Walk through Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, and you’ll see the reason for Israel’s continued existence and its ferocious protection of its nationhood. Talk to a Palestinian and you’ll understand the rage of feeling constantly humiliated and harassed, the pain of having no nation and no real home.
Both Israelis and Palestinians live with harrowing histories and constant fear, anger and bitterness. While many world leaders have sought peace here, all have failed, partly because of the intense distrust and hatred. Nonetheless, it is long past time to try again.
A couple of stories may illustrate the difficulties. Yad Vashem documents the rise of Hitler and the Nazis’ degradation and slaughter of European Jews. It provides some sense of the immensity of the Holocaust and the utter despair it brought, as too many in the world stood silently by.
Watch the videos of Holocaust survivors talking about fighting for life in the hope that someone – anyone – from their families might be alive when the horror finally ended. When that hope proved vain, many survivors died. For many of those who lived, Israel provided the sanctuary they so desperately needed.
But their new home has been menaced since its first day. Threats continue to come, promising Israel’s destruction. Brutal terror attacks are a continual fear, just because Israel exists. No wonder Israelis defend their country with such passion.
Dalia is a young Palestinian friend who earned her MBA at the University of Colorado at Denver. Returning home to Ramallah, she found a job that requires travel between Ramallah and Tel Aviv. She has a pass that allows her to travel throughout the West Bank and Israel. But it does not save her from incessant and demeaning harassment and delays as she tries to make her way from home to work.
We met Dalia in Jordan recently. It had taken her eight hours to make the one-hour trip from Ramallah to Amman because, as a Palestinian, she had been stopped at five checkpoints where Israeli soldiers searched her and her luggage thoroughly, sometimes making her wait while they played games.
We planned to meet Dalia in Jerusalem several days later to visit Yad Vashem together. She never showed up. She e-mailed us later that her bus had been stopped at the Jordan/Palestine border and forced to wait two days to cross simply because the Israeli border guards decided to stop clearing Palestinian buses for 48 hours. “They bomb our camps and bulldoze our homes,” she said. “They don’t care who dies. They treat us like vermin.”
In Jerusalem, I asked an Arab shop owner a political question. He erupted into a two-hour lecture about being Arab in Israel. He talked about the Israeli guides who stand outside his shop and tell tourists not to buy there. He told us about the wall that Israel is building to keep out terrorists and about his uncle’s ancient and beloved olive trees, his livelihood, that had been bulldozed to make way for the wall.
“In 1948,” he said, “the Jews drove my family from our home and our land and took it for themselves. They hate us,” he said. “They try to destroy us and our businesses and drive us out. They will never agree to peace.”
Israelis cannot be safe and Arabs and Palestinians cannot live productive lives until there is peace in the region. If President Bush wants to rebuild faith in the U.S. power to do good in the world, this would be a good place to start.
Gail Schoettler (gailschoettler@email.msn.com) is a former U.S. ambassador and Colorado lieutenant governor and treasurer.
