WARRING STORIES : Israeli settlers & the Palestinians.

A recent appeal from the General Union of Palestinian Women relates the following story: "The latest victims of settler aggression have, unfortunately, fallen on the eve of the blessed Eid Al Adha (the Feast of Sacrifice). Ubai Darraj, yet another child of nine, had just had a haircut in excited anticipation of the Eid, when his life was terminated by gunfire from the settlement of Pisgot built on the lands of El Bireh, as he was helping his father paint their new home. Aida Fteiha had just finished her Eid shopping and was rushing back home to bring a measure of joy to her three young children when she was fatally shot by a bullet from that same settlement."

Ask nearly any Israeli about such things, and you will be told that this must have been in response to fire from the Palestinian village; Israeli settlers don't just shoot people randomly. Yet the fact is that they do. The tracer shells aimed at Beit Jala on the evening I arrived at Tantur from Cairo, which killed a young man in his room, were not provoked but were reportedly fired when a "suspicious group" was spotted from the artillery station across the vast wadi in the urban settlement of Gilo. Victims of settler vigilante activity, plus those felled by lethal fire from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), have been assiduously catalogued by the Palestinian Committee on Human Rights. If a peace and reconciliation commission should ever be inaugurated, all the relevant data will be available. But, of course, each of these lives is far more than a bit of data, and the greatest tragedy in the current "situation" (the going euphemism for all that is taking place) is that few friendships span these two societies so that stereotypes prevail. In fact, two distinct stories of recent events are emerging, each of which tends to cancel the other.

Israelis who supported the "peace process" feel massively "let down" by the Palestinian leadership, symbolized by Arafat, and many of them are now paralyzed by their society's pervasive fear. (The ingrained habit of carrying arms may project a macho image; yet, in fact, it betrays a massive fear.) Self-examination is replaced by Arab-bashing, with a fixation on Arafat: "Barak gave them the best they could hope for; indeed, he went far beyond the Israeli consensus, and they turned it down! How can there be any progress?"

These are the words of someone who longed for peace, who realized that Israel could not retain its own integrity by continuing the occupation, but who became deeply disillusioned when Arafat would not "play ball." The next step is to attribute venal motives to the entire Palestinian leadership, insisting that they organized the al-Aqsa intifada in advance while Ariel Sharon's provocative incursion of the Haram al-Sharif on September 29, 2000 is defended as "his right." And then the refrain: "Arabs can't be trusted; these reports you cite are propaganda; not even settlers would (or could) act with such impunity."

Beyond the exculpatory character of this account lies a presumption yet more insidious. The entire peace process is innocently regarded as one in which Israeli generosity is met with Palestinian ingratitude: "We gave them the best they could ever expect, and they rejected it!" There is little sense that, despite its overwhelming power, Israel alone cannot set the rules; negotiations are not simply horse-trading. Palestinians are quick to detect that premise which seems to escape Israelis (yet, Henry Siegman exposed it astutely in his comment in the New York Review of Books, February 8).

The Palestinians' story does not contradict my Israeli friend, but rather calls attention to facts that have impinged on Palestinian lives since Oslo, when they were praised for entering the arena of horse-trading. With a few prominent naysayers, most of us were thrilled that the Palestinians seemed willing to swap land for peace. Yet our endemic Western presumption has always been that half a loaf will gradually yield more. The seven years since Oslo told the Palestinian public otherwise: they had been invited to play on Israel's turf, to exchange freedom from the patrols of the IDF in their cities for yet more settler encroachment into the territory they anticipated recovering on the basis of international law. Moreover, playing ball on terms set by Israel and the United States hardly benefited the average Palestinian. Rather, principals in the Palestinian Authority profited. As a consequence, the intifada was directed as much against the Palestinians' own leadership as releasing pent-up frustration against continual humiliation at the increasing number of Israeli checkpoints.

Descriptions cannot serve as justifications, of course, yet the descriptions proper to each side in any conflict must be heard. Here lies a further source of frustration for Palestinians: the overwhelming bias of reporting. We read about Israelis killed by Palestinian mobs, yet are seldom, if ever, given the scantiest biography of a defenseless villager executed by settler vigilantes. A recent Palestinian lament is especially poignant:

   Is not the Israeli occupation destroying every aspect of Palestinian life
   in this so-called Holy Land--holy to the three monotheistic faiths? When
   will the U.S. administration and the British government and their allies
   have the courage to force Israel to end this brutal and destructive
   occupation? The civilized State of Israel, with its sophisticated and
   progressive machinery and supposedly democratic institutions, has to be
   challenged by the world community for its actions as an occupying force.
   When Palestinian houses are demolished, their olive groves bulldozed, and
   trenches dug in roads to cut off Palestinian areas from each other, such
   actions are violence, not civilization or democracy. Israel should not be
   allowed to justify all its actions because of its security paranoia. The
   security of Israel will only be guaranteed once it abides by the United
   Nations resolutions, and ends its occupation of the Palestinian
   Territories.

What is being exposed in Israel today is a society suffering from having to cover up two decisive contradictions woven into its very fabric: one in 1948 and the other in 1967. Palestinian insistence on the "right of return" (which Clinton proposed they simply renounce) is less a threat to flood Israeli society with returnees--for few Palestinians would feel at home there--than a way to register a profound need to hear Israel say officially what even its own historians have recently underscored: that the homecoming of one people meant the home-wrecking of another. Such a public acknowledgment would doubtless entail some form of compensation, but it would also clear the Israeli conscience. The experience of nations that have managed such a recognition is that life can go on, repentant, whereas lack of repentance reinforces a false consciousness that blames the other as it lashes out at them.

As for 1967, it was Yesheyahu Leibowitz, the polymath turned prophet, who insisted that Israel give back the territories won in the war, for a Jewish state (in the normative sense of "Jewish") could hardly rule over unwilling subjects who had no hope of citizenship. Many Israelis are willing to acknowledge this standing contradiction in their polity, as it requires their young men and women to enforce the occupation. The ideological settlers resist it totally, insisting that God gave it all to the Jews.

The result, however, is a situation in which the attitudes of a largely discredited minority, the ideological settlers, seem to be determining Israeli politics, notably by reinforcing an internal closure on Palestinian villages--lest the villagers come in contact with settlers--which is strangling that fledgling society by denying its citizens access to work, and thus to food, as well as medical assistance. Moreover, as the stories of aggressive mistreatment at the multifarious checkpoints multiply, one can hardly imagine how this is affecting the young Israeli men and women who are called upon to enforce so draconian a policy.

The Sharon government is learning how to tell the outside world that it is "letting up on the pressure" while continuing to deny the Palestinians access to work. Our only hope is that the message will get out, as it often has, despite media bias. Here the Internet helps, as those receiving messages from the Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron can testify. While the saddest indicator of the distance between these two societies is the paucity of friendships that span their borders, that fact also suggests where NGOs, synagogues, churches, and mosques can fruitfully renew their efforts.

David B. Burrell, C.S.C., is the Hesburgh Professor of Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He writes from the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem.