Will the Next Generation Wander a Lifetime for Peace?

The countdown that ended in Friday’s bombing in Tel Aviv began the moment the government of Israel decided to start building in Har Homa.

I do not mean to detract from the barbarity of the Hamas, an organization that sends its members on suicide missions to indiscriminately kill innocent civilians, children and infants.

I do not mean to detract from the responsibility of Yasser Arafat, who always seems to be flirting with terrorism--an option he just can’t relinquish--even as he prepares to talk peace.

Nevertheless, the first charge that set off this bomb was laid by the government of Israel. Over and over, Israeli security heads warned that building in a disputed area of south Jerusalem would have repercussions like the ones felt this Friday. The government decided the price was fair.

These are bitter, distressing moments for all who hold peace dear. I look at the pictures of the three young women who were killed, at the injured eight-month-old daughter of one of them, and I, too, cry out silently what many in Israel cry aloud: With whom can we make peace? With the scores of Hamas supporters who were jubilant at the massacre of these peaceable civilians?

If we do make peace, if we concede, is there any hope that they may one day stop killing us? Time and again Israelis are killed by Arabs, and not necessarily in the context of some “current” event, but because of these Arabs’ failure to accept the existence of Israel and Israelis. There are plenty of Palestinians, Egyptians and Jordanians who need no “excuse” to attack Israelis: Only 10 days ago, seven Israeli teenage girls were gunned down by a Jordanian soldier.

I have no illusions: Even if there is peace between Israel and its neighbors, acts of terror will not instantly cease. But I do remember, or, rather, I remind myself that the choice is not between total peace, like that between England and France, and all-out war. The choice that we Israelis and Palestinians must make is between all-out war and a slow, tortuous crawl down the blood-soaked path to peace.

If we yield to understandable hatred and the desire for vengeance, we will harm only ourselves. We will postpone the moment we take the first, real step toward life.

The late Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres understood this. Carefully, they began to defuse the first of the land mines in the giant mine field where Israel has been wandering for nearly 50 years. They established trust with the Palestinians, Jordanians and Egyptians. They proved they were dedicated to real peace. They showed respect for their negotiating partners. They could admit their mistakes.

From the moment Benjamin Netanyahu came to power, he has seemed to be driven by motives or forces that many find hard to explain, and among which few find any thread of consistency. He takes one step forward, toward peace, then immediately takes two steps backward.

Sometimes he seems to have understood the complex thicket of sensitivities in which Israel is caught in this region: He created the semblance of a viable working relationship with Arab leaders, left Hebron and pulled Israel out of a fair section of occupied territory. But practically at the same time he has made appalling errors, from deciding to open the tunnel near the Western Wall to deciding to build on Har Homa.

Keeping abreast of Netanyahu’s moves it seems as if two violent, opposing forces are at work in the man, forces he struggles to choose between. On one hand, he wants to prove himself a cool statesman with an eye to the future. This is the Netanyahu who, albeit unenthusiastically, obliged by law, complied with the Oslo accords signed by his predecessors. This is the Netanyahu who realizes that both he and Arafat walk a tightrope together, and that if one slips, he also topples the other. On the other hand, he is unpredictable, volatile, acting in defiance of diplomatic logic. This is the Netanyahu who believes Israel can do as it pleases, as if it existed in some vast empty quarter and not in the Middle East powder keg. This is the Netanyahu who time after time destroys what he himself has wrought, as if he cannot help himself.

The tragedy is that in this region there are immense, indefatigable forces just waiting for such errors. A thousand torches await just such a volatile wind to be set alight.

A wise Israeli leader would understand that it is in Israel’s interest to create a climate in which fewer and fewer Palestinians could be seduced by nationalist and religious radicals because their reality would be tolerable, because hope would not be in the heavens, but here on Earth.

Let none mistake my words: I do not believe Israel has the right to endanger its security just to appease. Yet today--nearly 50 years since the establishment of the state, our physical existence assured and our might enabling us to take calculated risks--today I allow myself to ask for more. I ask to believe that my sons and my sons’ sons may live here without having to fight, as my parents and I did. I ask that they may live with their neighbors in mutual respect. That they may save themselves and their neighbors the humiliation of living in hate, of weaning yet another generation on fear.

Today, when rage blinds my thoughts, I remind myself: Peace is in the interest of all nations in the region. If there are those in Arab states and the Israeli government who do not understand this, let it not keep me and my friends from remembering the true, abiding concern of every individual, Israeli or Palestinian; let it not tempt us, too, to violence and the terrible destruction it wreaks for all.

The Hamas, the bombs, the suicide terrorists and jubilant masses in the streets of Gaza, the Jordanian soldier who massacred seven girls, and Arafat with his limitations, the moderate Palestinians, the members of the PLO who have changed their ways--all comprise the problematic partner with which Israel must make peace. Israel, too, with its anxieties and memories, its score-keeping and imperiousness, is also a less than perfect partner with which to make peace. But these are the tools of the game with which everyone in the region must build a world view and a future. To do so successfully, we must act with deep insight and infinite sensitivity. We must act with a wisdom of the heart.

It seems to me that Netanyahu is not blessed with such wisdom. His actions bolster those most violent elements that feed on enmity, while shunting aside increasing numbers of moderate Palestinians, leaving them in despair of ever achieving dialogue with Israel.

This Friday the Hamas acted perniciously, as is its wont; by so doing, it pushes increasing numbers of Israelis toward extremism, “confirming” for them that there is no partner for dialogue. The government of Israel seems poised to respond with forceful measures, the Palestinians will pressure Arafat into escalating his response, and willy-nilly we will find ourselves whirling in the vicious circle in which we have lived most of our lives--all except for that brief period, which seems ever more fantastic, between the signing of the Oslo accords and the murder of Yitzhak Rabin.

Can someone from outside understand the dilemma of heart and conscience that tears us apart: To preserve a circumspect dream of peace while living at war, in constant fear?

I think the despair that grips many Israelis just now is a result of their realization that, at least for the coming generation, there will be no real peace, the peace that has been taken to heart and mind. I sense that many of my generation have begun to accept the bitter fact that we will not reap the benefits--national and individual--of real peace; not in our lifetime.

How painful it is to accept this!

How painful it is to suddenly realize that we who see ourselves as part of the next millennium, part of the virtual world of the Internet, are just another link in a chain of generations that fought bloody territorial and religious tribal wars to live in the Land of Israel.

The violent explosion in the center of Tel Aviv reminded those of us who would have forgotten that we, too--second generation natives of Israel, now raising older children--are still just another “generation wandering in the desert” on the interminable journey toward our promised land.

Today, choked by sorrow, I know that we have no other land, and that there is no other journey to it.