This guest post by Stephen Tobias & Alice Webber is part of a series of posts by participants in NIF’s 2014 Study Tour.
Shabbat morning in Jerusalem began with a sumptuous cold breakfast in the hotel dining room. At 10:30, half a dozen of us assembled to follow Itzik in a 4-hour tour of the Old City. We covered Jewish, Christian and Muslim Quarters (3 of the 4, Armenian quarter being closed to visitors, as usual). We viewed prayer at the Western Wall, saw the small new platform at Robinson’s Arch, and approached an entrance open only to Muslims for an unusual close look at the Dome of the Rock. In the Christian Quarter, Itzik led us through the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and explained how a status agreement signed 150 years ago divided responsibility for the space among six denominations: Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian and Syrian. (Conveniently, Protestants have designated a different site 500 meters away.) We were impressed with the relatively smooth functioning of the intricate sharing arrangement. Space sharing in the Old City is not always so successful. Itzik related a dispute between a Muslim merchant and the Coptic church: the church had begun to excavate a holy site that they had discovered in the merchant’s basement. Thirty years later, the High Court of Justice had heard the dispute twice but had not resolved it.
In the evening, according to study tour custom, we heard an Israeli and then a Palestinian speaker on prospects for peace. Between the two, Itzik led us in making Havdalah to mark the end of Shabbat.
Daniel Ben Simon, 60, veteran journalist and author, who left Haaretz for politics, served as MK (Labor) 2009-2013, and currently appears as a nightly commentator on Israeli TV, charmed and dazzled us with insight and an impish je ne sais quoi. Among other things, he said:
- Only a few years ago, prospects for peace with Palestinians were fairly bright. Abu Mazen visited Ehud Olmert every two or three weeks for a cordial, leisurely dinner. Since Bibi replaced Olmert, there has been almost no contact. Netanyahu tells Israel’s 22 Arab neighbors, “First make peace with us; then we will deal with Palestine.” The Arab states say the opposite, and the whole world agrees with them.
- Bibi fears that Palestine will become a corridor for the Arabs to attack Israel. In his view, Israel must include all its Biblical territory. Although not religious, he is a man of strong beliefs and he sticks to them. He has a mandate: he is the longest serving president since Ben Gurion. But, barring a new outbreak of war or terror, there will probably be early elections and Bibi will lose.
- Netanyahu could have avoided the latest crisis simply by saying to two or three MKs and a few Americans, “Don’t go to the Temple Mount now; it’s not the right time.” He hasn’t said this, even though eight out of ten of all Israelis would agree.
- Many Israelis think it’s time to shift priorities from security to social security. The defense budget to be voted on soon will be proportionally the largest since 1948; this disproportion has plunged Israel from its once-vaunted leadership in education and income equality to near the bottom in both categories.
- Shimon Peres, by talking to the press everywhere for several weeks, prevented an attack on Iran. He says this was his greatest achievement.
- There are no secrets in Israeli politics. Word of everything gets out quickly, and everyone talks about it.
- The Prime Minister runs everything in Israel. That’s the Israeli way. Lapid could topple the government tomorrow and form a new one, and he’d be much better than anyone else on the horizon, but he says he needs another four years. Bibi will soon be replaced, but by another “strong man.”
Our second speaker, Ali Abu Awwad, 42, a tall, athletic looking man with a fair complexion, shoulder-length curls, and undeniable charisma, is a leader in the Palestinian non-violent resistance movement. He arrived in the company of a grey-bearded man in a kippa—a settler from Gush Etzion who had driven him to the meeting to ease his passage through the checkpoint. His personal story is compelling. His mother joined the Fatah before he was born, and he grew up steeped in politics. Every day he experienced harassment personally; he grew up angry. He joined the first intifada in 1987. He was arrested and jailed for three months. He was again arrested in 1990 and remained in prison for four years. He says this was the best education he could have gotten. The prisoners were highly organized and highly educated, and the Israelis treated the prison leaders with respect, because they had to deal with them to maintain order. In prison Ali felt freedom and dignity for the first time, and there he came to non-violence. In the year 2000, when the second intifada broke out, his older brother, a gentle man who had never been arrested, was shot in the head at point blank range by a soldier. Ali struggled to control his rage. He asked himself, “How many Israelis would I have to kill to heal my anger?” And he concluded that no amount of killing could make him feel better. Four years later, at a meeting of bereaved families on both sides of the conflict, he saw Israeli tears for the first time and “got unstuck.” He now co-directs a center for Israeli-Palestinian dialogue on his family’s land, centrally located in the Gush Etzion area. In addition to facilitating dialogue between settlers and Palestinians, he facilitates dialogue between Israeli left and right. He said he meets with “nice Tel Avivis” who express great sympathy with Palestinian suffering but refuse to meet with settlers. “I have to bring them together?”
Ali is writing a book called Painful Hope. More information about his work can be found at FriendsOfRoots.net.
After the talks, the group walked to dinner at the rooftop restaurant in Notre Dame of Jerusalem. Itzik’s wife Yiskah, a specialist in history of Christianity and interfaith relations, gave us an introduction to the building’s history.