By Seth Freedman
November 19, 2007 7:00 AM
Guardian
When I first moved to this country, I was prepared to play my part by enlisting in the IDF and serving in the West Bank. While there, I saw for myself the effect my mere uniformed presence had on the Palestinians I encountered on a daily basis. Every interaction took place with me holding all the cards - it was me with the loaded gun in my hands; it was me barking instructions to "stop or I'll shoot", "lift up your shirt", "don't come another step closer"; it was me playing with my quarry as though they were puppets on the end of short, taut strings.
However, I still believed that we "did what we had to do", since it was a case of us or them, and we could never ease up in our actions for fear that the next Palestinian we encountered was the one with a bomb strapped to his chest. And so it continued, bursting into buildings to round up the residents and lock them in their own basement, so that we could take over the house and grab a few hours' sleep in the middle of a mission - and all perfectly acceptable in the context of war.
But that was when I saw the wide, silent eyes of the families' children as we screamed at their father - their hero, their protector - and wrested from him the reins of power inside his own house. And that's when it started to dawn on me just what kind of effect our actions were having on the next generation, who were guaranteed to end up hating us when all they saw was us herding them like cattle and imposing our will on them through the sights of our guns.
Once I left the army, my forays into the West Bank were on more equal terms, as I sought to meet the very people whose towns I'd previously patrolled, to hear their stories about life under military rule. From Jenin to Bethlehem to Ramallah and beyond, the extent of the suffering and the depth of the torment was exposed to me time and again. There was no doubt in my mind that our mere presence in their daily routines was twisting the knife every time they encountered a soldier - and breeding extremism and radicalism all the while.
The unspoken truth that every Israeli knows, uncomfortable as it may be to admit, is that occupation breeds terror. Every incursion, every raid, every curfew and collective punishment, drives the moderates into the welcoming arms of the militants, who promise to return their honour and their wounded pride by fighting the oppressors' fire with fire of their own. And that fact alone should be enough to shake Israelis awake and realise that the occupation has to end, as much for our own security as for the sake of the Palestinians that we're subjugating.
Even those who only care about the safety of the Israeli people, and to hell with the Palestinians, should be backing the withdrawal of troops to the Green Line. They should know that the labyrinthine network of checkpoints is not actually making them safer, but is there just to make the Palestinians' lives a misery, thus endangering Israeli lives further in the end. And they should recognise that while Israel's presence continues to fester in the Palestinian territories like an open sore, there is little to no chance that the Palestinians will seek rapprochement and dialogue with their neighbours.
And that means that any coexistence projects - such as those promoted by OneVoice, the Clubhouse network, and so on - are doomed to fail while the occupiers refuse to acknowledge the plight of the occupied. Israel has the upper hand whichever way you look at it, and to treat the situation as somehow balanced is to overlook totally the sheer injustice of it all.
Of course, the Israelis have suffered decades of terrorism at the hands of extremist Palestinian groups, and as such have every right to demand their government protects them from similar atrocities in the future. But, for all that Israelis have had it bad, they haven't seen every facet of their lives systematically destroyed at the hands of an uncaring occupying force. They haven't seen their economy run into the ground by crippling border closures and sanctions, they haven't been denied freedom of movement between their homes and farmlands, and they haven't had to beg soldiers to let their wives through checkpoints in order to give birth in hospital.
At the same time, the settlements are as much of a problem to a viable Palestinian state as anything, thanks to the watertight security their presence demands from the army, restricting Palestinian movement and cutting the West Bank into tiny ribbon-like strips. As one Palestinian said, in Emma Williams' essential book on the region, "thanks to the settlers and their infrastructure, we're locked so tight into the State of Israel we're like a bug in concrete."
But still the expansion continues, and still the stranglehold on the Palestinians persists. While the Israeli public stays silent, while their taxes swell the government's coffers, they are tacitly aiding and abetting slow torture on a national scale. On top of the sporadic killing that the occupation inevitably causes, the killing of an entire people's hopes and dreams takes place 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
And it has to stop. Even though it's no doubt too late to pull many of the current generation back from the brink of hate and enmity, there's still time to ensure that today's resentment doesn't have to be instilled into the children of tomorrow. Playing the "fighting terror" card might win Knesset votes, but it doesn't push things forward nor work out how to pave the way towards long-lasting future peace.
Israel must leave the territories, and they must do it soon - whether accompanied by concessions on the Palestinian side or not. The occupation is illegal, it is abhorrent, and it is utterly counterproductive if its aim is to bring security to Israelis.
Anyone who ventures into the Palestinian towns and cities, who witnesses the devastation for themselves and hears the tragic tales from the horse's mouth, knows this. And anyone who prefers to cover their ears or avert their eyes is only doing damage to both sides in the long run.
Israel will never have peace whilst it crushes Palestinian aspirations - and both sides deserve far better lives than those they are being forced to endure at present.
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