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August 22, 2012
By Melkam Lidet for MIFTAH
‘Out of sight out of mind’ is a common saying in different languages–
the further away one is from something or the longer time one has spent
away from it, the less relevant it becomes. After days of traveling with
friends to the north of Israel – Haifa, Akko, the Galilee and the Golan
this saying resonated with me in regards to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.
The north is a beautiful place: the blue Sea of Galilee, the mountains,
green terrain and the grace of Mt. Harmon in the occupied Golan Heights.
Except for the Golan which Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 war and
is considered occupied territory by international law, much of the
North is now what is considered Israel-proper, captured and claimed in
the 1948 war and recognized by the international community as such. The
north is also home to diverse groups: Muslim Arabs, Christian Arabs,
Jews and Druze. Almost half of “Arab Israelis” i.e. people who are
Palestinian in nationality but citizens or permanent residents of
Israel, live in the North, making up a slight majority over the Jewish
population there; and compared to other places around Israel/Palestine,
these groups live in harmony.
In all the places we went, we stayed with Israeli hosts we met on Couch
Surfing, an online social network that connects travelers with locals
who can host them in their homes. We were a group of peace studies
students, living and working in the West Bank and a Palestinian from the
West Bank who had to get a permit to join us on this trip; obviously,
politics came up several times in our conversation. Keeping in mind that
the people we met were left-leaning, open-minded, well-travelled
people- a minority in Israeli society, their knowledge of the West Bank
was very limited. Most haven’t been to the West Bank except maybe on
school trips back in grade school or in ‘Green’ – as soldiers. But the
ones we met were in Special Forces so they served away from the West
Bank or were limited to the offices and bases in the West Bank with no
interaction with Palestinians.
The further away from the West Bank one goes, the more blurred the image
of the occupation appears. The North is very far from the West Bank
where the occupation manifests. Here, there are no confrontations with
settlers, checkpoints, encounters with young Israeli soldiers or a long,
concrete separation wall. There is not much that would remind you of
the Occupation. Our hosts weren’t aware of the daily human rights
violations and maltreatment Palestinians go through at the hands of
individual soldiers or the iron fist of the army. Evictions, house
demolitions and roadblocks to farmlands didn’t ring a bell in their
collective memory. While they interact with “Arabs” everywhere they go
in their respective cities, it was surprising to them how my
Palestinians, such as my friend from Hebron, have never met ‘normal’
Israelis. His experience with Israelis have been unpleasant interactions
with soldiers or angry and violent, ideological settlers in Hebron even
mainstream Israeli society disapproves of due to their economic burden
on the state.
I don’t usually buy into conspiracy theories and I’m not saying this is
necessarily one, but a bigger picture of the occupation struck me during
my time up north. There is a mechanism of occupation - a divide and
rule, detach, distance and dehumanize strategy that is neither a
coincidence nor a result of the course of history. Palestinians are
divided amongst themselves, confined to small areas, dehumanized in
Israeli media, and kept at a distance from the average Israeli all
behind a wall that most Israelis do not bother to peek over.
As a result, at the societal level, the further away one goes from the
West Bank, the more distant and irrelevant the occupation becomes. Given
the political, economic and diplomatic power asymmetry between the two
sides, there’s nothing that would ‘bring home’ the suffering and
oppression of Palestinians to average Israelis to call for political
change. The occupation is different from the Vietnam prototype where
every family felt the cost of war. Even when the fact is that almost all
Israeli citizens serve in the military, the reality is that many do so
behind thick bullet proof glass, bullet proof vests, heavy machine guns
in hand and in situations that are less intense and political than they
are casual and social. Of course this is no excuse for the lack of
awareness or ignorance of Israeli society about what’s going on and what
their government does. Rather, it points out how interaction between
Palestinians and Israelis are in places and in ways that would reinforce
stereotypes and power imbalances between the two people at the
political but also personal level.
The lack of social interaction or citizen diplomacy therefore puts the
overall solution to the conflict in the hands of politicians who,
according to recent polls and analyses are lagging behind their citizens
in their will for peace. As the gap between the “us” and “them” gets
wider while giving a sense of peace (or at least coexistence in the
North for example) without a peace agreement, it hides the truth and
kisses justice good-bye cutting one of the building blocks of peace out
of the big picture. As a result, stability is conflated with peace and
it is used to justify maintaining the status quo in the pretext of
maintaining “peace”. But this is out of sight; hence it is out of mind
when one lives so far away.
Melkam Lidet is a Writer for the Media and Information
Department at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global
Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mid@miftah.org.
