Death as a Way of Life Read online

  Contents

  Introduction

  Suddenly, Human Contact

  Arafat Arrives in Gaza

  The Holocaust Carrier Pigeon

  Yes, Prime Minister

  After Rabin’s Assassination

  When Fear Overcomes Everything

  Open Letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

  No Peace, No Security

  Whose Life Is It, Anyway?

  Beware, Opportunity Ahead

  Expulsion of the Cave Dwellers

  Leave Lebanon Now

  The Pope’s Visit to Israel

  Despite It All

  Boy Killed in Gaza

  Letter to a Palestinian Friend

  Stop Mumbling

  An Invitation to Dialogue: Response to a Palestinian Open Letter

  Point of No Return

  Hours Before the Elections

  After the Elections

  Death as a Way of Life

  International Intervention, Please

  Time to Part Company

  Terror’s Long Shadow

  Seven Days: A Diary

  Deadly Routine

  Turning a Blind Eye

  QED

  Hail, Caesar!

  Reality Check, March 2002

  This War Cannot Be Won

  Bad Fences Make Bad Neighbors

  Two Years of Intifada

  A Note on the Author

  By the Same Author

  Also Available by David Grossman

  Introduction

  Noise. That’s the first word that comes into my mind when I think of the last ten years. So much noise. Gunshots and shouts, incendiary words and mournful laments, and explosions and demonstrations, and heaps of clichés and special broadcasts from the scenes of terrorist attacks, and calls for revenge and the throb of helicopters above and the screeching sirens of ambulances and the frantic rings of the telephone after each incident.

  And within that whirlwind, in the eye of the storm, there is silence. It can’t be heard; it is felt, in every cell of the body. A silence such as one feels in the brief moment between receiving bad news and comprehending it, between the blow and the pain.

  This is the empty space in which every person, Israeli or Palestinian, knows with piercing certainty all that he does not want or does not dare know. There, within himself, he understands—even if he denies it at the top of his lungs, with shouts and gunshots—that his life is being dissipated, squandered in a pointless struggle, and that his identity and self-respect and the one life he has to live are being endlessly expropriated from him in a conflict that could have been resolved long ago.

  It is too painful to admit. The thought is too intolerable. And that’s the source of the constant, overwhelming urge to flee that silence, to go back out into the familiar noise to which we have somehow—it’s hard to remember just how—become accustomed. We actually don’t function badly there. They (that is, “the enemies”) will not break us. Justice is on our side. There is no choice. We shall live by the sword, and die by the sword.

  But there, in that quiet place, the noise from outside is silenced. There, laid bare, stripped of any national, religious, tribal, or social garments that protect him, a man sits alone, curled up inside himself, like someone who has perpetrated a truly horrible deed, and who comes to understand the crime he has committed, that he continues to commit, outside the silence, against others and against himself.

  Few of us, Israelis and Palestinians, can be proud of what we have done during these past years, of what we have collaborated in, whether actively, whether in passive acceptance of the noise—the collaboration of turning away our eyes, of suspending our souls, of anesthetizing ourselves.

  This book contains a few dozen articles and responses to particularly turbulent moments during the years since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. I am not a journalist—if I had my way, I would lock myself up at home and write only fiction. But the daily reality in which I live surpasses anything I could imagine, and it seeps into my deepest parts. Sometimes, writing an article is the only way for me to decipher, to understand, and to survive from day to day.

  I also write articles because of the noise. Because I often feel suffocated, truly claustrophobic, caught between the deceptive, deceitful words that all interested parties—the government, the army, the media—are constantly trying to impose on us, their subjects who live in this disaster area. Sometimes, if we reformulate a situation that already seems beyond hope and set in stone, we are able to recall that there is in fact no divine decree that dooms us to be the helpless victims of apathy and paralysis.

  I have to admit that I often feel that words can no longer penetrate the screen of horror. It is difficult to speak to another person’s heart when, all around, human beings are being blown up and children are being torn to pieces. At such moments, I very much want, instead of writing, to run through the streets screaming.

  Some opinions and hopes I expressed, some assessments I believed in, have been proven wrong after they were written. I included these writings in this collection because they, too, reflect, or so I think, the process that many of us have undergone. I include them here because I do not want to deny what I—and not just I—have experienced. Nor do I wish to refute my hopes and wishes.

  Sometimes, when I take a look at the map and see the thing that is at issue, I grow despondent. Here is the minuscule state of Israel, whose size on the map isn’t even large enough to contain its name, and whose central waistline measures less than seven miles. It’s surrounded by hostile countries and peoples, several of them drenched in a wave of fundamentalist Islamism, saturated with a hatred of Jews as Jews—explicitly declaring their desire to destroy the Jewish state. I feel, in my body, how dread and despair transform the fingers of an outstretched hand into a fist. It is not difficult to comprehend how, in this situation, the instinctive urge of Israelis is to raise their defenses even higher. It is easy to understand why they are tempted to follow aggressive, bellicose leaders; to hide inside a suit of armor, frightened, suspicious and scarred by past memories, in expectation of the next collision.

  What awaits us? Who is wise enough to know? I tend to believe that for the foreseeable future, our lives here will be made up of a continual series of small and large confrontations. My hope is that, gradually, the fuses of the conflict will be neutralized, that weariness will overcome both sides, and that painful acceptance of truth will force Israelis and Palestinians to turn to nonviolent means of achieving their goals.

  But even if we are doomed to years of violence and animosity, to fragile peace agreements that will be violated over and over again, we must still ceaselessly manufacture the alternative. We must reiterate the possibility, denied and repudiated today, of peaceful coexistence. Our two peoples must strengthen among themselves, and among the members of the other nation, those who are truly interested in peace, those who are already prepared for painful compromise. If we don’t do this, the entire arena will be wide open for the extremists, the violent, and the warmongers. If we don’t do this, our children will remember only dimly what is truly worth fighting for, what they can aspire to. It is frightening to see how easy it is to forget that. How quickly the dearest, most important things grow indistinct, and are swallowed up by the noise. This, perhaps, is the most depressing discovery of the last two years—the heady attraction of hatred, of hunger for revenge. In a single breath, it is as if a thin veneer of culture and humanity has been removed from the two peoples to reveal brutishness and barbarity. Sometimes, viewing the atrocities that these two peoples inflict on each other, a person not only loses his desire to live in this region, but also his desire to live at all.

  The chance of extricating ours
elves from these inner snares thus depends not a little on the ability to resist the way of thinking expressed by the phrases “There is no choice” and “There is no partner.” In this struggle, the battle lines today are drawn not between Israelis and Palestinians, but rather between those who are unwilling to come to terms with despair and those who wish to turn it into a way of life.

  That struggle is at the heart of this book—thirty-four articles; one story, still being written.

  David Grossman

  Jerusalem, December 2002

  Suddenly, Human Contact

  September 1993

  Following secret negotiations in Norway, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasir Arafat signed, in the White House on September 13, 1993, a Declaration of Principles—known as the Oslo Accords. The sides “agree that it is time to put an end to decades of confrontation and conflict, recognize their mutual legitimate and political rights, and strive to live in peaceful coexistence and mutual dignity and security, and achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement and historic reconciliation through the agreed political process.” The Oslo Accords provided only a framework for a solution rather than a final determination of all conditions of peace, including borders and relations between the two peoples.

  I

  “And now,” the newscaster chortled, “they’re shaking hands!” And then he added, in a hushed and astonished whisper, “They’re simply—shaking hands.”

  Through nearly one hundred years of conflict, the two peoples have been in physical contact untold times, especially during the last sixty years. There have been thousands of moments in which body brushed body. For the most part, these have been violent encounters. The aspirations, anger, and distress of one people drained suddenly into the blade of a knife, or crystallized into a flying rock. And the aspirations of the other people, with their anger and fears, would transmogrify into lead bullets, clubs, police handcuffs, and soldiers.

  On the face of it, the contact in the ceremony on the White House lawn was really the contact of two symbols. For many of his countrymen, Yitzhak Rabin is the prototypical Israeli. He symbolizes, almost stereotypically, the Sabra, the new Israeli Jew. He’s native-born, fought in the War of Independence, rose to the rank of chief of staff, and led the army to its great victory in the Six-Day War. He’s the salt of the land of Israel.

  To the Palestinians, Rabin symbolizes the evil of the Israeli occupation. They cannot forget his order at the beginning of the Intifada to “break their bones.” They see him as the essence of Israeli militarism, cruelty, and callousness to their suffering.

  Arafat, to many Israelis, is the prototypical enemy. To them he’s crafty, slippery, and can’t be trusted. If you turn your back on him, they fear, he’ll stab you. For thirty years, Israel’s leaders have taught their people to view Arafat as a two-legged beast, Hitler’s heir, a creature not fit for human society, who under no circumstances can be a partner in a dialogue.

  But most Palestinians see Arafat as a symbol of the Palestinian life force. He represents survival in the face of hardships and persecution. For them, Arafat is the oppressed and wretched refugee who finally—thanks to his patience, courage, and determination—will win what he has demanded from his powerful and heartless enemy.

  Two symbols shook hands, and the contact suddenly became human. It is a kind of contact consisting of reluctance and revulsion, as well as instinctive curiosity, and even a smile. Contact between two flesh-and-blood human beings.

  The two made painful concessions in the Declaration of Principles. On each side there are individuals who oppose the agreement and who see it as a defeat for their leader. But none of the opponents—not among us and not among the Palestinians—can offer an alternative course of action that has any real value.

  Rabin knows deep in his heart that he has, with his own hands, established the Palestinian state he has so feared. Arafat understands that he has given up his dream of establishing a greater Palestine that would include the territory on which Israel stands. Israel will have to accept armed Palestinian police forces, the Palestinians an Israeli military presence on the border between Israel and Jordan. Israel has made an immediate and concrete concession of territories and security assets. The Palestinians have, for the time being, conceded mostly aspirations and dreams. Yet I do not really know which side has made the more painful concession.

  II

  For many long years the Palestinians stood outside history. They lived within larger-than-life mythical memories of the past and aspirations for a heroic future. Like children embroidering fantasies of comfort and revenge out of the threads of their pain, they sought to flee the oppressive and humiliating present. In such unrealism, such conditions of weightlessness, hopes become entirely disconnected from the possible. For years the Palestinians cultivated illusions and believed in them. It has been embarrassing and galling to read the Palestinian National Covenant, its definition of the “Palestinian identity,” the statement of the Palestinian state’s goals, and to compare them to reality and to the geopolitical balance of power in the region.

  The agreement made with the Palestinians will return them to history. If a people receive a place of their own, they can also return to time, to the natural progress of history. With such a people, one can begin to conduct negotiations between equals and to establish tolerable neighborly relations.

  I don’t wish for anything more than that, but also not for anything less. Unlike many Israelis—including many on the left—I do not seek a “let’s make up and never see each other again” kind of peace, or a high and impenetrable wall between Israel and Palestine.

  I believe that the best thing for the two peoples is to maintain as many connections of different kinds as possible. Economic, commercial, cultural, touristic, and athletic ties, in order to peg the new tent we’ve erected to the ground of reality with thousands of ropes and tent pins.

  We should keep in mind that these are two industrious, ambitious nations, quick to adjust to new situations. Although we have ignored and dismissed each other as nations for many years, on the individual level it has been possible to sense that we have here two peoples with a natural ability to talk with each other. There are similarities of character and temperament, even senses of humor.

  I should stress that I am not speaking of love between the nations. There is no place here for idealization. Not for the Palestine Liberation Organization, which has committed especially repulsive acts in its years of struggle (one entry requirement has been proof that the candidate has murdered a Jewish child and abused the body), and certainly not for the Palestinians as a people, whose culture, values, and very being have been worn down by decades of oppression by the Turks, the Jordanians, and the Israelis. It is not only power that corrupts. Weakness can be no less corrupting. Even the Intifada, which began as a heroic initiative of a nation seeking liberty, became in the space of only two years a welter of mutual killings, a rebellion run by religious extremists and common criminals. Yet despite it all, we would not have reached the current agreement without the Intifada.

  I can certainly understand that the Palestinians loathe Israel, which to them looks like a militaristic, cruel, oppressive state. Despite its attempt to conduct an “enlightened occupation” (a conceit at best—no such thing is possible), the behavior of the Israel Defense Forces during twenty-six years of occupation has left major scars in the Palestinian collective memory. The state of occupation has been debilitating for Israeli democracy and for the rule of law. Violence has permeated our lives. I don’t know how many years will go by until children on both sides cease being afflicted at birth with hatred.

  But who can hope for love between nations? Who really loves anyone in this world? (Of course, I’m referring not to people but to nations.) Do the English love the French? Do the Germans love the Russians? Perhaps we should even ask: Do the West Germans and East Germans love each other?

  “Interests” is the key word, and it is the
guarantee that the agreement will work. The two peoples have signed on to the agreement because they understand that they have no other choice. After decades of mutual bloodletting, they have come to terms with the idea that if they do not live side by side they will perish together, in a maelstrom that will engulf the entire region. It is existential interest that pushed these two reluctant peoples into each other’s arms. The United States and Japan, and the Europeans led by Germany, now have to turn peace into a practical and enticing option for both sides. A flourishing economy, new jobs, a sense of freedom, reinforcement of everything in life that was damaged or paralyzed during the years of occupation and Intifada—all these can significantly strengthen those Palestinians who want peace. Similarly, the right-wing extremists in Israel will have difficulty arguing with a concrete improvement in the economy, in the quality of life, in the sense of security. The fundamentalists of Hamas will fight a war of despair and no quarter. They will try to create a nightmare atmosphere. Only a robust creative reality, full of life and hope, will succeed in withstanding them. We need to begin creating that reality now, immediately.

  Neither romantic love, then, nor a high wall. I dream of two countries separated by a distinct border. A border that will make clear to each state the space in which it exists as a political entity, as a national identity. If there’s a border, there is an identity. There is a new living reality in which this identity can begin to heal, to bleed out the poison of illusions.

  One more important thing: This is a condition in which—years from now—the two sides will be able to give themselves a new kind of definition—not one contrasted with an enemy, but one that turns inward. One dependent not on the fear that they might be destroyed but instead on the natural development of a nation, on its system of values and the various facets of its character. This is a decisive change. For years, both sides have suspended the internal dialogue that each must have. The state of continual conflict was a reason and an excuse for not addressing their fundamental, authentic problems, a reason for just trying to survive one more violent conflagration. I can definitely see that such a new process of defining ourselves, the Israelis, will bring about tremors and changes. It will require a painful assessment of our definition of ourselves today in relation to our Jewish heritage. It will force us to confront our complicated history anew, and to consider the possibility of choosing a new way of relating to the world outside us.