We Must Think About Those Villages

What is the difference between a psychotic and a neurotic? A psychotic believes that 2 + 2 = 5. A neurotic knows that 2 + 2 = 4, but it makes him mad.

In the debate between Israel’s two principal political blocs, Likud does not believe that a Palestinian people exists; Labor knows it exists, but it makes it mad.

Likud’s belief leads it to the position that Palestinians have no national rights and no national leadership. Therefore, according to Likud, the Palestine Liberation Organization is not a national leadership--it is just a bunch of depraved crooks, murderers and saboteurs. Labor realizes that there are indeed Palestinians and there is a Palestinian people, but, according to Labor also, there is no national Palestinian leadership.

But whom should we talk to if not to the PLO? Labor says that we should negotiate with Jordan’s King Hussein, who says that he does not represent the Palestinian people. Labor would consider trading part or all of the occupied territories to Hussein, who does not have the power to guarantee peace, rather than negotiate with the PLO, which does. Where is the logic?

Reaching new levels of irrationality, Labor would prefer to have as a neighbor a strong, enhanced Jordan, stretching from Tulkarm in the West Bank to the outskirts of Baghdad--a Jordan that overnight can concentrate four Arab armies--rather than a small, geographically divided Palestinian state between Tulkarm and the Jordan River, which would exist in the shadow of Israel’s overwhelming military might.

When it comes to Palestinian matters, logic evaporates like smoke. Rational thinking is paralyzed. Why? What causes this national psychosis/neurosis?

The answer came to me during Memorial Day observances in April. On a bare hill in the south of Israel, as I stood before a monument to comrades who gave their lives on that battlefield, I thought of the Arab village that once stood there, a village of which literally nothing is left today--nota stone, not a wall, not a hole in ground.

And suddenly I understood. That village is the crux of the matter.

We stood there, eulogizing our friends. Everyone who came remembers this place as it once was. But no one mentioned, not even with the slightest hint, that villages once stood there, villages that we took over. We even lived in those villages for a short time; we collected mementos--an Arab headdress, an Arab coffee pot.

We remember those villages--and yet we don’t remember. Our memory of them has shifted to the dark and hidden areas of our subconscious. There the memory lives; from there it spreads its spiritual poison and distorts the way we think, as individuals and as a nation. We cannot bear to think about those hundreds of Arab villages erased from the face of the Earth.

But we must think about those villages, not for the Palestinians’ sake but for our own, in order to enable us to make rational decisions, in order for us to become sane.

A few writers have made a beginning in this direction, but what we need most is a national leader--a leader who is part prophet, part writer, part psychiatrist, but who is also a great politician. We need a leader who would combine policy with therapy, practicality with spirituality. We need the combination of Herzel and Ahad Ha-am, of Ben Gurion and Martin Buber.

Instead, what we have is the pathetic combination of Peres and Shamir.

Maybe Peres, in his heart, already knows the terrifying truth. But he lacks the guts to boldly proclaim with whom it is that we must make peace, and what the price will be. We need a leader who will stand up and say: 2 + 2 = 4.