It's a hard read that requires a bit of patience. Still, gradually, a heartbreaking and compelling true story emerges as told by a Palestinian and an Israeli, both of whom lost daughters, one to suicide bombers, the other to border police.
Let me share an illuminating excerpt from the book by the Israeli man as he looks back on his life.
"I was forty-seven, forty-eight years old at that time, and I had to learn to admit it was the first time in my life, to that point - I can say this now, I could never even think it then - it was the first time that I'd met Palestinians as human beings. Not just workers in the streets, not just caricatures in the newspapers, not just transparencies, terrorists, objects, but - how do I say this?- human beings - human beings, I can't believe I'm saying this, it sounds so wrong, but it was a revelation - yes, human beings who carry the same burden as I carry, people who suffer exactly as I suffer. An equality of pain. I'm not a religious person, far from it - I have no way of explaining what happened to me back then. If you had told me years ago that I would say this I would have said you were crazy.
Some people have an interest in keeping the silence. Others have an interest in sowing hatred based on fear. Fear makes money, and it makes laws, and it takes land, and it builds settlements, and fear likes to keep everyone silent. And, let's face it, in Israel, we're very good at fear, it occupies us. Our politicians like to scare us. We like to scare each other. We use the word security to silence others. But it's not about that, it's about occupying someone else's life, someone else's land, someone else's head. It's about control. Which is power. And I realized this with the force of an ax, that it's true, this notion of speaking truth against power. Power already knows the truth. It tries to hide it. So you have to speak out against power. And I began, back then, to understand the duty we have to try to understand what's going on. Once you know what's going on, then you begin to think: What can we do about it? We could not continue to disavow the possibility of living alongside each other. I'm not necessarily asking everyone to get along, or anything corny or airy-fairy, but I am asking for them to be allowed to get along. And, as I begin to think about this, I began to think that I had stumbled upon the most important question of them all: What can you do, personally, in order to try to help prevent this unbearable pain in others? All I can tell you is from that moment until today, I've devoted my time, my life to going everywhere possible, to talk to anyone possible - even to people who will not listen - to convey this basic and very simple message, which says: We are not doomed, but we have to try to smash the forces that have an interest in keeping us silent.
It may sound strange but in Israel, we don't really know what the Occupation actually is. We sit in our coffee shops and we have a good time and we don't have to deal with it. We have no idea what it's like to walk through a checkpoint every day. Or to have our family land taken away. Or to wake up with a gun to our faces. We have two sets of laws, two sets of roads, two sets of values. To most Israelis, this seems impossible, some sort of weird distortion of reality, but it is not. Because we just don't know. Our lives are good. The cappuccino is tasty. The beach is open. The airport is right there. We have no access to what it's like for people in the West Bank or Gaza. Nobody talks about it. You're not allowed into Bethlehem unless you're a soldier. We drive on our Israeli-only roads. We bypass the Arab villages. We build roads above them and below them, but only to make them faceless. Maybe we saw the West Bank once, when we were on military service, or maybe we watch a TV show every now and then, our hearts bleed for thirty minutes, but we don't really, truly, know what's going on. Not until the worst happens. And then the world is turned inside out.
Truth is, you can't have a humane occupation. It just doesn't exist. It can't. It's about control. Maybe we have to wait until the price of peace is so high that people begin to understand this. Maybe it won't end until the price outweighs the benefits. Economic price. Lack of jobs. No sleep at night. Shame. Maybe even death. The price is paid. This is not a call for violence. Violence is weak. Hatred is weak. But today we have one side, the Palestinians, who are completely thrown to the side of the road. They don't have any power. What they do is out of incredible anger and frustration and humiliation. Their land is taken. They want it back. And this leads to all sorts of questions, not least: What, when, to do about the settlers? Repatriation? Land swaps? Generous compensation for the Palestinians who had their land stolen? Maybe a mixture of things. And then those settlers who wanted to stay and become citizens of Palestine under the rule of Palestinian sovereignty like the Arabs in Israel. Equal rights. Equal rights to the letter. Then after a period of trying to make it work we create a Europe of the Middle East, a United States. Both sides make sacrifices. Redefine what we kill and die for. Now we kill and die for simplicity. Why not die for something complex? There can be no way that one side has more rights than the other - more political power, more land, more water, more anything. Equality. Why not? Is it as insane as theft? As murder?
Nobody can listen to me and stay the same. Maybe you will get angry, or offended, or even humiliated, but at least you will not stay the same. And in the end, despair is not a plan of action....We must sit down together and figure it out. One state, two states, it doesn't matter at this stage - just end the Occupation and then begin the process of rebuilding the possibility of dignity for all of us. It's as clear as the noonday sun. There are times, sure, when I would like to be wrong. It would be so much easier. If I had found another path I would have taken it - I don't know, revenge, cynicism, hatred, murder. But I am a Jew. I have a great love for my culture and my people and I know that ruling and oppressing and occupying is not Jewish. Being Jewish means that you respect justice and fairness. No people can rule another people and obtain security and peace for themselves. The Occupation is neither just nor sustainable. And being against the Occupation is, in no way, a form or anti-Semitism.
Others know this too, they just don't want to hear it.
The word Apeirogon is a math term for a polygon with an infinite number of sides. Indeed, this book, written in 2020, gives voice to many sides of a very complex and long-standing conflict.
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