http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?id=52593&mador=4&datee=8/1/99
Ha'aretz, August 1, 1999
Pop in for a visit
By Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz
New government, new intentions. Here is some free
advice to ministers and policymakers. Pop in for a
visit with the Palestinians. Get in your Volvos
and take a 15-minute drive - an hour at most -
east or south of your offices. Go see the refugee
camps, the demolition of homes, the unemployment
and roadblocks and afterwards we'll talk. Talk to
the Palestinians you meet on the way - they will
probably be very courteous - and only afterwards
make final decisions on your positions. Open your
eyes, prick up your ears and for once listen to
the hardships of the other side. Any passerby you
happen to come across and any home you choose to
visit will tell you the same story. The gist of it
is the suffering of life under the occupation, the
economic situation, the harassment, the daily
humiliations, the son in jail, the nephew killed,
the cousin tortured, the brother-in-law who
left. While you have not been elected to represent
them or even to solve their problems, our problems
will not be solved as long as theirs are not. For
many years Israelis, leaders included, have not
stepped foot in the areas where the Palestinians
live under occupation. Moshe Dayan, the first of
the occupiers, used to visit with Palestinians, or
at least with certain circles. The tradition
continued for a while and then it was completely
halted. Israeli politicians cut off all contact
with the population living under occupation, as if
it had nothing to do with them. Palestinians were
left exclusively in the hands of the military
occupation apparatus - as biased, military and
one-sided as it might be. Meanwhile Israelis
stopped doing their shopping in the cities of the
West Bank and Palestinians stopped building
Israelis' homes, washing their dishes and cleaning
their streets. The separation materialized and
took shape. Perhaps this is how it should be.
At the same time, however, most Israelis haven't
got the slightest idea what a refugee camp looks
like or what the day or lifestyle of his or her
Palestinian counterpart looks like. The
Palestinians know a great deal more about us and
our lives than we know about theirs. This is how
it is in the world - the occupied always takes a
greater interest than the occupier. But if
information is power, then the lack of information
in the hands of Israeli politicians is a serious
weakness. The information the average Israeli
politician has about the Palestinians is limited
and indirect. It comes - if at all - exclusively
from intelligence and security agencies and from
the press, whose coverage of the lives of our
neighbors in the West Bank and Gaza is minimal.
This is insufficient. When did you last hear of an
Israeli minister visiting a Palestinian villager
or a Palestinian delegation to his office? There
is a serious water shortage in the territories, a
shortage that Israel played a major role in
creating. Has even one influential Israeli
politician seen the distress? Heard about it
firsthand? Visited a parched Palestinian village
and entered homes in which water from the faucets
flows once every two weeks for just a few hours?
The Shin Bet continues to use the same bad old
interrogation methods. Has an Israeli politician
met with a Palestinian who was interrogated to
hear what was done and to learn about the physical
and emotional scars that will stay with him
forever? Has any of Israel's policymakers ever
visited a home demolished by the Civil
Administration or met the new homeless people who
lived there? Might not this type of exposure do
something to change their positions?
Nava Barak visits women's health institutions and
homes for distressed youth in distant Washington,
but has never even entertained the notion of visiting
a similar Palestinian institution right next door.
Her husband, on the other hand, knows refugee
camps only from the vantage point of a protected,
reinforced army jeep, and then from the time our
jeeps still moved around in them.
I am not talking about humane gestures of sympathy
for human suffering, although such gestures may
also be very beneficial. Involved here is the
urgent need for the Israeli leadership, if not all
Israelis, to be exposed to the daily life of
Palestinians. For the police minister to hear
about his police officer's behavior from the
victims; for the agriculture minister to see with
his own eyes what thirst for water really is; for
the interior minister to meet face to face with
Palestinian families torn apart because of the
bureaucracy of his ministry; for the Education
minister to hear what it means to prevent students
from reaching their university; for the
transportation minister to hear what it means to
be a Palestinian driver or passenger in the land
of roadblocks and permits; for the religious
affairs minister to hear what it means to a Muslim
when he is prevented from praying in Jerusalem or
sees a mosque demolished in his village; for the
environmental affairs minister to see children
wallowing in sewage right next to their homes; and
for the prime minister and defense minister - who
once said that had he been born a Palestinian, he
would join a terror group - to be exposed to the
reality of life for those with whom he wants to
make peace. A government that has declared that it
is headed in the direction of peace must be
exposed to this depressing reality.
Israel bears a sizable portion of the responsibility
for this reality and that is where the future
lies. A thousand agreements or permanent
settlements will not help. If we do not know the
reality, we will never be able to change it
(c) copyright 1999 Ha'aretz. All Rights Reserved
