Taking Issue: Can Israel, Palestine beat deadline for peace?

GEOFF SIFRIN

When the Rosh Hashanah sermon of a senior Johannesburg rabbi praised Shimon Peres for successfully mediating in his lifetime between the poles of political realism involving military force, and resolute belief in Israeli-Palestinian peace, he mentioned that it is 40 years since the Entebbe raid where Israeli commandos rescued hostages held by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine at Uganda’s airport.

What was not mentioned is that in nine months’ time it will be 50 years – half a century! – that Israelis and Palestinians have existed in an occupier/occupied relationship in the West Bank and Gaza.

Several generations of Palestinians and Israelis have lived their entire lives in this reality, for which both sides are blamable. Ending this deadlock by creating an independent Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel is a dream Peres did not see fulfilled, despite tireless engagement with leaders in the conflict – Israelis, Palestinians, Americans, Arabs and others.

In the 1967 Six Day War Jewish volunteers from all over the world – including South Africa – flocked to Israel to help defeat Arab countries’ attempt to destroy it. Many Jewish youth came from movements like Habonim, Betar and Bnei Akiva. The war resulted in Israel taking over the West Bank and Gaza from Jordanian and Egyptian control respectively.

What Israel and these Diaspora Jewish volunteers never envisaged is that 50 years after that war, there would still be no genuine peace with the Palestinians and Arab world. Even Egypt, after nearly four decades of formal peace, still harbours in its society a deep hatred for Israel.

In 2003 Peres told a Jewish audience at Johannesburg’s Linder Auditorium that when he was younger, he used to believe Israel would end its problems with the Palestinians and Arab world long before South Africa solved its problems – that the South African situation under apartheid was so intractable, it could only result in an extended racial bloodbath into the foreseeable future.

Contrary to his view, South Africa is now a stable democracy, notwithstanding rumblings making it wobble ominously from time to time. Despite the ineptitude and corruption characterising its first two decades of democracy, basic democratic institutions are intact, such as an independent judiciary and free press.

Student protests currently taking place at universities for fee-free higher education, are expressions of these democratic liberties, even if disturbing, violent excesses sometimes occur from both sides, including students and law enforcement agencies.

Yet the Israeli-Palestinian conflict rages on, with peace-dreamers seeming like Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill which always falls down again. Most countries and people accept that the only viable answer is the two-state solution – including South Africa, which maintains full diplomatic relations with Israel and co-operation with its ambassador, as well as welcoming a Palestinian ambassador.

Going back to the rabbi’s sermon and Rosh Hashanah’s message of hope: Is it possible that before reaching a full half-century of Israeli control over another people – the Palestinians – there can be a turn towards a new reality? That rabbis will celebrate not only “miraculous” events like the Six Day War victory and the Entebbe rescue, but also an end to the corrosive yoke both sides carry by being occupier and occupied?

Given current world events, it is clear progress does not depend only on Israelis and Palestinians. The Syrian mayhem, rise of ISIS-inspired terrorism, buffoon Donald Trump potentially becoming leader of the world’s most powerful nation, and other bizarre developments are just some.

But if rabbis and other religious leaders can influence goals their followers strive for, Israeli-Palestinian peace before the half-century is reached should be one of them.

Read Geoff Sifrin’s regular columns on his blog sifrintakingissue.wordpress.com