An open letter to Palestinians: You can break this cycle

This is an open letter to Palestinian readers.  I already know that I will be attacked and criticized with passion for what I am writing.   I have been engaged in bridging between Israelis and Palestinians for 46 years, and believe me, I have heard it all.   I remain dedicated to the basic principles on which I believe that peace can be made between the two peoples who live on the land between the River and the Sea.  I note here at the beginning that over all of these years while Israelis have spoken mostly about peace, Palestinians have spoken about ending the occupation, freedom, equality and dignity. Israelis and Palestinians don’t speak on the same frequencies and of course there is no symmetry between them. Israel is a strong state established 76 years ago recognized by about 165 countries in the world and having economic and security ties with even more. Israeli is a challenged democracy, but at least until now, still a democracy. Israel occupies Palestine with a harsh military occupation.

Palestine is not a fully recognized state. It has a divided political leadership for 17 years. Palestine has a weak economy largely limited by Israeli restrictions.  Palestinian lands are confiscated by Israel to build illegal Israeli settlements. Thousands of Palestinians are imprisoned by Israel in Israeli jails.  Palestine lacks democracy and has no accountable government. To put it bluntly, Israel is strong, Palestine is weak.

Throughout the 46 years that I have been working across the conflict lines, I have heard from Palestinians that because Israel is the occupier and because Israel is strong, it needs to take the first step towards the Palestinians. This is a very valid argument and, in the world, where everything that happens is based on what is right, I would agree. But that it not the way the world works and that has not happened and I would be willing to wager that it will not happen – especially after October 7.

The Gaza war is the worst of all of the Israeli-Palestinian wars. More people have suffered, have been killed, and home destroyed than ever before.  This war must be the last Israeli-Palestinian war.  We cannot allow this conflict to continue. I fully recognize that there are more justified reason to hate the other side than ever before.   There is more anger and more hate than we have ever seen.  The supporters of peace on both sides is probably at a new low point. There are almost no leaders in Israel or Palestine who even dare to speak about peace, or ending the occupation or any kind of positive future.  I note, that there are almost no people on both sides that I would even call leaders.

Change happens when new voices appear and break the sound barrier by saying things that have not been said in the past. Nelson Mandela cracked the core of Apartheid by stating that he was not seeking revenge, that in the new South Africa whites and blacks would live together with security and dignity. Nelson Mandela was victorious because he did not see the white South Africans as his enemy. Mandela understood that the fear inside of White South Africans was the enemy and that to beat that fear he had to speak to the inner heart of white South Africans. The same is true here in Palestine/Israel.  Israelis know that there are seven million Palestinians living on the land. They know that the Palestinian people are not going to leave (even though there are Jewish Israeli extremists, some of them in the government who have plans to make this happen). The overwhelming number of Israelis feel trapped in a reality that they do not want. Israelis don’t want to live in fear of their Palestinian neighbors. But October 7 increased their fear, with good reason, to heights that make the imagination of ever living in peace seem like science fiction.

Any reasonable Israeli knows that the lives of Palestinians is bad. Many of them know that Israel is a major cause for the hard lives that Palestinians live. Many may even recognize that the root cause of our reality is the occupation. But very few Israelis believe that Palestinians are truly prepared to live in peace next to Israel.   Most Israelis truly believe that the ultimate goal of all Palestinians is to destroy Israel, not only Hamas, but all Palestinians. When Israelis who are willing to listen to Palestinians, more often than not, what they hear is the narrative of victimhood. They also hear from Palestinians that Israel is the victimizer. At the same time Israelis feels themselves to be the victims and that Palestinians who sanctify death, not life, are the victimizers. There is a very clear and present competition of victimhood. This common narrative has been going on for more than 76 years and its only achievement is the continuation and the escalation of the conflict.

How are we going to break out of this horrible cycle?  I believe that what could break the cycle is clear, coherent, rational, compelling and convincing Palestinian voices speaking peace. Again, I repeat, yes in an ideal world it should come from the stronger side. But we are very far from living in an ideal world. I know some Palestinians who speak out loud and clear. They say without reservation that the atrocities of Hamas on October 7 were done in their name too and they take responsibility for it. They speak about the moral red line that has been crossed and they remind Israelis that Israel has also crossed too many moral red lines in this conflict. They say to Israelis that they as Muslims have to recognize that Jews have always been in this land and that Jewish history, memory and religion are attached to this land between the River and the Sea. But they also remind the Israelis that Jews were never here alone – there were always others living in the land and today those others are the Palestinians. These people with courage and honesty say that we Palestinians have never had the leadership that we need and in the past 100 years we have basically had three unworthy leaders who have failed to bring us independence, peace and dignity – Hajj Amin al Husseini, Yasser Arafat, and Mahmoud Abbas. They say we need new, younger, leadership which is not corrupt, believes in democracy and freedom and speaks the language of peace.

I know that these voices exist in Palestine. I have heard people who say clearly and understand in their hearts that Israel will never have security unless Palestinians have freedom and dignity and that Palestine will never have freedom and dignity unless Israel has security. These people speak to the hearts of Israelis and say we recognize the suffering of the Jewish people. We understand that traumas that Jews have experienced throughout the ages, including and especially during the holocaust. We do not seek to kill the Jews or to destroy Israel.  We seek to be free from Israel’s occupation and to build our own country with honor and dignity – next to Israel, not in place of Israel.  These Palestinian voices would be very wise to say that they take responsibility for the horrors of October 7 and that diminishing Hamas and removing its weapons is a threat to Palestinian plans for freedom and dignity and therefore, Hamas must be confronted and removed from power. They must say that in a Palestinian state there can only be one legitimate political authority that has a monopoly on the use of force – that is the legitimate government.  They must say, as the Palestinian Declaration of Independence (November 15, 1988) says: “The State of Palestineis to be a peace-loving state, in adherence to the principles of peaceful co-existence. It will join with all states and peoples in order to assure a permanent peace based upon justice and the respect of rights so that humanity's potential for well-being may be assured, an earnest competition for excellence be maintained, and in which confidence in the future will eliminate fear for those who are just and for whom justice is the only recourse.”

Those inspiring words of Mahmoud Darwish should be the north star for Palestinians representing a new generation of people who will not forget the past, but will have one eye focused on the future with clarity of purpose and a moral code of justice and a keen sense of reality knowing that in order to achieve the goal of freedom and dignity, it is not enough to be right, you also have to be smart.