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All conflicts are divisive. Forgive the truism. This one is so deeply divisive, so burdened with hatred and so threatening to so many, far beyond the immediate victims, Israeli and Palestinian, that any attempt to explain it comprehensively and to move from explanation to a possible remedy in one lecture is to invite ridicule and to ride for a fall. Not to take that risk, not even to try, is even worse.

It may be possible to address this subject with academic objectivity, though it hardly ever happens. I make no such pretence. Take the horror of Darfur: my anger at the slaughter and rape notwithstanding, I might, were I better informed, be able to address those crimes with something like objectivity. But not the fate of the Jewish state of Israel. The Jewish people are part of my story. My father’s strong and loving  Jewish mother who took her own life when the time came to be thrown in a cattle truck on the way to a mass death, this was my grandmother. In a wider context, to have chosen to be a Christian commits me to following a Jewish teach-er, Jesus, the Rabbi from Nazareth. Can my solidarity be anything other than with the Jewish people? So, whether I like it or not, my history and my faith make me a party to this conflict.

That same Christian faith, with its Jewish roots, enshrines the principle, or perhaps I should say the conviction, that God’s love is not partisan, but universal. It allows of no exception. That, once again, whether I like it or not, commits me to a love of the people of Palestine. Jesus put an end to the idea, already foreshadowed in Jewish prophecy, that Yahweh is a tribal deity. The God of Israel is the parent of one human family. That brothers and sisters in that family kill each other is part of the human story from the outset. So, semitic brethren, closely related tribes, fighting each other over the possession of land should not surprise us. It should be no surprise then that together with my wife, who has the same family background, I actively sup-port the British organisation Jews for Justice for Palestinians. It may be a sub-tle distinction, but though I respect it, I have never signed up to the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign.

It is a remarkable fact of history that from the time of the dispersion of the Jewish people throughout the Roman Empire and then throughout the world, they have maintained their identity, a complex mixture of religion and culture. Jewish roots are middle-eastern but Jews are not a homogeneous race. Just think of the fair haired, blue eyed Jewish girl in Nazi Berlin, wearing a yellow star, accosted by an angry SS officer: “You must be mad to show your sympathy with them?” You just need to take a walk through the streets of Tel Aviv.

Nor do you have to believe and wor­ship the God of Abraham to be and to remain a Jew. Jewish identity is a strange mystery. That the faithful should see the hand of Yahweh in this miraculous pres­ervation through the centuries should not surprise us. A dispersed people – and yet tomorrow in Jerusalem has been both their dream and the expected fulfilment of God’s word to Abraham. One day the land of ancient Israel will be ours again. That is the root of Zionism, but it is good to remember that Zionism began as a highly idealistic secular movement.

Over the last century Zionism has given political expression to the dream: a Jewish nation. A few Jews had always lived in Palestine among Muslim and Christian Arabs. There was room for more people. From early in the 20th cen­tury, Jews began to settle the land. They were not well received and often had to defend their settlements, not unlike Europeans settling on the land of native Americans. Many Arabs saw the writing on the wall. Might they lose their land altogether one day? Many however lived side by side with the settlers in peace. After the First World War, Britain was mandated to rule Palestine. The seeds of future conflict lay in the British promise both to Jews and Arabs that they had a right to the land. Jewish fears and hopes can only be understood against a back­ground of permanent insecurity, of dis­placement, marginalisation, banishment and intermittent bitter persecution by Christians and to a lesser extent by Muslims. That angst has become a part of Jewish identity. The persecution of centuries culminated incredibly in what the world knows as the Holocaust. I hope that this lecture might be seen as part of what is now an annual Holocaust memorial. To keep the memory alive is not to dwell on the past but to raise awareness of and to stand by the victims of injustice now.

Zionism after Auschwitz had a new dimension. There was now somewhere for the escapees and the survivors to go: a Jewish homeland. An ever greater number, fearful for their future in the Arab world, also headed for Palestine joined by oth-ers from around the globe. It was a mighty adventure spearheaded by the survivors of unspeakable cruelty. Never again would Jews go as lambs to the slaughter. They would now carry a spade in one hand and a sten-gun in the other. No Arab would be allowed to get in the way. And if the British rulers dared to try to stop them – which is what the post-war British Labour Government did try to do – then Jewish freedom fighters would not hesitate to kill them. They were freedom fighters. In the British media they were called terrorists, the fathers and mothers of the new Israel.

The victims of yesterday would be victims no longer, even if others would have to pay a price. So, while some Arabs were left in their homes, others were killed – a few whole villages were destroyed – and many were expelled or fled in terror. There were simply too many Arabs to make a Jewish state viable. The words ethnic cleansing had not yet been invented. The children and grandchildren of those who fled still populate the refugee camps around Palestine’s borders. They, in reality, are also the victims of what Nazi Germany did to the Jews. For world Jewry, the Holocaust had become not just one more pogrom, though unique in its extent and horror, but the defining event of modern history. Many Christians, often out of a sense of guilt, have bought into that myth. A myth is not a lie, but a perceived truth that becomes a powerful symbol.The Arab world react-ed with righteous indignation at the Zionist enterprise, yet with nothing like united and committed solidarity with the people of Palestine. The Arab rheto-ric declared that Israel would be driven into the sea. Wars were launched against Israel but with nothing like the potential power of the Arab world. Israelis proud-ly fought back with passion and won, won more than once. An honest and realistic David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first President and freedom fighter emeritus, in his memoirs showed that he under-stood the Palestinians who had lost their ancestral homes. Had he been one of them, he would feel as they do. He would have fought the Jewish colonists. He knew and admitted that Palestinians would have to pay for the fulfilment of the Zionist dream.

The young Israel, born in blood­shed, was a remarkable success story. Jews showed that they could be great farmers and greater soldiers. The trac­tor driver and the soldier were one and the same. It was heroic and it was beautiful and the world looked on in admiration. American Jews, most of whom did not join the pioneers, felt bound to provide them with money. So did guilt-ridden Germany. However unjust to the displaced Palestinians, the United Nations affirmed Israel’s right to live in secure frontiers. That was not a mistake. Yet Israelis themselves would have to secure those frontiers. They felt threatened and they still do. Their in-built angst is no figment of their imagi­nation. They see themselves as David facing an Arab Goliath.

But the whole of Palestine that many Jews now chose to see as their rightful inheritance – the Abrahamic Covenant must surely be valid for all time – the whole of the promised land, the outside world declared, should not be theirs. With realism, the United Nations apportioned to the Arab people of the land an area that would remain theirs. Gaza, Judea and Samaria, the Jordan Valley and East Jerusalem would be part of the new Palestine. Neither side loved that compromise, but what was the alternative? Only a multi-reli­gious, multi-cultural unified state for all those living there. That would be my ideal but it would spell the death of the Zionist dream. It could not be imposed. So the land would have to be divided.

Conflict was inevitable. Arab attempts to destroy Israel were consis-tently defeated by a determined and militarised Israel in which every Jew and every descendant of a Jew from anywhere in the world was welcome – but no-one else. And every Jew, male and female, was one more soldier. In Israeli consciousness the best form of defence soon became attack. In the last major war, Israel in 1967 captured the whole land and made Jerusalem, no longer divided, its capital. The Arab world was humiliated.

The nearest neighbours, Egypt and Jordan, settled for what realpolitik dic-tated and in effect recognised Israel’s right to exist. Syria’s captured Golan Heights were now also in Israeli hands and the Arab world did nothing. Nor was anything effective done for the Palestinian refugees in their miserable camps, a permanent grievance and a calculated source of unrest. To make a comparison: a ruined post-war Germany had managed to settle and integrate some twelve million ethnically cleansed Germans. The rich Arab world made no attempt to do the same for some two million displaced Palestinians. It was argued that if every Jew had the so-called ‘right of return’ to a land where he or she had never been, why should a Palestinian family be denied the right to return to their ancestral home? Yet such a return would destroy a state that defined itself by its Jewishness.

The whole land was now in Jewish hands, Israel proper – including its Arab citizens with their second class status – and Palestine under a harsh military occupation. History shows that unwel-come military occupations cannot be anything other than harsh. Palestinians inevitably, with their leader, ‘Yasser Arafat, exiled in Tunisia, were in no mood to recognise the right of Israel to exist in what they saw as stolen land. Yet there was no doubt where the power lay. In defiance of the United Nations, Israel was in no mood to end the occupation and to allow a hostile Palestinian state to emerge. There was, Israelis claimed, no such thing as a Palestinian nation and never had been; so said Prime Minister Golda Meir. To stabilise this inherently unjust status quo and to consolidate Israeli power, year by year more and more Israelis were settled in the occu-pied lands. According to international law that was illegal. To Israel, its own perceived security, enhanced by these settlements, overruled any such con-sideration. UN resolutions were simply ignored. After all, many Jews believe that all the land is theirs by divine right. Many secular Jews simply leave out the word divine. All this was a prescription for permanent conflict.

For years we have been in the midst of this conflict. It has long since ceased to be a local problem. Like no other it inflames global politics and global security. An Israel once genuinely threatened and by its geographic position inherently insecure, has become a widely hated and yet not invulnerable regional super power. Even its nuclear weapons – a long-time open secret – cannot create genuine security. Only diplomacy of a quality hitherto markedly absent can come close to doing that.

There is already a long history of diplomatic failure. I personally led a Pax Christi delegation to Arafat in his Tunisian exile to help to persuade him to embark on a diplomatic process that could only succeed if he was prepared to recognise the right of Israel to exist within secure frontiers, not any fron­tiers, but those laid down by the United Nations at the very outset. He was, I am convinced, a pragmatic realist who was prepared to do that, and the Palestinian people would have followed him. Never in the tortuous processes that went on for years was an offer made by Israel – despite claims to the contrary – that would have led to a viable and inde­pendent Palestinian state. When Arafat returned to Palestine he was left, a virtual prisoner, with nothing to offer his people.

And so, as any oppressed people would do, some turned to violence as their only hope. It began with children throwing stones – stones against bul-lets and soldiers breaking their bones. 

The Intifada, a war of the weak against the strong, the suicide bomber against tanks and gun-ships from the air, was and is a cry of desperation. Do I need to say that to understand is not to condone? For every dead Israeli, there are ten dead Palestinians. For every captured Israeli soldier, hundreds of Palestinians are imprisoned and tor­tured, their homes crushed by British bulldozers. In the midst of all that, Arafat died, his heart as well as his body broken.

To add to the tragedy, Israel twice fell on neighbouring Lebanon with dev-astating consequences, not only to pursue those threatening Israel’s borders but to kill refugees and to destroy a country’s infrastructure. In both Israel and Palestine there were and are political doves and political hawks, those prepared to negoti-ate and those ready to do or die. So great are the levels of fear and hate and both sides that a majority of the people have voted for the hawks and threatened those whose language is of peace. Israel’s most conciliatory politician was murdered by a fellow Jew. In Palestine radical Hamas is at war with moderate Fatah, a civil conflict playing into the occupier’s hands. The occupier reflects: “Why bother to negotiate, and with whom, when we can impose our version of peace?”

So great is the bitterness in the Arab world and throughout Islam that many an Arab regrets that Hitler failed to do what he wanted: to kill every Jew. So great is the bitterness and fear in Israel, that a large part of the population can see no better solution than to drive out every Arab from what they hold to be Jewish land. Meanwhile those Palestinians are forced to live in mis­ery, their olives groves destroyed, their water supplies diverted, while Israeli settlers build state of the art swim­ming baths. Palestinians have no right to move freely in the enclaves of land left to them. They stand as beggars at innumerable military check-points. Ordinary people on both sides, though not all of them, speak of each other with fanatical hatred and undisguised racism. The nearest comparison, often made by those who are in a position to compare, is apartheid South Africa. I think the hatred and despair is even greater. Archbishop Desmond Tutu makes that comparison. Recently invited to investigate human rights abuses in Gaza, his UN Delegation was predictably refused entry by Israel.

Ariel Sharon’s goals and those of his successor Ehud Olmert have stayed the same: to maintain Gaza as a large enclosed prison, to control the West Bank as a system of sealed enclaves and to annex even more Palestinian land under cover of the construction of the new giant wall – higher than that in Berlin – a wall not on the legal frontier (which would just as effectively stop suicide bombers) but cutting deep into Arab land, heaping misery on misery, making a viable economy even less possible. The army which represents Israel’s true power forcibly imposes Sharon’s legacy. The electoral success of militant Hamas provides the ideal pretext. The hawks on both sides are each other’s natural allies. Globally, all this plays wonderfully into the hands of militant Islam which has no interest in a solution that diminishes its power to recruit.

Why is Israel free to ignore interna-tional law and much of world opinion? Any other nation (remember apartheid South Africa?) would by now be subject to severe sanctions. There are two rea-sons: the mythology of the Holocaust provides Israel with invisible but pow-erful protection. The claim that any critique of Israel is proof of anti-semi-tism is a form of moral blackmail that works in a western and still largely Christian world that is ashamed of its past. But there is an overriding reason: Israel has become a client state and the key Middle Eastern ally of superpower USA. Virtually unconditional support for Israel has long been American pol-icy. Without that support Israel could not survive economically or politically. Economic aid to Israel far exceeds aid to any third world country.

Since the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the global “war against terror” this support has turned into an apparently immutable doctrine. Internal US factors help to consolidate it: the interests of the industrial-military complex, the powerful and extremely well organised Jewish lobby exploiting the Holocaust myth and the relatively new factor of Christian fundamentalists who have become more zionist than the zionists and who will support Israel right or wrong.

The key to breaking the Middle East deadlock is to be found in Washington. A strong, committed European policy, backed perhaps by China and Russia, could make a crucial difference and just might begin to break Israel’s strangle-hold, the strangle-hold of a nation blinded by fear, blind to its own self-interest, a nation hanging on like grim death. Why should Europe and Britain in Europe be tied to American apron-strings? Why should Europe lamely accept a financial embargo against Palestine while Israel defies interna­tional law with impunity?

Yes, there is a solution to hand. It is not even very complicated. It is in the interests of an Israel that cannot, I believe, see the wood for the trees. It lies in accepting an offer that all the nations in the Arab League – with Saudi Arabia to the fore – have already made in the largely ignored Cairo Declaration. It looks roughly like this:

In return for full diplomatic rec­ognition of Israel by the whole Arab world, recognition that accepts Israel’s legal frontiers as inviolable and is under­written by the UN, Israel would end the occupation, release all Arab politi­cal prisoners and recognise the State of Palestine and its democratically elected government. A statute for Jerusalem would be agreed, making East Jerusalem the capital city of Palestine, leaving West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. That, in essence, is the Arab states’ offer.

As for the Palestinian refugees, I believe a small symbolic number should be permitted to return to Israel. A larger number would be free to join in building the Palestinian nation. Many more could find new and good homes in the surrounding Arab nations, fund-ed internationally. The refugee camps would cease to exist. 

Arabs now living in Israel and Israelis living in Palestine (the present settlers in the occupied territories) should, I believe, be given dual nationality, should be free to move and live in either state and would be subject to the laws of the one in which they choose to live.

Why is such an obvious solution not put into effect? Largely because trust has broken down and neither side believes in the readiness of the other to make it work. So how could or should it happen? It could happen tomorrow if the United States made continuing support of Israel dependent on its implementation. As Israel’s economy and security depends on the United States, Israel’s hawks would have no choice but to surrender their claims to a greater Israel. Hard line Muslims would at the same time have to give up their unreal dream of a Middle East without Israel. Given such an offer, they would not be able to turn it down in the face of the will to peace by the great majority of Palestinians and the combined pressure of the Arab states. The bluff of the hawks on both sides would have been called.

None of this is beyond the scope of what I call the diplomacy of power. 

How do I square my radical critique of Israeli policy since the beginning of the occupation with what I regard as my solidarity with Israel? I do so by embracing that statistically small part of the Israeli nation that is outside the mainstream and that is, in a true sense of the word, an opposition. They have long recognised that Israeli politics of all the main parties, left and right, flies in the face of Israel’s true interests, destroys Israel’s moral legitimacy and is promot-ing a new wave of anti-semitism world wide. Prophets are never loved in their own land. These are the inheritors of the prophetic tradition of ancient Israel. These brave Israelis and the minor-ity of Jews outside Israel who support them are the true patriots. Not only are they morally right, they have political wisdom on their side. Among them are the courageous members of Israel’s armed forces who refuse to be party to an unjust occupation. Many of them are in prison.

 An Israeli playwright – and that is significant – has written a drama recently staged in London, about the martyrdom of Franz Jaegerstaetter, a Catholic peas­ant, who refused to take part in Hitler’s wars of aggression and was executed. It is a coded play about Israel today.

But for all its racism, Israel is not Nazi Germany. Yuri Avnery, the remark-able prophetic journalist, is free to write his column in Ha’aretz, saying better than I can say, that Israeli policy is betraying Judaism at its best. His is not the only voice. The Women in Black are free to stand silently in the streets of Tel Aviv in solidarity with the women of Palestine. Jews are still able to collect money to help rebuild the homes that Israeli tanks and British bulldozers have destroyed. In the silence of their homes young Jews (and I have met them) do weep at what their fellow soldiers – for all are soldiers – are being forced to do; while others, often the most pious, make no secret of their wish to be allowed to kill more Arabs. I have met them too. All that is Israel today, the Israel I love, and that makes me weep. It could once more become the place where the desert blooms and people live with-out fear in joyful community. However, if sanity does not prevail, if hatred is not quenched, then I fear for little Israel, however well armed, in the midst of an Arab world growing ever richer and stronger. Then a second Holocaust is not a wild fantasy but a terrible probability.

American foreign policy is not written in stone. Should the day come when friendship with the oil rich Arab world matters more to Washington than friendship with Israel, then heaven help Israel. No one else will. I pray that that day will never come. It need not. Indeed, an Arab-friendly Israel could be a secure Israel, living in harmony with its Palestinian neighbour, a blessing to the whole Middle East and the humane voice of Judaism at its best. That was the vision of the Kibutzniks I got to know forty years ago. When I see Jewish and Arab children at work and play together in Neve Shalom I know that there is still life in that vision. 

Having said all this, I could eas­ily add my critique of the Palestinian leadership and of the Arab nations more generally. They are not my heroes and they are not the people whose guilt I share. I have not done so because I am convinced that it is Israel and America that hold the cards to peace. Today, though not necessarily tomorrow, that is where the power lies, for this is a story about the use and the misuse of power, a story of powerlessness and power.

Loving both Israel and Palestine: is it possible? Of course it is.

Speaking the truth in love – the truth as I see it – is the only way open to me. My radical critique of Israeli poli­cies, far from being a sign of covert anti-Judaism, is the very opposite: an expres­sion of my commitment to those brave Israelis who know that peace can never be built against the people of Palestine but only with them.

 

Canon Paul Oestreicher originally trained as a political scientist. He is a vice-president of CND, canon emeritus of Coventry Cathedral and Quaker chaplain to the University of Sussex, UK. This article was first given as the University of Leicester Chaplaincy Lecture for 2007.