semitism.net

Reading Secretary of State Rice’s remarks yesterday about the situation in Palestine brought to mind a few questions and thoughts about “choice” and “life” in Eastern and Western Palestine and Israel. Here is what she had to say about the issue:

A fundamental choice confronts the Palestinians, and all people in the Middle East, more clearly now, than ever. It is a choice between violent extremism on the one hand and tolerance and responsibility on the other. Hamas has made its choice. It has sought to attempt to extinguish democratic debate with violence and to impose its extremist agenda on the Palestinian people in Gaza. Now, responsible Palestinians are making their choice and it is the duty of the international community to support those Palestinians who wish to build a better life and a future of peace.

Aside from the fact that this sounds a whole lot like the quote I posted from the American Jewish Committee’s statement from last week, I am somewhat amazed to hear that the Palestinians are confronted with a choice, at least as of right now. No doubt the Secretary knows far more than I do about what’s happening on the ground, but from where I sit, behind (in front of?) the Wall, I am hard-pressed to comprehend this “choice” that so clearly faces Palestinians on June 19, 2007.

First there are the Palestinians in Gaza (or maybe we just don’t consider them Palestinians anymore?). What choices do they have? Some would like to leave, perhaps they would like to choose “tolerance and responsibility.” But if they can get through Hamas checkpoints and arrests, Israel won’t let them leave. They’re stuck. Now the Israeli government won’t even let in Magen David Adom ambulances into the Erez crossing area, for fear of infiltration. So I have trouble seeing the choice there.

They could choose to try to sneak into Egypt, as a few hundred have chosen to. But again, even if they can get in to Egypt, I’m not so sure that’s a destination brimming with “tolerance and responsibility” or where they can find “a better life and a future of peace.”

Should they take to the streets? Well, if they do so with guns, they’ll likely be labeled terrorists. Or, even if supported nominally by the West, they will likely end up where Fatah has: running for their lives. And if they choose to stand up and take to the streets without guns, they’ll likely face the wrath of Hamas and its “violent extremism.” And since the international community is leaving Hamas to its own devices, without any kind of negotiations or interaction other than basic aid, there will hardly be much leverage should more such carnage happen.

Or should they simply sit back and wait? Well, if they simply do what they can to survive physically and economically to make sure they and their families live until tomorrow, then we will probably label them as Hamas sympathizers because they stayed in Gaza and did not rise up.

In the end, not a lot of real choices. Next there are the Palestinians in the West Bank. Sure, the aid is coming, the tax revenues are finally flowing, and the support seems steadfast.

But, of course, that’s support for Fayyad and Abbas and, apparently, for Fatah, not necessarily the people. Now, Fayyad has managed over the years to maintain a solid record and profile, so I can understand the move in his direction. But this is quite clearly a Fatah and Abbas-led government.

Yet it is Fatah, after all, that was deemed so corrupt that the Palestinian people so overwhelmingly voted for Hamas, despite most not agreeing with its ideology. And in spite of millions of dollars of aid from the U.S. directly to Fatah to help it try to win those elections. As the Washington Post editorialized – in a piece appropriately called “Hamas’s Choice” – after the elections:

Many Palestinians who voted for Hamas don’t support the Islamists’ fundamentalist agenda: Polls show that large majorities want an end to violence and a resumption of peace talks with Israel. Wednesday’s vote was not an embrace of extremism, but — as President Bush suggested yesterday — a rejection of the corrupt and incompetent clique of leaders left behind by Yasser Arafat. Since Arafat’s death more than a year ago, his Fatah movement had been unable to reform itself or control its violent elements, despite the good intentions of Mr. Abbas. Now, perhaps, a new generation of secular leaders will be able to purge Fatah and prepare to offer Palestinians a better alternative, while crooks and armed thugs are cut from the government’s payroll.

But here we are again: Fayyad is new, but this is still Fatah and Fatah is still led by Abbas. Can we really be sure there will be no corruption? That the government will actually work for the people?

And although the Palestinian people, both in Gaza and the West Bank, so clearly did not choose them in the open and fairly-contested elections in 2006, they are now supposed to choose them? Now that…what? Now that they have been routed in Gaza but held on and propped up in the West Bank?

I don’t necessarily believe Abbas to be the problem, but how can he be seen as the only “choice” for a “better life and a future of peace,” two things he clearly has not brought to the Palestinian people, even when he was in complete control?

What if the Palestinians in the West Bank want to choose someone else now, some party other than Fatah, because, unlike the Bush Administration apparently, their memories go back before January 2006? Will they be allowed? Will this be a choice they can make? Can they choose Marwan Barghouthi?

What if they wait six months or a year, and nothing much has changed? Or are they allowed to “choose” only if it means choosing the one choice we might approve of?

What if Palestinians in the West Bank would like to choose a “better life and a future of peace” that involves, say, being able to get to school or work on a road of their choice? Or getting to school or work at all? Or trying to find work in and enter Israel? Or pray at al-Aqsa? If they would like to live a future of peace and “tolerance and responsibility” on land not surrounded by settlements and the IDF? How about if they would like to build a larger home on land adjacent to their house, but for which their only title document may date from the Ottoman era? Can they choose to build and not have their home demolished?

What say you, Madame Secretary, can they make those choices? Will you stand so clearly behind them then as you do when it is Hamas on the other side? Will you stand with the Palestinians when the choices are a little harder to make, to implement? When they involve pushing Israel a bit more than you have chosen to so far? Will you support their choices then?

Now, I do not mean to imply the Palestinians have no choices to make, or have not had choices to make over the past decades of Occupation and Oslo. Surely they have, and in so many cases, some Palestinians have made terrible choices that have resulted in only more pain and tragedy for them and for so many Israelis.

But perhaps it’s time for the Administration, for Israel, for the American Jewish community, for the West to own up to their own choices here. To stand behind the Palestinians, to support the choices that they believe will lead to this future of peace the Secretary speaks of. Not just asking them to choose the choices that Israel would choose for them. Call that whatever you want, but do not call it choice.

No matter what you believe about how or why we got here, no matter whose choices or mistakes or ideology you would place blame on, I pray that we all realize these choices are not really for the Palestinians to make alone. They are for all of us to make.

Two final notes – one from the Palestinian author Raja Shehadeh and one from Moses (quite a duo). Shehadeh, as many of you will know, has written several must-read books on the situation here, both from legal and personal perspectives. One of his older memoirs is entitled “The Third Way.” As he explains about halfway down in this piece, the title is actually based on a saying from Treblinka:

Raja himself demonstrated in choosing the title of his book, The Third Way: A Journal of Life in the West Bank. On the back cover, the origin of the phrase “the third way” is explained: “From the wisdom of the Treblinka concentration camp: ‘Faced with two alternatives-always choose the third.’ Between mute submission and blind hate-I choose the third way. I am Samid [the steadfast].

For his part, Moses, at the end of Deuteronomy, while ending his leadership of the Jewish people, announces a second covenant of sorts with the people. That is, the first covenant under Moses’ leadership took place at Sinai, but Abravanel teaches us that this covenant was only with those souls present at Sinai. But as the people stood ready to enter the Land, a second covenant – binding on the souls of all those present and all future generations – is initiated.

And within that covenant, we read the following verses in Deuteronomy 30:

15 See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil,

16 in that I command thee this day to love HaShem thy G-d, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His ordinances; then thou shalt live and multiply, and HaShem thy G-d shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest in to possess it.

17 But if thy heart turn away, and thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them;

18 I declare unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish; ye shall not prolong your days upon the land, whither thou passest over the Jordan to go in to possess it.

19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed;

On the Shabbat following 9/11, I gave a d’var torah on this passage and those around it (you can see most of the text excerpted on the Shalom Center’s website here). And I essentially suggested there that we should, perhaps in a sort of post-9/11 covenant, read the end of this passage to say not just “choose life” for you and your seed, but for you and all seeds to live.

So, since it did not exactly play out that way post-9/11, let me ask this again, post-Gaza. Let us not see only two choices, involving two failed options, innumerable failed leaders, tragically failed realities. Let us use this moment, all of us, to be like Shehahdeh, to choose neither submission nor hate, but to be steadfast: steadfast in our pursuit of what Moses commanded, to choose life.

Choose all life: Israeli, Palestinian, American, Iraqi, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and those of every seed on earth.