Israel and to Judaism? Will it ever be able to let go of its racism toward Jews? With your permission, I will leave these momentous questions open. I do not have the answers.

There is one more unanswered question: What will really happen to Israeli society, now polarized and conflict-ridden, if the external threat is removed — the threat that currently protects it from internal strife and “helps” it avoid confronting the contentious issues? To an outside observer this may seem an unfounded and even fantastical question, but it has been hovering in Israeli public space for decades, so much so that one can sometimes hear statements along the lines of “The war with the Arabs saves us from civil war.”

I have no doubt that removing the external threat from Israel will clear a large space for it to cope with its profound domestic troubles. Although the crux of the central argument between “right” and “left,” on the question of the Occupation, will be dulled, other issues will jump to the forefront: the vast social and economic gaps, the tense relations between secular and religious Jews, between Jews and Arabs, and between different immigrant groups who are unable and unwilling to understand one another. Such circumstances may expose the fragility of the diverse and diffuse immigrant society that has emerged in Israel. They may also reveal the weakness of the democratic worldview, which does not seem to have been truly internalized by most citizens, both because they came to Israel from countries that never knew democracy and because it is impossible for a state to maintain true democracy while simultaneously upholding a regime of occupation and oppression.

Still, only a madman or a complete cynic would prefer Israel’s century-old state of war to a state of peace, bad as it may be. Even if internal conflicts do erupt, even if genies are let out of their bottles, they will be our genies, the internal, authentic identity materials of the State of Israel and Israeli society. In some sense, the developments that occur then, though they may be painful, will be far more relevant to the construction of Israeli identity than the processes in which Israel has found itself due to the conflict with the Arabs. The fact that such hesitations are openly voiced and contemplated by many Israelis attests to the powerful destruction and degeneration that can result from prolonged exposure to the cancerous rays of war.

“Here in the land our ancestors cherished, all our hopes will come true,” our pioneering forefathers sang when they came to Eretz Yisrael roughly a century ago. Today it is clear that many years will pass before even a fraction of “all our hopes” comes true. It will be very difficult to relinquish the distortions of violence and anxiety, as it is sometimes difficult for a slave to lose his shackles or for someone to let go of a defect around which his entire personality has been constructed.

Because the situation we live in, in Israel, in Palestine, in the Middle East, has become a sort of national and personal defect. Many of us have become so used to the deformation that we find it difficult to even believe in any other existence. Others create entire ideologies, political and religious, to ensure the continuation of the present situation.

Hegel said that history is made by evil people. In the Middle East, I think we know that the opposite is also true: we have seen how a certain history can make people evil. We know that prolonged existence in a state of hostility, which leads us to act more stringently, more suspiciously, in a crueler and more “military” manner, slowly kills something within our souls and finally hardens like an internal mask of death over our consciousness, our volition, our language, and our simple, natural happiness.

These are the real dangers that Israel must act quickly to avoid. Israel needs to experience a life of peace, not only because peace is essential for its security and economy, but so that it can, in a sense, get to know itself. So that it can discover everything that is still present, though dormant, in its being: the parts of its identity and personality, and the possibilities of existence, that have been suspended until the anger dies down, until the war ends, until it can be allowed to live life to the fullest in all its dimensions, not only the narrow dimension of survival at any cost.

Elias Canetti writes in one of his essays that survival is in fact a repeated experience of death. A sort of practice of death and of the fear of death. At times I feel that a nation of sworn survivors like the Jewish people is a nation that somehow addresses death at least as insistently as it addresses life, a nation whose intimate and permanent interlocutor is death, no less than life itself. And I do not mean to imply a romanticization or idealization of death, or even the idea of being in love with death (akin to the prevailing notions in late-nineteenth-century Germany, for example). Rather, I am speaking of something more profound. Of some firsthand knowledge, a bitter knowledge that is passed through the umbilical cord, a knowledge of the concreteness and the actuality and the daily availability of death. A knowledge of the “unbearable lightness of death,” whose saddest expression I ever heard was in an interview with an Israeli couple on the eve of their marriage. They were asked how many children they would like to have, and the sweet young bride immediately answered that they wanted three children, “so that if one is killed, we will still have two.”

When I hear Israelis, even very young ones, talk about themselves and about their fears, about not daring to hope for a better future, when I am exposed — in those close to me, and in myself — to the powerful existential anxiety and the influence of the tragic historical Jewish memory, I can often feel, chillingly, the failing left in us by history, the terrible tendency to view life as latent death.

In a life of stable and continued peace, this failing and these anxieties may find some cure. If Israel can live in peace with its neighbors, it will have the opportunity to express all of its abilities and all of its uniqueness. To examine, under normal conditions, what it is capable of as a nation and as a society. To discover whether it is able to forge a spiritual and material reality full of life, creation, inspiration, and humanity. To examine whether its Jewish citizens can extricate themselves from the destructive fatal metaphor framed for them by other nations, who have viewed them as eternal strangers, as borderless nomads among nations — to step out of these definitions and become a nation “of flesh and blood.” Not just a symbol or an abstract concept, not a parable or a stereotype, not an ideal or a demon. A nation in its country, a nation whose state is surrounded by internationally recognized and defensible borders. A nation that enjoys not only a sense of security and continuity but also a rare experience of actuality, of being, finally, “part of life” and not “larger than life.” Perhaps then Israelis will be able to taste what even after fifty-six years of independence they do not truly know — a deep internal sense of security, of “solid existence,” like the one expressed so simply and movingly in the musaf prayer recited on the Sabbath: “And plant us in our borders.”

I conclude with one more wish, which I once expressed in my novel See Under: Love. This wish is uttered at the very end of the book, when a group of persecuted Jews in the Warsaw ghetto finds an abandoned baby boy and decides to raise him. These elderly Jews, broken and tortured, stand around the child and dream about what they would like his life to be, and into what sort of a world they would like him to grow up. Behind them, the real world is going up in smoke, with blood and fire everywhere, and they say a prayer together. This is their prayer: “All of us prayed for one thing: that he might end his life knowing nothing of war … We asked so little: for a man to live in this world from birth to death and know nothing of war.”

Lecture at the Levinas Circle meeting in Paris, December 5, 2004