Between Brothers?
By Amos Oz
Yediot Achronot, May 11, 2004
The victory of the settlers and extreme right in the Likud referendum was achieved by concealing their real stance behind a mixture of fear (“the disengagement will blow up in our faces”) and emotionalism (“they want to expel us from our homes”). Their real reasons have to do with neither security nor emotion, but derive from the religious and ideological principles of their faith, which depend on neither security considerations nor the emotional attachment to home. With or without security, with or without home, the greater land of Israel is a religious commandment.
Many of them are ready, even now, to get up and leave their homes to settle in an even more contentious site—and to build themselves a new home, or trailer, on some new hilltop. Many of them have already succeeded in settling two, three, and even four times.
I see the pain of the settlers. Out of historical blindness, Israeli governments have allowed them, and even encouraged them, to settle in territories beyond the nation’s borders. The sin of the settlements lies more with the various governments than with the settlers themselves. Rather than engaging in political infighting, one should offer an emotional response to the emotional arguments of the settlers: “brothers don’t abandon brothers,” “brothers don’t uproot,” and “you don’t disengage from brothers,” etc.
Years ago, when the settlers rushed to settle in the heart of Hebron, in the heart of the Gaza Strip, in the heart of the Palestinian population, why didn’t it occur to them to say to themselves, wait a minute, stop, don’t we have a brother in Arad or Beit Alfa or Tel Aviv? Maybe before we drag Israel into a war of occupation and dispossession, we should stop by the home of our dear brother and see what he thinks? Maybe he is not so eager to protect us year after year in the course of his reserve duty. Maybe our brother is not so eager to endanger and even sacrifice the lives of his children and grandchildren for the sake of our dream?
Maybe he has entirely different dreams? Maybe our rule over the tombs of the patriarchs is less important to him than the life and well-being of his children. Maybe our brother has moral values and even a Jewish heritage that is completely different from ours. Maybe our dear brother is just not into this thing about the legacy of our ancestors and the sacred tombs and capturing hilltops, and we are basically forcing him to take part in a project that he finds repugnant.
But at the time, when governments from the left and the right were encouraging the settlers, or at least turning a blind eye to their actions, the settlers had no concern for any brothers. Anyone who opposed them during those times was considered a defeatist, an uprooter of Israel, an agent of Arafat. Now, to their discredit, the settlers cry that Sharon is plotting to “transfer” them. But they don’t for a moment bother to think about the transfer that they, by their actions, have been inflicting on us for more than a few years.
Tens of thousands of our youth, among them the best of Israel’s children, have already left the country, or are considering leaving, because they don’t see the point of building their lives and raising their children in a reality of deepening annexation, dispossession, and oppression. The settlers imposing their will on Israel are causing a large part of the nation an ever deepening sense of shame, despair, alienation, and disappointment, to the point of disengaging from the country.
The argument is bitter and protracted. Devotees of settlement and “wholeness of the land” and also promoters of a compromise solution based on two states for two peoples, are all feeling that the moment of truth is approaching. Both sides feel wounded and cheated.
At a time like this it may be best to conduct this protracted argument without obscuring it with an entire industry of blame: evacuation of settlements by decision of a democratic majority is not transfer. Returning settlers home, to the state of Israel, absorbing and resettling them is not “disengagement” from them. On the contrary, the very establishment of settlements in the occupied territories was an act of disengagement.
(Translated from Hebrew by Daniel Breslau)