Table of Contents
Introduction
When remembering my grandparents and their generation—thinkers like the members of Brit Shalom, a group which advocated a bi-national state in the early 20th century1 –I am very aware that they lived out their lives according to Jewish ethics, that is to say, the ethics which dwell on the question of how to live, what are the values that guide my life. These values are in huge contradiction with the Israeli Zionist value of the last 100 years, which dwells on the question of do I live? Living and staying alive, no matter what and how, is the goal. When this is the guiding principle, there is no place for moral questions; there is no place to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” But there is a lot of room for idolizing power and for accumulating weapons. The first principle–how do I live–is a moral one. The second principle– do I live–is a functional one.
Gustave Flaubert, the French writer, wrote: “Modern Foolishness is not ignorance. Modern Foolishness is the absence of doubt about convention.” The most central and profound Israeli convention is that “we” cherish and crave peace. At the same time “we” are convinced that all the others, especially the Arabs (Palestinians) are warmongers. Facts, naturally, cannot confuse “us.”
The Jewish-Israeli self-image as spiritually superior and peace lovers is a cardinal element in the group’s high self-esteem, and has made possible thousands of cases of state-sponsored killings, injuries, torture, abuse, and dispossession. It justifies the devaluation of the Palestinian enemy and permits the disregard of their lives and other human rights.
When discussing the Israeli-Jewish community, we talk about a large group in Wilfred Bion's terms.2 The group that describes Israel best is the fight-flight group. The fight-flight group’s basic assumptions (which are subconscious) are that it must preserve itself at all costs, and this can be done only by fight or flight. This group has no tolerance for weakness and it expects casualties, since the survival of the group is more important than the needs of its individual members. The group may be characterized by aggressiveness and hostility. The leader must lead the group against a common enemy. If this enemy does not exist, the leader will create one. Simultaneously, the group has a group-work mentality that agrees on the common tasks of the group. In Israel's case the group-work mentality is about peace: the group is profoundly convinced that peace is its superior issue and goal. The result of the constant co-existence of these two contradicting mentalities (power veneration and peace volition) is an unavoidable tension or conflict between them.3 Any basic assumption that would interfere with the group task mentality generates a dysfunctional group culture.4
In order to protect group cohesion from group dysfunction, the leader and the group members take measures to keep a firm and solid consensus. When consensus, a general “truth,” is the fundamental issue, it leads to a mental state where the group, the tribe or the nation, gets priority over the individual. When consensus becomes both an ideology and a policy, the individual is forced to surrender to the will of the group, i.e., the nation. In Israel, great pressure is exerted on everybody to be a part of the national consensus at any price. Criticism of the national consensus is hardly tolerated inside Israel, and totally condemned abroad. As mentioned above, one of the main pillars of the Israeli consensus is that we are peace lovers. Peace is what we want and desire most.
For example, in 1980, following the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel and the impending peace with Lebanon, I observed great anxiety within Israeli society. When I argued that the prospect of peace is conceived as a threat, or as I named it, the trauma of peace, I was then confronted in my society, my large group, with much hostility: "How dare you say, even think things like that? We want peace more than anything else. Are you not an Israeli?"
One might ask why peace, which is the declared aspiration of Israelis, provoked a collective anxiety. The answer is that Israel does not yet have a mature definition of itself. In other words, it is not evident to us who we are. Israel demands time and again that neighbor states recognize it as if Israeli statehood is not a solid fact.
When having difficulty figuring out one’s identity from within, it leads to the need to get an answer from outside. The maximal "not me" is an enemy. Therefore an enemy defined by the large group is an absolute need. Losing this solid definition via a peace agreement is a real psychological threat.
Another reason to be in a need of an enemy and war is the severe fragmentation of Israeli society into various sectors, which requires war as a tool for inner cohesion, a remedy for social disintegration. The impending peace with Lebanon in the north that followed the peace treaty with Egypt in the south (1979-81) brought up the inner threat of fragmentation and disintegration to the degree of psychological trauma. I predicted then that a war that would “save” Israel from the trauma of peace. The war in Lebanon started in June 1982.
In general, people love to get reassurance for their conventions and cling to them, rejecting ideas and facts that might disrupt or disturb their grasp. The idea that “we” are basically afraid of and reject peace cannot be tolerated because it transgresses the conventions of the community and betrays the tribal culture and mentality. In Flaubert’s words – this is an illustration of “Modern Foolishness.”
Several years later, in one of his political speeches during July 1984 election campaign, the extreme right wing Rabbi Meir Kahane declared: “We will kick [out] all of the Arabs. The few Arabs which I will permit to stay here will have to be slaves to the Jews, as it is written in the scriptures. But that is not all. I will force them to take an oath not to the Israeli state, but to the Jewish state.” (My emphasis—R.M.)
Kahane was disqualified from running to the Knesset due to his blunt racist ideas. Twenty-six years went by. But his ideas did not disappear at all. On the contrary, since 2010, the Knesset and the Israeli government have been dealing with at least three different bills that define Israel as a Jewish state.
The 'National Bill' asks to overrule every law and it is not balanced by equal universal rights to minorities. In this bill there are clear elements of breaking the equality status of minorities: In rights for land and inhabitance, in defending culture and legacy, in the language status. In other words – it gives superiority status to Jews over other minorities.
The revival of Kahane's ideas in Israel's actual politics is manifested today by making the segregation concept a reality.
What is the difference between segregation and disengagement? If power-ridden principle is the hard core of disengagement policy, then sharing power is the hard core of engagement based on respect. Separation (disengagement), in contrast to segregation, is possible only if the partners are equal. In other words – it can work only if the partners are acting with respect – meaning they are willing to share power between them. I firmly believe and argue that the genuine meaning of respect lies in the readiness to share power. Otherwise, separation is a euphemism for segregation that serves the powerful side, i.e., creating and maintaining the occupation.
Disengagement-separation-segregation is in fact the Israeli government’s policy ever since the establishment of the state. Such a policy maintains the imbalance of power and prevents reconciliation. In this policy and conduct there is no need or even place for decency or for common goals for the two national groups. The powerful side can and will dictate one-sidedly the rules of the game.
The name of the game is the Oslo Process, the outgrowth of the Oslo Peace Accords. The Oslo Process is an “as if” peace epoch.5 In fact, it is the ethnic segregation/separation epoch. Closing the gates between Israel, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip has turned out to be the daily reality of the Palestinians since 1990 and has become the main concept of the Oslo agreements: establishing a separation wall between the two nations. The Oslo Process and its intermediary agreements implemented, de facto, the process of segregation and separation between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, in which Israel got rid of its responsibility for what it had done in the occupied Palestinian territory for almost three decades. This segregation includes most aspects of life: the infrastructure planning, as well as concrete segregation in the sewage infrastructure and water supply—all according to ethnic criteria.
Peace can be just a condition of no war. It is not necessarily a just peace, nor is it necessarily a relationship based on respect. Some might even consider “peace” the relationship between the white Americans and the Native Americans. These relationships are frequently characterized by an extreme imbalance between the two sides, who are not really partners at all. One side might be strong and the other weak. In a situation like this, respect is replaced by diktat. This demonstrates that reconciliation is by far more difficult to achieve than peace.
The Oslo Agreement did not die and peace was not born. We, the Israeli-Jewish group, continue to believe what we say to ourselves and the world: that we want peace and they, the Palestinians, are refusing it. It is easy for us to believe what we say since actually it is the collective subconscious that rules: the leader names the enemy, the group follows him and supports aggressive militarism on a daily basis by deepening and expanding the segregation and avoiding any chance of reconciliation. For us, Jewish-Israelis, equality is an impossible mental mission.
The Oslo Process and the endless peace negotiations that follow it are so powerful because they help shrink the gap between the subconscious demands and the group-work mentality. It is so efficient because the Oslo Agreement actually serves war (the basic assumptions) while declaring peace (the group-work mentality). The Oslo documents did not deal with human rights or with equality. Maybe this fact is the primal sin of those accords.
The actual beginning of a true, profound peace process–apart from the ceremonial signing, demonstrations, and media attention–will have to be reflected in the creation of a different emotional and cognitive system. Perceptions of the Palestinian as an equal, worthy of human and civil rights–just like his/her Israeli Zionist counterpart—would constitute the beginning of a real, meaningful peace process.
–Ruchama Marton, Tel Aviv, 2013
Articles
[Articles follow in chronological order.]
ISRAELI SOCIETY AND THE PEACE CAMP
[Speech in different U.S. communities, November 1985]
One of the organizers of this meeting called me a few days ago and asked me, in a very charming way, “Well, who are you?” My answer was, “I am an Israeli who belongs to the ‘Peace Camp’ in Israel, and it is about the Israeli society and the peace camp in Israel that I came to talk to you today.”
I was also asked “What do you think?” and that remained me of a Yiddish proverb that goes more or less like this: “Man thinks, God laughs” [a mentsch tracht und Gott lacht]. Laugh at the man.
God, metaphorically in this proverb, laughs when humans think because humans think they know the truth, they think that they know how things should be, but there is no way to know the truth about oneself, or about the world.
I come from a place where general truth, general agreement, consensus, are the most important issues, politically speaking. But only those who have never heard God’s laughter can think that there is a big ultimate shining truth, their own truth, of course. They are convinced that everyone should think the same and accept their truth. With such a worldview, there is no room for the individual. Only when one loses the certainty about one’s truth, one becomes an individual. Moreover, he or she no longer has to force everybody else to agree with them.
What is individual? Individuation begins when one recognizes the difference between oneself and the other. That was the story of Adam and Eve: after eating the apple, they were aware of the difference between them. Being aware of this difference, they felt shame. So, not recognizing the difference between individuals, having a full agreement and being all alike, that is paradise of fools, a world without a sense of shame, and in a world without shame the distinction between good and evil cannot be made.
Shame and guilt are the foundation of any moral system. Put differently, a consensus, a national consensus, is democracy’s biggest enemy, bigger than any other power trying to demolish it, because an all-mighty consensus kills the spirit of individualism from within, erases the right to have different thoughts and yet to exist, and as such, it undermines the freedom of the individual which is the foundation of every democratic system.
Consensus leads to a concept that the group, the tribe, the nation, gets priority over the individual. When consensus becomes an ideology in itself, then individual freedom is forced to surrender to the will of the nation. And in Israel today great pressure is exerted on everyone to be a part of the consensus, at any price. Criticism is hardly tolerated inside Israel, and totally condemned if it comes from abroad. The term “extremist” is considered as different, thus transgressing the rules of the community, betraying the tribal culture, not accepting tribal mentality, or, using Flaubert’s words, not taking part in Modern Foolishness. So, because of the pressure to conform is so strong, the danger to the Israeli society comes not only from the right, which supports the consensus, but also from the people who do not support it, but who are either afraid or are still hesitating to openly oppose and criticize it.
I discussed the big need in Israeli society for conformity, oneness of mind, but what is the reason for this need? The need for unity, which is gained by the consensus, by the “we” feeling, is not uncommon. Usually it comes from the need to feel strong so as to compensate for an immature and ill-formed identity. This is a normal occurrence in adolescence, when the identity is not yet crystallized and there is a need to identify with one’s peers and to fight against a rival group in order to get the “we” feeling. There are many ways in which the young Israeli society is, indeed, adolescent.
Zionism, seeking to create a new society, gave rise to a cultural discontinuity. Jews coming to Israel both from East Europe and from the Middle East were pressured to abandon their culture, but a new culture, a new tradition, was not yet formed. In a society like that, torn by conflicting cultural pressure, a common enemy is needed in order to establish unity. The well-known Israeli writer, A.B. Yehoshua, said in this context: “It seems as if we need a dangerous life, on the edge of a war, or a catastrophe, because only then we can find in ourselves the most vital forces and we are saved for a while from our emptiness. Then when the whole world is against us, we regain our self esteem.”
In order to nurture a state of endless war we need hate, we have to nurse and cultivate the hate, to cherish it and to give it the appropriate conditions to grow. It is easy to hate when the enemy is anonymous, it is easier to hate the mass than to hate the individuals. One commonly hears in Israel the statement that “all Arabs are the same.” Behind this statement lies the desperate need to avoid treating as individuals the numerous construction workers and janitors which roam the streets of Israeli towns. The need is to go on treating them as the faceless anonymous mass, which is so easy to hate.
The Arab as he appears in the Israeli literature from the sixties on seems to be lifted directly from the Israeli collective unconsciousness. The Arab appears as the repressed part of the Jew, he is described as inferior and primitive, out-of-control like an animal and faceless. Often he does not express himself verbally; often he comes from the dark. It is easier for the hatred to grow and to direct itself towards a dark wicked faceless impersonal enemy.
The situation is even worse in children’s literature. In a recent research completed by Prof. Adir Cohen from Haifa University it was shown that the Arab in Israeli children’s literature is described as wearing traditional Bedouin cloth, he is dishonest, cowardly and primitive. A survey conducted by Van Lear Institute in Jerusalem studied the attitude of Israeli high school students towards Arabs and democracy. It was found that 60 percent of the students supported extreme right wing Rabbi Kahane in the sense that they supported deportation of the Arab population from Israel. Thirty-seven percent supported limiting their civil rights. The teachers’ opinions were very much the same as those of the students. It is interesting to compare these results with a similar survey conducted four years ago, in which 25 percent of the students supported deportation of the Arab population. Thus, in the last few years there is a serious escalation in anti-Arab attitudes among young people. Most of the Israeli youth in the survey did not even know that Israeli Arabs were Israeli citizens.
As an example from the survey, to the question “Could you imagine an Arab with a violin?” the answer was, “No, there is an Arab with a gun and there is an Arab with a broom.”
The summary of the survey was as follows: “The image of the young Israel high school student emerges as a nationalist who hates Arabs, who is full of fears and anxieties regarding the future, full of prejudices, intolerant and looking for simple and easy solutions. He is disrespectful towards human rights, longing for authoritarian leader and is ready to limit individual rights and the freedom of speech.”
Against this background, it is not surprising that Kahane could have started his speech in Acre with the words “Hi, Israelis, Hi, Jews, Hi, dogs.” Acre is inhabited by both Jews and Arabs.
During July 1984, while the election campaign was going on, Kahane’s racist advocacy that he would deport most Arabs and those permitted to stay would have to take an oath to the Jewish State provoked much anger and resentment, and rightly so. But the last part of it, the fact that he wanted to change the state of Israel into the state of the Jews, passed unnoticed. Only a year passed by, and what do you know, the Israeli Knesset passed a law in the exact spirit of Kahana’s ideology, stating that a party is allowed to participate in the elections only if its platform contains the statement that it recognizes Israel as the state of the Jewish people. This law passed in hurry, and it is not clear that the more liberal supporters of the national consensus actually understand the fascist implications of this anti-democratic law. In Israel today the Arab minority numbers 17.5 percent of the population. This law forces them to deny their rights altogether or alternatively, to absent themselves altogether from the political life.
Kahane is the most prominent expression of the growing fascist ideology in Israel. He gives a voice to the tribal instincts and uninhibited drives. All of this, put in modern term, is indistinct from Nazi Germany in the 30’s.
In most political parties, whether they are in power or not, there is a big gap between ideological and political declarations and practice. For example, U.S. policies in Central America are a declared policy to protect democracy in Nicaragua and in El Salvador. However, the practices are quite different. Soviet policy in Afghanistan, for example, is laced with declarations of support for the Afghani people, but the practices seem to suggest otherwise. I am not suggesting in the least that these are the only examples. The world is full of them.
The one regime that proved itself free of these contradictions altogether was Nazi Germany, where the ideological declarations and the actual practice went hand in hand. For example, they declared that the territory, the land, belongs to victor, to the conqueror, and to the one who can hold on to it by the power of national consciousness. Upon conquering countries, this ideology was put into its exact practice: the German regime no longer considered these countries sovereign, but was integrating them into Germany. When they declared “Juden raus!” [Jews out!] They put it into a horrifying practice. And so on.
In Israel, the gap between ideology and practice has always been very wide. The founding fathers declared their intention to create a state based on equality and humanitarian qualities, a state that would be progressive, secular and based on ethics of labor. This is a formidable ideological commitment. Almost as formidable is the gap between this ideology and the reality of Israel today. The realization of the beautiful Zionist dream was intricately connected to the denial of another people’s rights, namely the Palestinians. From the very first days of the Israeli statehood, there are examples of this denial. We can mention the military government installed to control Palestinian regions while Israeli leaders talked about equality. Further considering the commitment to the secular state, I would like to remind you that the religious parties were always part of the ruling coalition in every Israeli government, from the very first one, striving in a very active way and very successfully to enforce religious legislation in various areas of life. With the coming of the Likud party into power, the gap between ideology and practice narrowed, as their ideological program called for one Israel on both sides of the Jordan.
Going to the extreme right, acting ruthlessly toward the Arabs in the occupied territories, the ongoing occupation, the discrimination of the Israeli Arabs are all one side of the Israeli coin.
The other side is a new development which is taking place in the Israeli society: the Israeli society response to the Lebanon war on preconscious level and on the level of full awareness. To my knowledge, this is unprecedented progress. It has never occurred before to that extent. A group of people consciously refused to take part in the Lebanon war, and they were ready to pay the price for their refusal. These are people who individually refused to participate in the occupation. They wanted no part in destruction and murder, meaning the terror inflicted on people, when it was possible to choose a constructive and positive solution for the Jewish-Palestinian conflict, that is, a political solution: peace negotiations and mutual recognition of the right of both people to exist. Another group of the population separated itself from the war in Lebanon from not entirely conscious motives. That group is quite significant both in terms of its size and in term of its moral standing: Many Israeli soldiers began to feel subconscious guilt merely for their participation in that unjust war. One of the forms of this feeling of guilt was a battle fatigue, and in Lebanon war soldiers were inflicted with battle fatigue much more than in any other war on which there was a complete agreement in Israeli society. Another reaction, somewhat difficult to explain and unique to Lebanon war, was developed by many young people, who chose to do only what was necessary. This attitude, dubbed by Israeli youth as a “small head” attitude, entails no involvement. “I am not part of it; I am only doing what is absolutely required of me. I only obey the most explicit orders, I do not take initiative, I do not volunteer and I do not make any suggestions. Leave me alone because all this does not concern me, and what I do I do because I am forced to do it. I have no choice.” This can all be explained as subconscious reaction of those who feel an overwhelming sense of shame for the acts that the state is committing on their behalf, and for the acts that they themselves are expected to commit on behalf of the state, but who cannot release themselves from the powerful embrace of the national consensus.
This syndrome has acquired surprising proportions. It is now spread in segments of the populations such as the sons of the kibbutzim, the traditionally military elite, those who would customarily fill up the command schools and who would regularly man the commando units, those who would always volunteer for a dangerous mission. These young people found a middle way of being and not being part of the madness, of the Lebanon war and of the violent policies everywhere else. The “small head” is emotional preventive medicine of sorts.
There is also an active resistance: desertion in unprecedented numbers. The media reports 9,000 deserters, when a few years back the highest number was 3,500 at any given time.
Clearly, a large section of the Israeli population has chosen to resist the war, each person in his or her own way: a conscious moral resistance, a resistance stemming from subconscious guilt and shame, and those who choose to desert. All these people deny the hold which the state has on their body and their mind. They have left the national consensus insofar the war in Lebanon is concerned, and insofar as the oppression and the occupation are concerned. So, for the first time Israel does not fit Mussolini definition of a nation: “A nation is a group of people fighting the same war.”
The peace camp in Israel now is, to my knowledge, the beginning of the creation of an authentic Israeli identity, which is not dictated by the paranoia of a fascist and religious origin. The peace camp is much more mature, psychologically speaking, and does not need external enemies in order to feel that it exist.
Norman Braun said: “The growing of nations resembles, in certain ways, the growing up of a human beings.” I do hope that the peace camp in Israel will have enough of a momentum to carry us all into adulthood and emotional maturity, in other words, into individuation that recognizes itself as well as the other, and is willing to allow just and safe existence for both peoples.
I would like to see the Israelis coming back to the Jewish ethics, that is to say, the ethics which dwells on the question of how to live, rather than do I survive? When this is the attitude, there is no place for moral questions; there is no place to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” There is only room for idolizing power and for the accumulating weapons. Today, when the State of Israel is an established fact, and when no real danger is present, it is time to graduate from an attitude which idolizes power, the ideology represented by people like Sharon, Eitan and Kahane.
The Palestinians nation, just like the Israeli nation, is a young one, in the sense that its national identity is still undergoing crystallization. The Palestinian nation suffers from power struggles internally as well as from external struggles for power which originated from realistic circumstances as well as from the crystallization process itself. This is the way of ideology, it has been said: “When [ideologies] are created they mean freedom. By the time they are fulfilled, they mean repression.” This happened to Zionism. Let us hope that this would not happen to the Palestinian nation by the time it accomplishes its goals.
This is what I think. God, most probably, is laughing.
THE PEACE-CAMP FORCES IN ISRAEL
[Speech at the International Meeting on Developing Countries in the Contemporary World, Moscow, October 1989]
Presidium, Conference, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I would like to share with you my great appreciation for the fact that this important international meeting has invited me to represent the progressive and peace-camp forces in Israel.
I am happy to see that this distinguished forum has realized that there are different ways of thinking and acting in Israel. I’m honored by you to represent this part of Israel, and as a woman it shows in a very clear way that we are not stagnating but moving continuously towards a more sophisticated understanding of the human mind and human society.
We believe that the solution of conflicts between people and nations should be achieved by means of compromise and mutual respect, and definitely not by armed forces.
Our small contribution to this way of thinking was to establish an association of doctors, both Israelis and Palestinians, working together against the Israeli occupation and for equality in every aspect, political as well as individual. I can tell you that we are not alone in my country; this tendency is growing slowly in Israel, and your political and moral support is extremely important to us.
I shall tell you briefly about the Association of Israeli-Palestinian Physicians for Human Rights [the original name of PHR-IL) : In February, 1988, a group of Israeli physicians began to organize as a result of their concern about the conditions of medical and health services in the Occupied Territories and the situation of Palestinian doctors working during the intifada. We were concerned about the human and civil rights of the Palestinian population in the occupied territories.
We visited Shifa hospital in Gaza and Maqassed hospital in East Jerusalem and established contacts with doctors from all over the Occupied Territories.
In March 1988, we held a joint meeting of Israeli and Palestinian doctors for the purpose of working together in assisting the population in the occupied territories, the sick and those wounded by army attacks. We intended to be of assistance to the local medical teams, which are subject to harassment, detention, dismissal, etc. and to monitor human rights of the Palestinian population. The meeting was concluded with a resolution declaring our support for the two-state solution, namely the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
In practical terms, we formulated several decisions with reference to bodily and mental injuries, the lack, or even refusal, of medical care, the entry of army forces into hospitals and the life-endangering use of tear gas. We also decided to gather information about the state of medical practice, the various kinds of injuries resulting from the use of gas; high velocity, rubber and plastic bullets and clubbing, and the prevention of medical treatment by the authorities. We decided to publish this information in Israel and abroad.
In May 1988, a demonstration was held by our doctors in front of the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv, in protest of the administrative detention of Dr. Zacharia Ibrahim al-A'rah, chairman of the Medical Association in the Gaza Strip.
In June 1988, we went to the Gaza Strip in order to investigate the state of medical care there and in particular the effects of tear gas. A medical report was written and presented to the press and Amnesty International. It seems that this report has had a somewhat moderating effect on the use of tear gas in the refugee camps and hospitals.
In October 1988, a delegation of doctors visited Al-Ittihad hospital in Nablus to investigate the medical results of the use of plastic bullets. A medical report was written and sent to the Ministry of Defense and medical authorities in Israel.
Since October 1988, we have been concentrating mainly on investigation of severe bodily injuries of residents of the occupied territories and have brought our findings before the Israeli public through the press. For example, we investigated cases of children from Nablus area who were severely burned by IDF weapons; or women who were cruelly beaten in Gaza, etc.
We brought these cases to the Knesset’s attention through cooperation with Knesset members. We demand an investigation of each and every case and insist on this even when our appeals are turned down or receive unworthy replies.
Most of our efforts during the past month and the next few months are concentrated on carrying out a survey of the medical conditions in the occupied territories. To this end, we travel to all hospitals in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and examine hospital conditions, medical equipment, amount and quality of medication, budgets, the number of medical staff and doctors’ complaints regarding the disturbance of their work by the army or Civil Administration.
We completed a report on the conditions of health services in the Gaza strip in August 1989, published in Hebrew, Arabic and English. This report achieved great attention within Israel. For the first time a positive contact had been made between our Association and the official Israeli Medical Association, who traditionally ignore the suffering of the ill and wounded in the occupied territories.
In addition, we are continuing our struggle to return the hospitalization budget to the residents of the occupied territories until such time that they are able to develop medical centers which can provide decent and comprehensive medical services. In January 1989, we held a press conference to arouse public opinion and influence policy makers. We succeeded in returning about half of the budget that had been reduced.
We are a voluntary organization whose members finance their own activities, carried out on their days off from their regular work.
I wish to thank the organizers for their hospitality, and to thank the efficient and pleasant interpreters. The organizers have given me a great opportunity to exchange ideas with distinguished P.L.O. members and leaders, meetings that otherwise are outlawed according to the Israeli law and provide for imprisonment of three years for such participants.
Personally, I do wish to see Palestinian women in the next meeting. Equality is important everywhere, at home even more so. It will be great to be in a meeting like this with some of my Palestinian women friends, and hopefully to meet new friends.
Thank you.
THE POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY OF PEACE
[Excerpts of a speech to the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, Gaza City, Gaza, September 1993]
We stand at the threshold of a new era—the prospect of peace between the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Syrians, and the Jordanians. For the first time in the history of the state, Israel will have to draw an international border neither temporary nor obscure, and Israelis will have to internalize the concept of this set border. The question is: How will the peace treaty and a defined border affect the mentality and behavior of the Israeli public?
Zionist Israeli society will now have to adjust its self-identity to the new reality. Israelis will have to go through a series of emotional processes in order to develop new attitudes. They will have to renounce ideas, feelings, images, subconscious fears, and cognitive fears.
As reflections of attitudes, linguistic expressions will have to change. Yasser Arafat, long referred to in Israel as a “murderer,” “head of a terrorist organization,” and even “Hitler in a bunker,” will have to be referred to in completely different terms, such as “Dear Mr. Arafat,” “President Arafat,” and in the future, “Dear Colleague.”
This is not a mere change of title or denomination. Signifying words are chosen consciously and unconsciously from the “basic assumptions” of the collective, in the terminology of W. R. Bion, one of the prominent researchers in the field of groups and large groups. The basic assumption of Zionist Israeli society would be a “fighting group” (W. R. Bion, Experiences in Groups, Tavistock, 1991). Signifying words are also chosen from the collective identity, which in Israel is that of the victim. A new relationship will have to be formed between the signified and the signifier, between the mental cognitive concepts and the new subconscious contexts which will be created.
Israeli society has always required an enemy. This need stems from the basic assumption of Jewish Zionist Israelis as a fighting group. Such a group needs an enemy, as extreme as possible, in order to unite its members. The cohesive influence of the enemy is particularly important in a young society like Israel’s, which has not yet formed its own mature identity. The enemy serves as the society’s defining element. The ultimate Other, the enemy, provides distinct borders for the Self, without which individuals or societies feel disintegration, and little cohesive integrity.
The role of the enemy in Israeli society was made clear to me during the war in Lebanon in 1982. I tried to understand the motives for such an unnecessary, unwanted war – one that contradicted the myth of Israel only engaging in “Wars of No Choice.” Different from other wars initiated by Israel but presented as “Wars of No Choice,” the war in Lebanon was the first to be called a “War of Choice.” What was going on in the political psychology of Zionist Israel to induce such a change in attitude?
The answer dates back to the peace treaty with Egypt which, after a short period of euphoria, triggered feelings of depression and anxiety in Israeli Jewish society. This anxiety was expressed as rational worries about the future, but actually hid a wish to return to the previous situation. People asked themselves: have we been trapped? Will a new leader take power in Egypt tomorrow and start a new war against us? Is the enemy cheating? The Egyptians declare peace, but aren’t they doing so only in preparation for the next war?
The anxiety behind these questions is the result of peace, not of the realistic possibility of a future war. Since the state of war could not have been preserved in reality, it was preserved in the collective imagination. Israel’s self-image as a warrior people and its identification as victim were being shaken. When a cease-fire on the northern Israeli-Lebanese border was negotiated with the PLO in August 1981, anxiety and stress became threatening and unbearable. The collective angst of Israelis permitted their leaders to use lies and distortions in order to encourage the nation to conduct a long and bloody war.
In Israel, a continuous state of war serves to confirm the community’s victim status. Paradoxically, it claims the anxiety provoked by peace while serving another important psychological need: it strengthens a sense of self-righteousness. Thus, the people can humiliate, oppress and dehumanize the enemy without allowing their own self-image to become tarnished.
The Jewish self-image as liberal and moral is extremely important in Zionist Israeli society. The self-conception as spiritually superior is a cardinal element in the society’s high self-esteem, and has made possible thousands of cases of state-sponsored killings, injuries, torture, abuse, and dispossession. The image of spiritual superiority justifies the devaluation of the enemy and permits the total disregard of human rights.
What will happen to human rights in the new climate of peace when Israeli society has to part with its old basic assumptions and create a new identity?
Without a constitution, Israel’s highest authority for the protection of human rights has been the High Court. In the past 50 years, the High Court’s perception and application of human and civil rights have been constantly improving, reflecting a concomitant change in both the government and Israeli society in general. As a result of the Court’s decisions, censorship of artistic expressions has been greatly reduced. Almost every Jewish Israeli can get a job regardless of political ideas, a significant improvement from Israel’s first years. Freedom of expression for Jewish Israelis is at a level similar to that in any democracy.
At the same time, the liberalization and enlightenment of the High Court has left out Palestinian society. This has been even clearer since the intifada, which brought with it a severe deterioration in Palestinian human rights' by the Government, the army commanders, the security services, and the soldiers. The High Court has repeatedly failed to uphold the rights of the Palestinians, and despite the establishment of a few human rights groups, Israeli society has been complicit.
The Israeli Jewish public, in massive denial, does not know and does not want to know what happens to Palestinians in the occupied territories and in the refugee camps in Lebanon. Thirty-nine children were killed by Israeli security forces in the last few months, and except for a mild protest by a human rights group, there was no response from the Israeli public.
The closure of the occupied territories nearly eight months ago was a cruel collective punishment, resulting in unemployment, a dire economic situation, near food shortages, and restrictions in health services, since medical centers in Jerusalem were cut off from the populations they serve. Executions by undercover Israeli units continue. These calamitous events have been relegated to the back page of newspapers and are not given much attention; there is hardly any public reaction. And all of this is happening here and now. Furthermore, the very people who commit these acts deny them, thereby preserving their proper self-image, and the proper self-image of the society.
The denial mechanism is closely tied to fear, the lowest common denominator in politics. The “bad” leader who uses the fear of his/her followers to his advantage is in a better political situation than the “good” constructive leader. The latter’s job is much more difficult because he/she does not play into fears, but works against them. Hence, in most societies, especially during times of stress and conflict, it is easier to nurture fear and a desire for war than to eradicate them. Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir demonstrated this in a June 1992 election speech, when he said “We need war—without it there is no sense to the life of the individual and no sense of the nation.” For many years, Israeli leaders have encouraged their citizens to fear Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular.
Another defense mechanism in addition to denial is the splitting of the world into good from evil, when our side is always good, and the enemy is always evil. Deeply rooted fears, along with this division of the world into good and evil, were reinforced by a constant Israeli analogy equating the Palestinians with the Nazis. Arafat was even compared to Hitler and Satan.
A clear-cut dichotomy of self-idealization and dehumanization of the other makes it easier to abuse, to torture, rob, and violate others. Thus, it becomes possible for an individual to cause pain and humiliation to the other and yet remain, in his own eyes, righteous. The male soldier assumes a distinguished place in Israeli society with a gun in his hand, his rude speech completing the macho image. A fighter in the brotherhood of warriors, he looks down on anyone who does not serve in the army, especially other men, most women and all Palestinians. Emotions are regarded as weaknesses, and the protection of human rights understood as self-hatred, detached from the Israeli existential reality. If they once “shot and cried,” now they shoot and sweat. Crying, for whatever reasons, has been eliminated during the intifada years.
Violating human rights becomes a job. Shabak (the Israeli secret service) interrogators, Golani and Givati battalions' soldiers, and the Border Police describe what they do as “work.” They “work,” and go home to the warm bosom of denial and self-idealization.
The beginning of the peace process, apart from the ceremonial signing, demonstrations, and media attention, will have to be reflected in the creation of a different emotional and cognitive system. Perceptions of the Palestinian as equal, worthy of human and civil rights just like his/her Israeli Zionist counterpart—that is the real meaning of the peace process.
Epilogue: Not long ago, I visited the Gaza Prison, where I examined a Palestinian imprisoned for the last five years. He is mentally ill. In spite of this, he is imprisoned and held in solitary confinement most of the time.
The Association of Israeli-Palestinian Physicians for Human Rights, of which I am the chairwoman, demands his immediate release. If he had been Israeli, an Israeli court would have sent Maqdam Maqdat to a hospital, not to prison. He is not the only mentally ill Palestinian in prison; there are others like him.
I hope that the Gaza Prison will be evacuated, and the building will be demolished by the inhabitants of Gaza, like the Bastille or the Berlin Wall. I hope that the Palestinians will be able to live with a minimum number of prisons. When human and civil rights receive their rightful place, there will be not need for all these prisons.
RECONCILIATION TODAY, PEACE TOMORROW
[Speech to Faculty for Israeli-Palestine Peace conference, Brussels, Belgium, July 2004]
In seeking to end situations of a long, bitter and aggressive conflict it is necessary for both partners to go through certain stages. This is true for individuals as for large groups alike.
The first crucial step involves an understanding. Let me be more specific as to what I mean by that. Understanding what? Understanding the part each side has had in creating and maintaining the conflict.
Extremely important is that each side focus on its own part of the wrongdoing, and resist the easy task of giving a detailed report of the other side’s faults. This kind of understanding facilitates the second step, which is assuming responsibility for what one did or didn’t do in the past. In other words, the above are stages of introspection and self-examination that demands an inner work of moral stock-taking.
It is only after both sides have taken upon themselves to fulfill these tasks sincerely and admit to themselves and to the Other their wrong-doings, then both sides are ready for squaring accounts.
[The step of asking forgiveness will not be discussed here. I would like to mention one thing: asking forgiveness might be an empty gesture without proper inner work.]
Here begins the process of bringing together the two partners to work for a common goal.
The two partners now go from a separate, individual history into working together on a common history. Trying to establish a form of togetherness requires, at first, a settling of accounts with the other side.
[The step of reparation will not be discussed here.]
From this point onwards they will enter a stage of commitment to the common ground between them, their joint efforts allied towards reconciliation.
On this long way to reconciliation there is a need for decency and fairness in the engagement. The partners are committed in helping each other achieve these goals.
Decency and fairness have to stem from respect. It is my firm belief and my theory as well, that the profound meaning of respect lies in the readiness to share power. If power is the source of disengagement, then sharing power is the core of engagement based on respect.
Disengagement is the Israeli government’s policy. It maintains the imbalance of power and prevents reconciliation. In this policy and conduct there is no need or even place for decency or for common goals. The powerful side can and will dictate one-sidedly the rules of the game.
We should also remember that peace can be just a condition of no war. It is not necessarily a just peace, nor is it necessarily a relationship based on respect. Some might even consider “peace” the relationship between the Americans and the Native Americans. These relationships are frequently characterized by an extreme imbalance between the two sides, which are not really partners at all. One side might be strong and the other weak. Here respect is replaced by dictate. This all demonstrates that reconciliation is by far more difficult to achieve than peace.
In Hebrew, the word for peace is shalom. The other meaning of shalom is goodbye. Not to see you again: Disengagement.
I would like to present here the kind of work, relations, expectations, dreams and reality of PHR-IL and the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP). These might help to illustrate a meaningful engagement process, including the crucial corner-stones that enabled its foundation: commitment, respect in its profound meaning, solidarity, co-working and equal demands toward the two partners. When those are real, vital, day-to-day experiences—peace becomes a word with no real relevance.
A short history: AIPPHR [the original name of PHR-IL was the Association of Israeli Palestinian Physicians for Human Rights] was established more than 16 years ago. Its initiation began in Gaza City, shortly after the break out of the first Intifada, when eleven Israeli doctors visited Shifa Hospital, as guests of a few Palestinians, among them Dr. Eyad El-Saraj. It was a rough day, thick with harsh impressions both from the hospital and from collecting data of what was happening then in Gaza strip. Nothing of what we saw or heard could soften these impressions. We encountered desolation, poor and unequipped medicine, harassment of medical teams, and a manner towards civilians that was cruel and devoid of dignity. Not knowing what are plans were for the next day, we felt an urgent need to share our thoughts and sentiments with the people we knew in Gaza.
Looking back I can say that this was the beginning of a solid friendship, both personal and political, with Eyad. Two months later, in Tel-Aviv, we managed to recruit over 100 health workers and to invite Palestinians from Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights to the founding ceremony of AIPPHR. Eyad was among the distinguished guests and colleagues. He was very helpful in the big not-knowing-how-to-do things stage, contributing his good humor and easy maneuvering from Arabic to English. When he said in front of everybody “I’m proud to be a member of AIPPHR,” he was able to turn the atmosphere among the Palestinians in the theatre hall from skepticism and suspicion into a welcoming mood. It was clear: we are working together. And we haven’t stop working together ever since.
Working together is a tremendous achievement.
Along the way we struggled together against issues of torture in Israel as well as in Palestine. We believe that we share the same ethic demands and moral obligations for the two groups in spite of the different situation we each come from. That being said, it is important to stress that no line of symmetry is drawn between the occupier and the occupied. It is the universal human rights concept and the medical ethics that we equally share and the understanding that we are striving to end the occupation.
Above all, it seems, both sides seek to keep in touch and work at maintaining the bond that has been growing deeper and more meaningful over the years. This bond is our political answer to the separation and segregation which is a corner stone in the occupation. Having a constantly changing reality, including huge political and policy changes that have occurred in both Israeli and the Palestinian leadership, we strive to sustain these principles even when circumstances make it almost impossible to meet.
As Israeli policy would have it, residents of Gaza are not allowed to enter Israel and Israelis are not allowed to enter Gaza. PHR-IL does not wish to disengage itself from Gaza Strip but our repeated attempts to enter it have failed and the High Court of Justice turned down our appeals. As Palestinians are not allowed to stay in Egypt more than 27 hours – it too was ruled out. We ended up meeting in Cyprus. There were twelve of us, a mixed group of activists and mental health professionals. Most of us hadn’t seen the Palestinian group (nor them us) in three years.
The first afternoon meeting was gloomy. The Gaza group was tired and bitter from having to endure the humiliating routine now exercised toward Palestinians on the Israeli and the Egyptian borders. On both sides there were similar feelings of doubtfulness among the activist part of the group. The mental health professionals from the Israeli side were less doubtful and were quick to believe that “we will teach the Palestinians methods in psychotherapy.” Needless to say, that this attitude was viewed by the Palestinians as a patronizing attitude.
The formal meeting was over. In the evening we ate together, heard each others’ stories and personal experiences, some of which led later on to political discussions.
At the morning meeting things started to look a little different as the group mood slowly changed. We, the Israelis, learnt that we actually “know” very little about the psychological needs and problems of individuals and society in Gaza. Instead of a teaching session it became a meeting of mutual learning. The common roots we had began to re-emerge and renewed our hope for joint activity. From an atmosphere of fatigue we moved to tremendous energy. It was the sense of partnership that did it. We shared the same dreams of participation and responsibility. The two civil societies were engaged in building something together.
We managed to work 10 hours a day but even more than that, we were filled with joy. As we let our guards down, an atmosphere of openness prevailed and allowed for agreeing as well as disagreeing (about small issues, like smoking, and bigger issues such as which kind of training is needed). Discussions could be had without disturbing our good spirits as each side demonstrated ample readiness to compromise. To make it easier to visualize, I can tell you that at the first meeting people were formally dressed but that by the second day they felt enough at ease with each other to show up casually dressed and later on, even barefooted.
Government policy, and in particular that of the Israeli government, aims to prevent civilian society, on both sides, to be engaged in anything that isn’t war. One-sided disengagement is the guideline. Therefore settlers and soldiers are allowed to enter Gaza strip and human rights activists, doctors or other civilians are denied entrance. Simply put: Government policy is against people like us. Disengagement rules out engagement.
Our small working group, Israelis and Palestinians could illustrate the other option.
In conclusion, let me quote a little of what was said in our final session:
- “I wish I could have been a poet in order to be able to say what I feel meeting people like you. I adore the way you understand yourselves and us. Is it possible that more and more people will be able to have the same attitude?”
- “It has been great fun, the meeting. I’m grateful for accomplishing it.”
- “For me it was an emergence of hope. For the first time I don’t feel alone, not abandoned; this is always the rule for us everywhere.”
- “This group was full of care, concern and the wish to achieve the same goals. It was highly meaningful on the emotional and practical levels.”
- “I appreciate a lot the fact that you took the trouble to come in spite of the hardship at the borders. This kind of work is a long acting connection, a civil kind of connection, contrary to the crisis connection we usually maintain like the one in Rafah, and that is the best.”
- “I feel as if we are changing shoes. There is a genuine relationship with mutual understanding. We can achieve a lot this way. I’m interested in continuing our work together.”
- “I have learned a lot. I believe that now I can feel and understand much better the needs and the problems. It was very important for me on the professional level.”
- “We can see clearly the awful reality but we don’t intend to neglect the vision of how it should be. It is my hope that people like us might have the chance to make the change. I mean the change from the actual reality to the one it should be.”
The two groups, PHR-I and GCMHP, have been working together now for 14 years. The profound personal, professional and political friendship between Dr. Eyad el-Saraj and me is now over 16 years old. What I am trying to say is that we do have a common history, commitment to our engagement and hope for a different reality based on respect. Together, we have gone through the first intifada, and the ‘Oslo’ period, the hope it aroused and of course, the disappointment in the face of its collapse. Now we are more than three years into the second intifada and we hope to continue our bond in the future independently of the political situation and government's policy. Maybe our experience might serve at the same time as a sign and signifier of reconciliation and a just peace.
OBITUARY FOR DR. HAIDER ABDUL-SHAFI
[October 15, 2007]
I first met Dr. Haider Abdul-Shafi and his wife, Huda, after June, 1967, through N., a friend who had studied with him in Beirut. When she spoke of him, a special light shone in her very beautiful eyes – the same distant gaze that comes when speaking of an old love. Haider and I quickly became friends, a friendship that deepened over the years. When we first met I already had the feeling – one that's never let me down – that we had sprung from the same earth (that's my private way of describing the feeling I had). In other words, I am speaking of a person (a subject) who is political active, secular, rational and generous. There is an immediate understanding with such people, you're fond of them, feel that you share with them a common language. I know men and women like that, not many, but they can be found everywhere: in Tel Aviv, in Ramallah, in Gaza, in New York, in Boston, in Europe and in China. These people have usually been communists at some point in their lives, or held such beliefs.
When the first intifada erupted, in December, 1987, even before it had been given that name, I called my friends in Gaza, Haider and the late Marie Khass, not only because I was worried about their safety and that of Gaza's residents, but also because I wanted to know what was really happening there, since it wasn't possible to obtain a reliable picture of events in Gaza from the Israeli media. Haider, with his customary generosity, agreed immediately to guarantee the safety and security of eleven people who would accompany me to Gaza. And so it was.
Eleven physicians took the trip, and we saw Gaza misery. Shops closed, frightened people, armed soldiers everywhere. It looked very bad. Worst of all was what we saw at "Shifah", the governmental hospital. We saw boys, mostly, but girls as well, and many young men filling the beds of this terribly wretched hospital, most of them suffering from multiple fractures of their arms and legs. There were some youngsters with head injuries from beatings. The sparse, outdated medical equipment, the neglect and filth, the sewage overflowing inside the hospital shocked us, we Israelis, accustomed to clean hospitals equipped with the best medical equipment. The Palestine Red Crescent Society in Gaza Strip, established by Haidar in 1972, which administered first aid and provided transportation to the hospitals during the first months of the intifada, was on the verge of collapse.
The eleven doctors who traveled to Gaza in January, 1988, formed the nucleus with which I established the organization that was called at the time, "Israeli-Palestinian Physicians for Human Rights." That day in Gaza we met Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj and others, with whom we continue to work to this day. As Physicians for Human Rights, our first obligation is to combat the evil, the destruction, the torture and the death that people inflict on their fellows. Our medical activity, combating disease, comes next. The fight against human evil requires us to oppose the Israeli occupation in solidarity with our Palestinian colleagues. Our opposition to evil-made-by-man is deep and all-encompassing, and applies throughout the world – but first of all in our own backyard, the Occupied Palestinian Territory. After a few years we extended our struggle to include that against the discrimination and evils affecting migrant workers, trafficked women, and Bedouin citizens living in unrecognized villages in the Negev desert, Palestinian citizens of Israel and the Israeli disempowered population.
Let me expand a bit about Gaza's ambulances. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), headed by Haider, suffered greatly at the hands of the Israeli authorities, and was threatened with closure. Contributions to the PRCS were delayed, or not authorized at all. The donation or purchase of ambulances equipped for resuscitation was forbidden and communication equipment couldn't be installed in the ambulances that were then in use. This was before the era of cellular phones. The ambulances were, in fact, white vans bearing the symbol of the PRCS, but empty of life-saving medical equipment. Haider told me how Hamas, the religious group, was able, on the one hand – almost without any difficulty – to transfer funds with the permission of the Israeli military authorities, while on the other hand the authorities were restricting the work of the PRCS. His words, always spoken in a restrained, pleasant tone, also carried a clear and unambiguous political message. He understood the actions of the occupation authorities and foresaw what would happen. Few grasped his clear-sighted vision at the time, or agreed with his analysis that Israel was "grooming" Hamas as a counterweight to the secular, left-wing Palestinian organizations.
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR-I) joined the struggle of the Palestine Red Crescent Society to obtain authorization to install communication equipment in ambulances, and to increase the number of ambulances operating in Gaza. Our efforts had no practical results – essentially, we failed. The number of ambulances didn't increase significantly, and the prohibition on communication equipment remained in force. But there was one important success: building trust and mutual respect between Palestinian individuals and organizations and PHR-I, relationships that grew of a joint struggle against the occupation, a struggle based on solidarity and not on arrogance or patronage.
In 1988, the first year of the intifada, I often traveled to Gaza in order to prepare a report on medical and health conditions there. I needed the help of medical personnel in Gaza to obtain data and to verify information. Most of the work could only be done through face-to-face conversations with Gaza physicians. There were no computers, no e-mail and no cellular phones. There were few phone lines, those that existed were overburdened, and it often required two hours of dialing in order to complete a single call. The journey from Tel Aviv to Gaza took an hour at the most, so I preferred to make the trip. I told Haidar about the many difficulties involved in the preparing the report, and about additional difficulties because of fear and suspicion on the part of many Palestinian doctors who didn't know me, someone who came from the occupiers' side. How could they know I wasn't working for the Israeli Shin-Bet (security services)? In one of our talks, I told him that an aboriginal woman once said something that seemed to be correct and to the point: "If you have come to help me, please go home. However, if you have come because your liberation is tied with my own, then let's work together." Haider smiled and promised to help. Work on the report then proceeded quickly, and it appeared in three languages – Hebrew, Arabic and English.
In February, 1988, Mordechai Avi Shaul died. He was 90. He had been an exemplary translator from German to Hebrew, an activist on the left, a human rights activist and a friend for many years of Haider and his family. Haider was confined to Gaza by order of Yitzhak Rabin, then the Minister of Defense, and was not permitted to attend Mordechai Avi Shaul's funeral, or the traditional seven-day mourning period that followed. Pleas and intercessions were no help. Palestinian peace activists, those who supported non-violent opposition to the occupation, in particular if they were known leftists, who were in contact with Israelis, were considered dangerous and undesirable – while tens of thousands of workers and businessmen entered Israel daily from Gaza.
Haider headed the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid peace conference, in October, 1991. In his speech he said: "From Madrid we launch this quest for peace, a quest to place the sanctity of human life at the center of our world and to redirect our energies and resources from the pursuit of mutual destruction to the pursuit of joint prosperity, progress, and happiness".
The sanctity of human life, or, in other words – human rights – is what is missing from the bulky document, 400 pages long, produced in Oslo two years later, when Haider was no longer a member of the delegation. Not only his person was absent – also missing were his spirit and his understanding of the process that was to develop between the two peoples. Haider resigned from the Palestinian delegation to the peace conference when his demand that Israeli settlement in the occupied territories must cease was rejected.
As far back as 1947, Haider had favored a solution involving two states for two peoples, a solution involving the establishment of a secular, democratic Palestinian state. That's why he couldn't agree to his homeland being torn up by the settlements, and saw even then how confiscation of land, dispossession and the continued occupation would transform the peace talks into an empty vessel, and make dead letters of the agreements.
His deep belief in the possibility of peace placed him in a position in which personal and political relationships with Jewish Israelis were part of his public life and behavior, not only while he held an important and influential position, but also when he relinquished it.
On September 13, 1993, the day of the famous handshakes by the three leaders in Washington when the Oslo agreements were signed, I was in Gaza. Among other things, I visited Haider and Huda in their beautiful home in Rimal neighborhood. Haider said: "This agreement is a recipe for disaster for the Palestinians." Almost everyone I knew, including my friend N., were angry at him, accused him of stubbornness and an "absolutist" approach, couldn't understand how he failed to see what they saw – a new beginning, one that promised the benefits of peace and an independent Palestinian state. Everyone wanted so much to hope that it blinded us all, but Haider saw and understood the difficult reality they faced at that time, and viewed the future as absolutely terrible.
Haider's greatness was that he knew and understood from the depths of his soul that a just and stable peace would not be achieved by groveling. Palestinian national interests obligate its emissaries and elected representatives not to grovel or to surrender, even to forces stronger than they. Haider openly said to Israelis as well as to his leader, Yasser Arafat that true cooperation and the correct solution to the conflict cannot come in the form of an agreement to surrender. Such an agreement would not only be wrong; it would not endure. A true partner must be dignified and equal, not one that is defeated and humiliated.
Even the Zionist left at the time didn't choose Haider as a partner for discussions – not, at least, as their preferred partner. They gave precedence to Arafat's people, who were good and worthy, but were neither independent thinkers nor persons who, like Haider, were far-seeing. They frequently spoke and met with Sartawi, Hammami, Hisham Sharabi and other members of Arafat's circle. Haider didn't overturn any tables. He maintained personal and political connections with Israelis as he had always done, but did not abandon his view that no compromise was possible on the important issues: settlements, Jerusalem, the right of return and a solution to the refugee problem. And above all – the end of the occupation that began in 1967. He was aware of what this cost him personally: He was no longer included in the first ranks among the founders of the PLO in 1964, but was relegated to the place reserved for independent individuals, the few, the honest, the unbending.
When he understood, with sorrow, that he could no longer have an influence on events, he resigned. He resigned as the head of the Palestinian delegation to Madrid in 1991, and years later, in 1998, from the Palestine Legislative Council. On the eve of his resignation from the Council, again by chance, I was a guest in Haider's home. We met for a talk, but we said little. One phone call followed another. It seemed as if the whole world was calling him. Most of the callers attempted to convince him to remain a member of the Council, not to resign. Huda, wearing tailored slacks, her hair uncovered as usual, passed through the rooms wearing a certain smile. She, who knew Haider better than all of them, knew he wouldn't change his mind. His brother, Dr. Mustafa Abd A-Shafi, was also there and supported his decision, as did Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, from Ramallah, his friend and political follower.
Both of us are from here, Haidar from Gaza, I from Jerusalem. We could have left, but preferred to remain. We have much more than that in common – medicine, ceaseless political activity, a profound secular viewpoint. That is why Dr. Haidar could think and feel like a communist, however, his fundamental lack of religiosity prevented him from being a party member, not even of a party he supported, be it the Communist party or the Popular Front.
And perhaps we have something else in common that comes from the traditional medical education both of us received, that the role of the physician is to mend, not to dismantle. A good doctor should be concerned with the patient's life, bodily and soul integrity and independence. Collaborators are interested only in anesthetizing the system, in silencing it, and in maximum conformity. Haider was wary of dismantling systems, and even more wary of destroying them. When his view (which turned out to be correct) wasn't accepted, he moved aside or resigned. He did nothing that was destructive to the PLO or to the Palestine Legislative Council, or that could have helped tear them apart. That's another similarity I found between his political path and mine.
Haidar visited my home in Tel Aviv, I don't remember in what year. The jasmine was in bloom and its strong fragrance was everywhere. He said: this wonderful fragrance reminds me of Beirut. Every house had a jasmine bush.
The glance from Tel Aviv casts light on Haider's life from a particular direction, the Israeli-Palestinian direction. This glance prevents seeing other aspects of his life and character. But all one can see from here is what's visible from here. The Israeli-Palestinian conflicts casts such a long shadow that it seems nothing else exists.
If a person like Haider had been in charge of this region, it would have been better for us all. His wise and sober vision, usually ahead of its time (for which he paid a heavy price), could have allowed all of us here to live honorable, prosperous and culturally rich lives.
When Haider died, his nephew Dr. Omar Abd A-Shafi, needed a permit to travel from East Jerusalem to Gaza in order to attend his uncle's funeral. As usual, a request like this was met with a refusal and with impassible administraive obstacles. Omar contacted Physicians for Human Rights-Israel for help. Naomi Mark and Miri Weingarten, from PHR-Israel, contacted the military liaison offices. No one there knew who Dr. Haider Abd A-Shafi was. After great effort, Dr. Omar Abd A-Shafi received a transit permit to Gaza that was valid for one day only. An entire generation knows nothing about the Palestinians who dedicated the best years of their lives to creating the possibility of cooperation and peace between the two peoples.
It was still possible in Haider's generation for Palestinian Arabs and Palestinian Jews to study together, in the same university – for example, in Beirut. Even in the next generation, my generation, Arab and Jewish children could have played together in the same neighborhood. People ate together, worked together and did business with one another. But people are no longer acquainted with each other that way. Whoever was born following the establishment of the state of Israel grew up in a different world, a world in which equality, in the simple, everyday meaning of the word, does not exist. Before Gaza was closed off and transformed into a cage, we employed Palestinians. We permitted them to come and work for us. For many years, Israel has not been even willing to employ them. There is no human contact at all. Personal friendships, which are also political, have become more and more rare. PHR-Israel, Anarchists Against the Wall and a handful of feminist women are among the few maintaining human contacts between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Haider, born in Gaza just after the close of the Ottoman period (1919), came of age during the British Mandate, lived through the period of Egyptian rule, and went to his final rest in Gaza under the control of the Israeli occupation.
Haider wanted a democratic, secular, socialist Palestinian state, free of corruption. I wonder whether he realized how much the state he hoped to see would have been formed in his image.
To my great regret, I was not allowed by the Israeli authorities to enter Gaza, to be together with Huda and their children, and mourn together with them.
- Brit Shalom, founded in 1925, sought a peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews in a bi-national state. Brit Shalom supporters and founders included Arthur Ruppin, Martin Buber, Hugo Bergmann, Hans Kohn, Gershom Scholem and Henrietta Szold; others, such as Albert Einstein, were supporters.
- (VOL. 34 | NO. 3 | 2002 Matt Minahan and Carrie Hutton Group Development Tools.)
- Bion, 1961: 96.
- Miller, 1998: 1504; see also Gosling, 1994; Stokes, 1994: 25-6.
- Helen Deutsch singled out schizoid personalities who “seem normal enough because they have succeeded in substituting ‘pseudo contacts’ of manifold kinds for a real feeling contact with other people; they behave ‘as if 'they had feeling relations with other people…their ungenuine pseudo emotions'. More broadly, she considered that the ‘generally frigid’ person who more or less avoids emotions altogether…may learn to hide their insufficiencies and to behave ‘as if 'they had real feelings and contact with people.” Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (London 1946), p. 445 and p. 532.