It is wrong and it must end

Simply put, this is wrong and must end. Some honest and direct questions: How can we look at our Palestinian neighbors and not feel the immorality of our 55-year domination over them? How can we Jews, who have suffered more persecution than anyone else in history, not feel their pain at their suffering at our hands? How can we, who have just celebrated the festival of freedom and soon will celebrate the establishment of our state as a nation, not understand the burning desire of millions of Palestinians for freedom and independence? How can we not sympathize with their passion and willingness to fight and fight for freedom and independence against those who associate them with the occupation as we did?
Those of us who have worked for peace across lines of conflict for decades have too often centered our approaches and arguments on interests, on what would be beneficial to Israel and the Palestinians. We have calculated the economic costs of occupation and what profits can be made from peace. We avoided talking about ethics. We were told, and we said to ourselves, that we would be called "yafe nefesh" (good spirits - quasi-curse term in Hebrew). This Easter, hours before Passover, I wrote: How do we celebrate freedom while our oppression against the Palestinians continues with unrestrained brutality? Al-Aqsa Mosque and Al-Qibli Mosque, which the Israeli police brutally attacked and raided to empty it, because many Muslims during the month of Ramadan want to sleep in it and continue praying until dawn prayer? This is a common custom in the Islamic world, especially in Al-Aqsa. Early in the morning, the Israeli police came again and brute force pushed the Muslims who were praying on prayer rugs while walking on them in their military boots violating their seclusion with brute force. How can we as Jews look at this scene and not feel sympathy for the Muslims who are praying? Israeli forces cleared the mosque and forced the worshipers to make way for the Jews who were invited by the criminal Minister of State Security Itamar Ben Gvir to climb up the Temple Mount in groups in a show of force - who is the owner of this holy site.

I am disgusted by our brutality throughout the Occupied Territories. I am ashamed of 55 years of occupation. I have witnessed with my own eyes and heard from hundreds of my Palestinian friends and colleagues about the shameful behavior of our forces and Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians. No moral person can look at what we Israelis do to the Palestinian people and not feel moral outrage. It does not matter that the Palestinians also bear responsibility for their plight. It does not change my moral outrage that they are using violence against us. I don't buy the false myth that they learned to hate Jews with their mother's milk. Their incitement against us is a direct result of the conditions in which they are forced to live under a brutal occupation. Their struggle for freedom and liberation is no less just than our "struggle for freedom and liberation." At Easter we sing "We were slaves and now we are free." But we are not free. We are slaves to the occupation we maintain and feel we have no choice because we tell ourselves we have no partners.

The fervor of Israeli settler movements fully supported by nearly every government in Israel since 1967 has created an unequal binational reality akin to the apartheid we live in today. This is a fact and peacemaking based on partition seems less likely than ever. I do not know how to establish a Palestinian state based on the lines of June 4, 1967, even with an equal exchange of land to enable about 80% of the settlers to live under Israeli sovereignty. I am quite sure of this - there is no possible solution to this conflict based on hard separation. Whoever dreams of a unilateral retreat behind the wall forgets about it. Gaza should be an example of what happens when we do this. At the time of the 2005 Gaza disengagement, there was an opportunity to connect with Mahmoud Abbas who had just won a major victory in the Palestinian elections on the ticket of non-violence and opposition to the armed second intifada. Prime Minister Sharon rejected this possibility, because he knew that if he negotiated anything with Abbas over Gaza, the next step would be negotiating a Palestinian state in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as well. So we withdrew unilaterally from Gaza, locked the gate, and threw away the key. Then Hamas declared victory because it claimed that it was through "resistance" that the Jews escaped. The Palestinian public accepted this narrative and saw Abbas's narrative of moderation and negotiations as a broken strategy that only led to more Israeli settlements on stolen Palestinian land.

Engaging on the path of a true peace process is the only way forward to achieve security and peace for both peoples living on earth. As long as the occupation continues with settler violence and settlement building, there will be violence against Israelis. The occupation is violence and can even be called state-sponsored terrorism against the Palestinian people. There are no easy solutions and peace may be a long way off with more innocent victims along the way, but there is no chance of getting there without serious engagement. Serious engagement begins with leaders who, instead of repeating every day that we have no one to talk to, say that our intention is to make peace and end Israel's control over the Palestinian people. Then begins the long and difficult process of communication and speaking, coupled with actions on the ground that end provocations, freeze settlement construction and also enable the Palestinian economy in Gaza to open up to the world and improve people's lives.