To the People of Israel, to the People of Palestine

These have been fourteen of the worst months in the history of both of our people for the past 76 years. We have killed and wounded so many of each other that it is hard to imagine how any of us can ever overcome the pain and the trauma of this war. None of us are new to this, let’s face it, Jews and Palestinians have been killing each other over the land, that we both claim as our own, for more than 100 years. As national groups, we have been willing to fight, to die, and to kill over a territorial expression of our identity. We both, Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, claim that we take our national-ethnic-religious identity from this land and we give our identity to it. We claim that only our side has the right to national identity on this land. The map of this narrow land for Israelis and for Palestinians is almost identical and since the war began last October many of our young people adorn that map on a chain around their necks. From the River to the Sea is the same river and the same sea for seven million Israeli Jews and seven million Palestinian Arabs. And the land in-between the river and the sea is soaked with too much of the blood of both peoples. If there is any lesson to be learned from the past 14 months it is this: This must be the last Israeli-Palestinian war; we cannot continue doing this.

October 7, 2023 will be marked in the history of Israel and the Jewish people as the day of awakening from the (mis)conception that you can occupy and control another people for 56 years and expect to live in peace. It should be the wakeup call that you cannot put 2.3 million people under blockade living in abject poverty for 20 years and expect to have quiet. Eventually people rise up and say no more. No Israeli would ever agree to live as Israel has subjected the Palestinian people to live over decades of control, domination, discrimination, confiscation of land and dignity and denial of national rights. Yet Israel has believed for years that this must continue to be the policy of the State of Israel because if not, the Palestinians will rise up and kill us.

Palestinian resistance movements, including those motivated by distorted versions of Islam rose up and gained support amongst the Palestinian people initially out of rejection of the recognition of the right of the Jewish people to establish their state on the land that they believed was only theirs. This land that we share had a large Palestinian Arab majority prior to 1948. But Palestinian have to come to terms with the fact that Jews have been present in this land for thousands of years. The Holy Quran is a testimony to the Jewish presence in this land. With that understanding, Palestinians can easily remind their Jewish neighbors that they were never alone in this land. There have always been others in the land, and today the Palestinians are the others. There is no exclusive right of one of these two peoples to the land between the River and the Sea. Until we all absorb that basic truth, we will continue to hate each other and to kill each other.

We have lost too much of our humanity in this war between us. The Palestinian people, under the leadership of Hamas crossed red moral lines on October 7, 2023. Hamas and other Palestinian groups and non-affiliated individuals committed crimes against humanity and war crimes on October 7, 2023. Hamas has claimed that its actions were justified in order to free the Palestinian people from Israel’s occupation, instead they have subjected the Palestinian people with a catastrophe worse than the Nakba of 1948. The State of Israel, its leaders, commanders and soldiers have crossed moral red lines during the past 14 months. Since October 8, 2023, Israel has been committing crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza and in the West Bank claiming self-defense. It is very difficult for both sides to look in the mirror and grasp the reality of what we have been doing to each other. We both justify our actions because we claim that they are existential. The other side only understands that language of force, we say, and that is the only language we have been relying on for decades. Each side believes that the other side has proven over and over again that they are not prepared to treat us as equals and to live in peace with us. We say, they covet our land and believe that it belongs only to them and that the other side has no right to claim rights to this land. Whether we like it or not, in so many respects we are mirror images of each other.  

This war must be the last war. For at least the past two decades, a majority of Israelis and a majority of Palestinians have been saying: I want to live in peace, but they (pointing to the other side) do not. Both sides have had more than enough justifiable reasons to point to the lack of willingness of the other side to prove their lack of trust that the other side is willing to live in genuine peace. But how do we Israelis and Palestinians convince each other that we are prepared to live in peace? To do that, we need to begin by looking inward. We both need to understand that the path to peace go through the hearts and the minds of the other people on this land. Peace will not be imposed from the outside.  Peace will come about when both peoples recognize each other’s’ national existence and right to be here. Yes, Israelis want all 193 Member States of the United Nations to recognize the State of Israel (165 countries recognize Israel) and yes, Palestinians want all 193 Member States to recognize the State of Palestine (about 150 countries recognize Palestine today). But in reality, what is most important is that Israelis recognize the State of Palestine and Palestinians recognize the State of Israel. That is much more important and much more urgent than all of the other efforts to gain international recognition. When Israelis and Palestinians both recognize their mutual national existence, then the rest of the world will as well.  The adjustment that we need to make in our minds is that we are not each other’s enemy – rather our fear of each other is the enemy. We both need to address that fear within our minds that prevents us to turning the page on this conflict.

For this to happen we need people on both sides to stand up with courage to speak loudly the words of peace. I want to stop fighting you. I want to live in peace in this land. I recognize your legitimate right to be here. I don’t want to live behind walls and fences. I want security and I know that I will only have security when you also have security.  I want dignity, and I know that I will only have dignity (national and personal) when you also have dignity. I want political separation because I want to have a nation-state that represents my identity, but I am prepared for a minority population from the other national group to live in my state with full equality. I recognize that even after we partition this land into two states, we all have emotional and historic connection to all parts of the land. That is why I understand that peace between us Israelis and Palestinians must be a warm peace, with high levels of cooperation. Not like the peace between Israel and Egypt and Jordan. We share this land and we cannot separate as if we are on different planets. We need to stand up and also voice remorse and regret for the crimes that we have committed against each other. Even if we did not personally do it, it was done in our names and the way to break down the walls of suspicion and fear is through the expression of remorse, sorrow and eventually forgiveness.

When we begin to reach that level of consciousness, we will understand that we have to begin making peace by looking at what we teach our children. What we teach in our schools is the best reflection of what we value and hold dear to us. We do not teach peace; we do not even teach the possibility of peace. Let’s begin with the easy part of our education – languages. Hebrew and Arabic are sister languages – there is so much in common between the two.  All Israelis should be learning Arabic from grade one – written and spoken.  All Palestinians should be learning Hebrew from grade one.  Our studying each other’s language should not be “learning the language of the enemy” but rather learning the language of my neighbor. Then comes the more difficult part – changing what and how we teach about each other. There is no need to rewrite history at this point.  We have done horrible things to each other in this conflict and need to recognize that. But we need to begin to teach other about each other in a much more objective and open-minded way.  We need to remove the teaching of hate from our curricula and text books.  To be practical, we should agree on criteria for the evaluation of what we teach and then each side needs to undertake and in-depth internal study of their own educational systems. This is a decision that must be taken on the national level and it must be a sincere and serious exercise of self-examination. It must be done by both sides, but even if it begins with only one side, it is a step in the right direction and will have impact on the other side.

Lastly, we want to address the issue of leadership and political representation.  We do not today have leaders who will take us forward to peace. Netanyahu, Abbas and Hamas are all leaders of yesterday. They have failed their people in so many ways and have prevented us from living in peace. They all need to be pushed out of the present into the realm of history. We need leaders who have the ability and the vision to understand that our futures are tied to each other and that the only way to good secure life can be provided to our citizens is by making peace between the people of Israel and the people of Palestine. There are about 30% of the citizens on both sides who today will reject any peace deal between them. These are the fanatics, the radicals, the messianics, the jihadists, on both sides who reject any notion of sharing this land. We do not have the tools or the ability to convince them at this point. But there is a potential of about 70% on both sides who would be willing to make the compromises necessary to reach peace, IF they believed that the other side was sincere in its willingness to live in peace. We need new political leaders in order for this to happen. Where are those leaders? Who are those leaders?  We honestly don’t know at this time. But we know that if there a change on one of the sides in the right direction, it will have a deep and lasting impact on the other side. Change can begin on one side first.

Our challenge as citizens – Israelis and Palestinians – is to create the partnerships of belief and commitment to peace. We need to raise our voices together in unison with the common shared message and vision that it is our responsibility to demonstrate to those in doubt (who are the majority) that we all want basically the same thing. We want freedom, self-determination, dignity and security. We all want to ensure a good life for our families and opportunities for material prosperity, cultural wealth and the knowledge that our futures are secure. All of our worthy aspirations are only possible if they can be achieved by both peoples who share this land.

Gershon Baskin and Samer Sinijlawi have now founded the Israeli-Palestinian Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-States Solution