Sixty years of Nakba, 60 years of nothing

n a nation as coiled and embroiled as this, with a language fraught and zip-filed as the bible, it’s only fitting that a single daily newspaper headline will often say more than the thousands of words that follow.

So it was, that on the day before Israel was to celebrate its independence, Maariv’s banner read, simply, “60 Years of Bereavement.”

In a narrow sense, the headline, stark white on a field of black, marked Israel’s memorial day for its war dead and its victims of terrorism.

At the same time, the brief headline may have said more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - and about Israelis themselves, and Palestinians as well - than all of this week’s floodtide of 60th anniversary punditry put together.

They are filled with dread here, these people, my friends, the Israelis and the Palestinians both. Part of the dread is the realization that, no matter what direction the conflict takes, the result will in no way justify the violent deaths since 1948 of more than 24,000 Israelis and uncounted thousands of Palestinians.

If we look back 10 years, to Israel’s 50th Independence Day, we see a time of much greater hope. Despite widespread dissatisfaction with then-leaders Benjamin Netanyahu and Yasser Arafat, there was a sense on both sides that the peace process was irreversible.

Since then, we’ve grown up. A decade of collapsed negotiations and inconclusive fighting has left us at a desolate emotional ground zero. First we lost our belief in the power of peace to solve our problems. Then we lost our faith in the power of war to do the same. Israelis and Palestinians both, we are in a state of unaccustomed loss of ideals. Revolution after revolution has betrayed us, divided us, failed us. Marxism, religious fundamentalism, nationalism, nothing has worked.

Now, after 60 years, we are at our proudest when we have nothing to offer. All we have left, we think on both sides, is the little we have left. We can’t give in anymore. We can’t give up any more. All we have left to offer is nothing.

We have confused manhood, self-worth, true independence, with the doctrine of Just Say No. No to recognition of the other. No to territorial compromise over Jerusalem. No to territorial compromise over the Holy Land. No to discussion of shared sovereignty of sacred shrines. No to compromise, even if only verbal, over return of refugees.

Both sides have their monsters, who see themselves as the keepers of the holy flame, ready to bring down and/or do violence to anyone on their own side who dares to work for peace.

Both sides have their diaspora, with its armchair martyrs and La-Z-Boy commandos, its online ideologue and its Talkback Cato the Elder.

We have done iniquity to one another and felt only victimhood. We do it still. Every single one of us, on both sides, suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Too many of us cause it as well.

We have seen that if the first casualty of war is truth, the second will surely be compassion.

We have seen that humans - or we, at any rate - have an innate need for revenge. We have also seen that vengeance does absolutely no good.

If we look back 60 years, and look closely, we will see that what happened in 1948 was a tragedy, a disaster, a Nakba, for both sides. The Palestinians who lost their homes and their dreams decreed that there would be no peace, no assured future for these newly decreed people, these Israelis, one out of every hundred of whom lost their lives in that war.

Today, we - Palestinian and Israeli both - look into the future, and see nothing. We are blinded by the enormity of our bereavement. We are unable to look into each other’s eyes with anything other than pain. Even the extremists among us are beginning to wonder about how their messianic visions have played out. All of us have been betrayed by some one on our own side.

Paradoxically, though, there may be something in all of this that promotes healing. Psychologists tell us that coping skills which enable children to survive horrific childhoods, may turn disastrously self-destructive if carried into adulthood. Perhaps we need to have our habits, comforting illusions, conforting misconceptions about the evil of our enemies, taken from us by force. Or by force of disillusionment.

There may be something healthy in the sense that the past 60 years themselves have betrayed us. Maybe that’s how a people weans itself from its illusions. Maybe that’s how a people begins to have self-awareness. Maybe that’s how a people finally, perhaps just before it’s too late, grows up.

Ref: Haartez