Last week Tuesday my Midrasha
went on a field trip to the West Bank/territories/Judea-Samaria (however you
would like to name the territory of which I am speaking). We focused our trip on Susya, and Hebron. In
Susya, we visited a historical Jewish town that existed and thrived after the
destruction of the Second Temple and lasted until almost 200 years after Bar
Kochba’s rebellion (335 CE).
Inscription at the entrance of
the Beit Knesset
In Hebron, we visited a site that
shows evidence of a Jewish community that existing there over 3,000 year ago
and the Maarat HaMachpaleot. If you see my entry from two years ago on Hebron,
it still looks the same; this is the building that Herod built to house the
cave where our matriarchs and patriarchs were buried. (http://darafrank.blogspot.co.il/search?updated-min=2010-01-01T00:00:00%2B02:00&updated-max=2011-01-01T00:00:00%2B02:00&max-results=13)
Two years ago, when I went to
Hebron, I told myself I would never go back again. It was the most depressing
place I’ve ever been. I have always been
opposed to the settlement movement—I have always seen it as a large barrier to
peace with a two state solution and this trip was no different. I hid my face
in Hebron least anyone I know sees me with this particular group of religious
Zionists. Nothing I witnesses or experienced during this trip made me change my
mind and I saw the situation as I’ve always seen it—a hundred Jewish families
living in a city with a million Arabs and having the protection of the entire
IDF.
I asked the rabbi leading the
trip what I thought would be a provocative question:
Me: “when we
have this land for Israel, what do we do with the population living here?”
R.A: “What
do you mean, what do we do with the population? They’re living here right?”
Me: “So we
let them stay here?”
R.A: “Yes”
Me: “And
they get all of the same rights as us?”
R.A: “Yes,
except the right to vote”
Me: ?
R.A: “They’d
be a Ger Toshav, a non-Jew living in the land, agreeing to abide by the laws of
the land, with all rights except the right to vote”
I’ve heard that opinion before
but I still got very upset. How could I, the good American Liberal who believes
that every individual is endowed with certain unalienable rights, believe that
Israel as one state for two peoples will actually be an apartheid state?
I was out of my league here and
decided that the next day, I’d do something more up my ideological alley and
attend a meeting at the Knesset about a two-state solution.
Apart from the fact that my
Hebrew was not quite good enough to understand all the nuances of what was
said, I basically understood what was going on. I stopped struggling to
understand because even though I did not know a lot of words, I knew what was
being said. I had heard it all before: two-states for two people, land swaps,
legitimacy, justice, fairness, etc.
Everyone was tired and the
turnout was pretty small. There was little energy in the room. Members of
Knesset came and said their part and left. Speakers blamed Bibi, the
settlements (all to the applause of people in the audience) and they offered up
nothing new or insightful.
A person from the audience raised
the concern about our partners on the other side. Are they having meeting like
this? Are they blaming their people and government for the stall in negotiations?
What are they doing to push forward the two-state solution? The answers that
were given were uninspiring. No, it did not appear that we have partners
working on the other side.
Gershon Baskin provided the
concluding remarks by showing us statistics taken from polls in the West Bank
that indicate opinions with regards to different subjects within the topic of a
two-state solution. It appeared as if more and more people are losing hope that
it will ever come to fruition. The numbers show that fewer and fewer people
would actively vote for a two state solution or vote for a politician who would
favor one. It also turns out that the most charismatic leader for the Palestinians is a member of Fatah who
has been jailed for killing Israelis. If he was out of jail, apparently, he
would win the election in a second.
The following day, I went back to
my Midrasha for a class on the Parsha HaShavua. Before we began class, a
teacher asked us what we thought about the trip.
Usually unwilling to air my
political grievances, I spoke up. I said that I was upset by the whole thing. I
was upset at how people lived, I was upset about how the Palestinians were
treated and I was angry about the presumptuousness that I perceived from the
settlers.
Just a quick side-note; I was a
political science student at Kenyon College. I learned early on that I in fact
don’t know anything. However, I am always surprised when I re-learn this lesson
with a topic I am so sure I do know. I was very surprised by the way my teacher
responded. I was expecting Torah verses to support certain actions but instead,
he spoke very logically and genuinely. He told me that as a visitor to Hebron,
I don’t really have the right to judge what I see—I agree, I don’t. I don’t
know how people’s lives are there, all I do know is what I see on tv and read
in the news and what I saw for the hour I was there.
He went on to explain that in
fact, if there were to be a one state solution, there is also a Hallacic
president to allow the population living here to vote in free and fair
democratic elections.
In the course of two days, I
learned (again) that in fact, what I thought I knew, I do not nor do I know of
anything just. Maybe there are other options on the table that I had not yet
considered and if I can get rid of assumptions I may have about what is good, I
can see these options more clearly.
