Peace Conference in Amman (III)

In this last part about the Peace Conference I want to talk about the most interesting part of it all. Amongst the participants we had a group of Palestinians and Israelis who usually meet. They were prisoners, people wounded from both sides… mainly people who without taking any specific political position have realized it is necessary to bring the other into the conversation and try to build something together. The group in question is called Wounded Xrossing Borders.

One of the most interesting testimonies is that given by Mohammed and Dudu. Mohammed is a Palestinian man on his early sixties who was detained 4 times and spent around 20 years in an Israeli prison. He explains how, as a prisoner, he discovered the concept of humanity and the value of life, as he had a lot of time to think. He realized the uselessness of war, killing and destruction, the stupidity of these in order to achieve any objective. Mohammed is imprisoned while his wife is pregnant and is never able to see his newly-born daughter. This obviously affects him and makes him think about what kind of future they are actually creating for her. Therefore he considers dialogue as the only way to solve the conflict, to achieve real solutions and some better future for his daughter.

The other speaker, Dudu, is an Israeli citizen who participated in the 1973 war. He explains how horrible war is. You can see dead people, injured people, ambulances, helicopters. The last thing you want to do is continue forward. However, once you’re in the battle you change all your feelings, you start to walk on automatic pilot. Once you’ve been at war you become mentally injured. Everyone who has been to war becomes mentally injured, he explains.

Dudu worked as a prison warden in an Israeli prison for many years, there he met Mohammed. During his stay there his daughter was born. He felt happy and heard that a prisoner’s daughter had just been born too and tells the prisoner he can have the visit of his wife and daughter, in order to see her for the first time.

When Dudu tells Mohammed, he rejects immediately and drastically. Such a thing cannot happen in prison. Everyone is the same and there cannot be any exception between the prisoners. Solidarity and union between the prisoners is the only thing they have left, Mohammed explains. Dudu explains how amazed he felt after having this answer. The night he explained the story to his wife, he says, he knew there were at least two women crying about it.

Dudu also lost five family members during the Second Intifada. Three of them were close relatives. He felt and saw grief everywhere every day. He could not stand it anymore and started to think about the necessity to talk to the other side.

Mohammed thinks Dudu was just “following orders”. He explains how for him between them “there were no differences”. Therefore they became part of this dialogue group and have toured many places for workshops and Peace conferences. Dudu insists several times to all the attendants of the conference on the idea that if they, prisoner and warden, eternal enemies before, are able to sit and talk together, face to face, dialogue is possible with anyone.

The group has other Palestinian ex-prisoners and refugees and Israelis that are also activists in other Israeli Peace Organizations. At night, I talk to some of them at a shisha bar. They tell me how their aim for dialogue and their peace activism is not related to their political positions. Some of them, they tell me, vote for right-wing parties and could be considered conservative. Some others are a bit more progressive and left-wing.

I ask them about their position on the possible solution, bearing in mind that they know Palestinians and have confidence in them and the possibility of a reconciliation. They tell me there cannot be other solution but a Two-State Solution. Why? I ask them, wouldn’t it make more sense to have a full democracy in the whole region? Oh, no! They answer, impossible! If we apply a One-State Solution we’ll definitely end up like the Balkans, killing each other till extermination, and we Jews, are the minority here, we would end up like the Bosnians.

The words of these people really make me wonder about this. They seem so convinced that the worst would happen that they sound really convincing, and I really have no arguments to say they are wrong. The Jews would be indeed the minority in a big state for the whole region, and they are really surrounded by a big majority of Arab countries. However, I would like to think, as Dudu said, that reconciliation is possible and it would be possible to end with ethnic hatred in the region, because this hatred is modern fabrication. I would like to think that once the basic needs of both populations were met, once no huge structural and direct violence was present and with an effective program of Conflict Resolution, Post-Conflict Resolution and Education for Peace, the current cultural violence would eventually fade away. However, nowadays, I really have no definite answers and arguments to counter the advocates of the Two-State Solution, especially those that have already been victims of violence. Probably another interesting option might be the confederation of the two states, like some people already have pointed out, that might eventually be turned into the same country (allowing a common market, free movement of its citizens, etc...).

What I can conclude is there will not be any possible solution for this conflict unless confidence between the parts is regained. No bridges are built with a Two-State Solution or a One-State Solution if the solution comes aseptically without any further program to be applied in the region. In some way, political decisions might end with the suffering and violence both parts but none of this will be indeed effective unless real dialogue takes place in order to overcome the huge fear and hatred still present in the region.