"Olive Trees Will Be Our Borders"

This is the post I don't want to write.

We were supposed to be on vacation; perhaps one where work was done and professional relationships developed, but plenty of chances to learn and explore. Yet as much as I don't want to think about politics here, they didn't take long to find us. And everywhere you go, the landscape is drenched in history -- including the history of the recent conflicts.

Israelis have a sort of code; a set of abbreviations that get across a whole context for understanding whatever it is they're saying. ". . .in 1948" or ". . .until 1967" have very specific meanings. These refer, of course, to the War of Independence, and the Six Day War, the two events that most shaped today's Israeli society. It's impossible to look across the landscape without thinking about those wars, and envisioning how they were experienced.

And of course, there's the elephant in the living room, which is "The Wall": Israel's separation barrier that's keeping the West Bank Palestinians out of sight, if not out of mind. In America and across the world, The Wall represents, as one friend put it, "the face of evil, all across the world." I'm still trying to understand it.

So often the barrier is discussed out of the context of Israel's security. So often we hear claims that there are no credible threats, that The Wall is really just a land-grab, or just another way that bigotry against Palestinians is expressed. After coming here, seeing it, hearing the way Israelis (both Jewish and Arab) talk about it, going to the other side and talking to Palestinian Muslims and Christians -- I still feel hardly qualified to express an opinion, other than we in the West are clearly awash in cartoonish oversimplifications. There's nothing uncomplicated about the situation, and there's nothing ethical about reducing the moral framework of the conflict to a "one good, the other evil" discourse.

Politics found us as soon as we arrived: The taxi driver exited the main highway from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; he seemed to want to show us something different, something not as visible from the main highway. He said something about traffic, but that seemed implausible when the smaller road we exited to were even more congested. "You will see -- there are two roads, one for Jews only. Which do you think is better?" Obviously this was wrong since I, not a Jew, traveled that road. The criterion for access to the better roads is a yellow license plate, signifying Israeli citizenship -- regardless of religion. The roads are segregated because of fatal attacks on Israelis and tourists. And for that matter, the "Israeli only" roads actually DO have some grey (Palestinian) license plates on them, an indication of the liberalizing policies of the last two years. Policies that, despite producing numerous and measurable improvements for life on the other side of the separation barrier, usually go unrecognized in our public discourse -- particularly by those who insist on discussing the separation barrier outside of the context that produced it.

Perhaps the best way to describe Israeli's separation barrier is through the eyes of people with whom I have discussed it:

The Taxi Driver (airport): A Moroccan Jew, this fellow clearly sees it much as the foreign critics do: as an unacceptable evil, and as the source of the current conflict. I have much sympathy for the position that violence is cyclical and self-perpetuating, and I fear for the children growing up on the other side of the barrier, who through isolation will become more vulnerable to extremism and xenophobia. Though our driver understood how the barrier perpetuates the cycle of violence, he was not unaware of its context. Why did they build the wall? "The Palestinians, they make a lot of trouble."

The Father: we had dinner in southern Israel with a family whose teenagers are at the age where they're stretching out and visiting other parts of the country, alone. This father is grateful for the security barrier, since he can allow his daughter to ride the bus all the way to Tel Aviv. Before it was too dangerous.

The Writer: this American freelance writer and orthodox Jew expressed gratitude for the separation barrier. It's the only thing that stopped the bus bombings, which were perpetrated not only by the Palestinians, but by militants from other countries who infiltrated Palestinian society, and who remain philosophically committed to the destruction of Israel and the Jews. The checkpoints continue to thwart attempts to smuggle explosives into Israel, so it's ludicrous to ignore that the barrier has been successful at preventing terror attacks.

The Merchant: for an Arab Christian whose Bethlehem (West Bank) shop caters to Christian tourists, The Wall has deeply impacted his way of life. He sees only a few customers a day, since the tour buses rarely venture to the Other Side. Because his family is wealthy and politically well-connected, he can afford to stay and wait for better times, but Bethlehem's Christian merchant class has beed devastated. He shows me a photo of an Israeli tank outside his shop, taken in 2000, and the damage it caused to the building.

The Shopkeeper: another Bethlehem merchant, a Muslim whose store is much smaller and less of an enterprise of the entire extended family. He's survived because his store is right on the walking path on the way to Bethlehem's main attraction, the Church of the Nativity. He still has many beautiful carved wooden figurines, carved by artisans throughout the West Bank. The selection is dwindling though, as those traditional craftsmen are less able to survive the isolation imposed by the barrier. (Economic pressures caused by Chinese souvenir imports couldn't be helping, either.)

The Taxi Driver (Tel Aviv): He went to Bethlehem on Christmas years ago, and regrets no longer being able to visit. He, his friends and family all loved going to Judea (the biblical and historical name of the southern West Bank), and spent a lot of money there, as many Israelis did, pumping money into the economy. Eighty percent of the Palestinians would have peace with us yesterday. Not tomorrow, but yesterday -- and yet the few on both sides of the political divide want too much, compromise too little, and perpetuate a separation that is good for neither side.

The Historian: The underlying problem is that the Palestinian leaders, and the leaders of the surrounding Arab states, have not come to terms with coexistence with the Jewish state. The Palestinians have been offered their own state several times, not the least significant of which was in 2000, when Arafat turned down a Palestinian state that included 91% of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and Israeli payments into an international fund to victims of the 1948 displacements. The current administration is correct in demanding Arab recognition of the Jewish state, since without this, no resolution can be achieved -- and since this is the main obstacle to peace.

Another Historian: After the failure of the peace process in 2000, the Bush Administration pressured the Palestinian Authority to accept Salaam Fayyed as Finance Minister, who rose through the PA leadership from there. Fayyed took the approach that it's up to the Palestinians to create a Palestinian state, rather than to waiting for Israel to recognize one. His approach: never mind what the Israelis are doing; let's build the state here with what resources we have, and in a few years we will be able to declare our own independence, regardless of what the Israelis want. It's a pragmatic and self-reliant approach, and one that's well on its way to success.

The Economist: the barrier is an extreme response to an extreme situation. We can talk about racism within Israeli society and how that affects policy, but little understanding can be achieved without an equal commitment to understanding how antisemitism continues to influence the conflict. Accusations of systemic racism are best disproved by looking around: every day you see Jews and Arab Palestinians living together in peace.

The Southern Israel resident: the barrier is a good thing from a psychological viewpoint, because it demonstrates to the Palestinians that they do have a state with borders, and that through separation they can learn self-reliance, both economic and psychological. Furthermore, it's allowed Palestinian money to be reinvested in building a Palestinian state, rather than being disseminated into Israel. The current hardships are a necessary step in establishing the fiscal autonomy needed by an independent Palestinian state.

Another Southern Israel Resident: the barrier can and should be criticized in places for its location, but keep in mind that it can and has been successfully challenged in the court system -- and that Israel's Supreme Court has in some cases ordered the location of the barrier to be changed, based on legal challenges from both Israelis and Palestinians. In the cases where the barrier is clearly causing unnecessary hardship, the correct response is to rely on the legal system to change it.

The Attorney: if you choose to describe this conflict in terms of race and racism, then you must realize that both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas intend for that same racism to be a central feature of the emerging Palestinian nation. They're talking about establishing a Palestine free of Jews, so we must decide whether to support racism in this context.

My sample of interviewees was clearly limited: I did not interview any Israeli Jews representing the religious right, and my sample of West Bank Palestinians and Israeli Arabs was limited.

Passing through eastern Jerusalem on the last day of our visit, we passed a house with a sign expressing hope for a peaceful solution that will not separate us from our neighbors: "Olive Trees Will Be Our Borders."

photos are here.