A Guided Tour of Israel, by Annick Labadie

It was my seventh day in Israel. Uri Goldflam, a charismatic Israeli professor guiding us around the country, was standing at the front of the bus with a microphone. Thirteen other graduate students sitting around me busied themselves with a few tasks. Some were making up for short sleeping hours, and missing out on information others jotted down in their notebooks. Attractive Israeli hotel clerks and Sauvignon Blanc were to blame for their predicament. A few more passengers were only physically awake. They didn’t hear Uri’s lecture, but only the noise in the background. They daydreamed about yesterday’s images, or searched for picture angles avoiding the sun’s reflection in the bus window. I was doing all four with moderate success.

Today was Saturday. The Shabbat. Our bus zigzagged around Ma’ale Adumim, the West Bank’s largest Israeli settlement. We were headed for Massada, ancient fortifications on the eastern end of the Judean desert, and then for a swim (read: float) in the Dead Sea. It was 9:15am, and the Jewish municipality slept under the desert sun.

As we approached the residential area, the bus slowed down. “So this is a settlement?” I thought. The picture hardly matched the more nomadic ones newspapers had painted for me. Somehow, settlement implied images from Lawrence of Arabia, tents battered by sand storms, camels, rusty mobile homes, and very rudimentary (read: absent) urban planning. While this description fitted the Bedouin camps dispersed along the highway, the aura here more closely resembled The Truman Show.

From behind the bus window, I saw hilltop houses and flawlessly manicured front yards. Olive, orange, lemon trees and patches of eucalyptus were scattered here and there. At the lower points of the hilly terrain, I spotted shiny plastic playgrounds, synthetic soccer fields, and brand new basketball courts. As the bus kept moving, I think I even saw a mall somewhere. This morning, the E1 area was no longer a word on a newspaper page, but a world buzzing with traces of life.

Ma’ale Adumim looked much nicer than Jerusalem, about 4 miles away. The only aesthetic commonality between both places was the white limestone enveloping every building. No prominent rooftop water tank announced the owner’s cultural heritage. In Jerusalem, Jewish houses featured white water tanks, and the Arab homes, black ones, as a reminder of conflict everywhere. It seemed like we’d been teleported to a different country. We pretty much were… This was the West Bank after all.

“This isn’t just any settlement” I heard Uri say through the static of the microphone. It was the E1 settlement emerging as yet another “roadblock to future agreements between Israelis and Palestinians.” That killer sentence had been parroted far too many times by journalists, politicians, professors, colonels, ambassadors we had met over the course of the week.

I was getting pretty sick of that too. So I made no effort to follow Uri’s fingers on the giant West Bank map he held up high, as he poured the good-intentioned roadblock talk over us. I was in denial. I wanted rainbows and unicorns on this sunny Shabbat morning, not information that would further lower my serotonin levels. It was getting pretty damn depressing. Learning about the Israel-Palestine conflict was like standing in a maze without knowing if it even had an exit. Everyone seemed to be more interested in cataloging all the blocked trajectories than in finding a way out.

Roadblocks were everywhere, I thought, as I tilted my head on the glass and reviewed opinions different speakers had shared with us. Hamas, the extremist organization ruling Gaza, was a one of them. The Hamas charter allegedly (it’s translated, so who knows) states that “Muslims must fight the Jews and kill them; push the Jews behind trees and stones until each tree and stone says ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him’”. Palestinian schoolbooks contained questions like “if there are 20 Jews and you kill 10, how many are left?” (Ten? Nope. None. They went back to the base to figure out how best to kick your sorry ass. And you asked for it.)

While the Israeli government toils for a two-state solution – however contradictory its actions (i.e. constant ass kicking as defined above) – Hamas unilaterally toils for Jihad. A one-state solution, if you will. Did the Israeli actions arise from Hamas-like mentality, or did Hamas mentality grow out of the Israeli actions? The chicken and the egg. No one really knows. Whatever came first, Hamas’s opinion of what came next didn’t leave much room for interpretation. That was blocking the road to peace.

And the fact that the chicken and egg riddle matters? Well that’s a roadblock too.

We were told there were roadblocks to peace because of international media; journalists without Middle-Eastern bearings returned to the West with a skewed message. Israel, the mighty Goliath, was an uncharitable symbol. Outsiders rooted for the Palestinian David instead, providing the figurative underdog with one more excuse to act like an outmuscled victim. Journalists talked about Israel’s belligerent US funding, for instance. But they never discussed Western aid to West Bank and Gaza, or the Arab world’s flimsy funding of the same land. Emir of Qatar had supplied some cash, sure, but only for Bnei Sakhnin F.C.s’ new football stadium. When it came to spending aid money, Yasser Arafat, a previous leader of the Fatah political party, had unconventional ideas. Parisian shopping sprees for his wife, for example. In 1998, he had taken a short pause from such habits to invest money in The Oasis Casino, of all things. This occurred at a time where hospitals were as abundant as drinking water. (It’s a desert.) Newspapers apparently didn’t cover that sort of stuff either. “That’s something to think about”, Uri had said one day while the bus drove along the Jordan border.

“Look at the hell holes they’re forced to call home” is the roadblock I was thinking about, when I saw a glimpse of a Palestinian town on the side of the road.

But never mind funding, here’s another journalistic example. With the help of a PowerPoint presentation, Colonel Bentzi Gruber had told us how the press quoted Gaza’s 1,300 to 12 death toll like it had Tourette syndrome. His face had looked tired, yet his voice had been as lively as the three falafels emblazoned on each shoulder of his military uniform. The media always associated the number 1300 with a majority of dead civilians, one slide stated. However, Palestinians self-reported their figures, often with the numerical methods provided in their math schoolbooks. Those dying of natural causes were lumped in with other casualties, boosting the count. As for the terrorists, Israel’s intended target, they were simple citizens until they wrapped explosives around their chests. As a result, Palestinian authorities placed them in the civilian casualty category too. Those false number claims, which constantly put Israel in trouble (see Goldstone report, a United Nations Human Rights Council “investigation of all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by Israel against the Palestinian people.”), were a roadblock.

But who’s counting bodies? One captured Israeli soldier, never mind a dead one, could lead to military wrath… and I guessed that could be a roadblock.

Speaking of Goldstone, The UN was also throwing boulders on the peace road. An Israeli correspondent for the New Republic at the Mount Zion Hotel, Yossi Klein Halevi, held this view. The organization pointed its virtuous finger at the democratic nation with as much reservation as a kid at the zoo, the correspondent claimed over a five-course meal. Yet, the UN used far more leniency with the antidemocratic bunch of Jihad-invoking extremists. Israel wouldn’t blow everyone up. Not without 24-hour advance notice at least. Palestinians were in on that double standard too; they played the little brother card. The result was mama UN always sending big brother Israel to his room while little Palestine put his thumb to his nose and wiggled his fingers, singing “na-nana-nanana” from the playground outside.

If only little Palestine had an actual playground to play in, of course…

In any case, the truth in the UN criticism, and Israel’s relentless reference to it, both were both roadblocks to peace.

Back on the bus, Uri sat down and turned off the microphone. All we could hear was the vibration of the wheels over the paved highway as we entered the Judean desert. I kept running down the roadblock list I’d been presented with, now writing bullet points in my notebook. There was Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt. There was the Palestinian authority representatives. They censored journalists, and scolded anyone cooperating with the Jews. The Palestinians’ constant lack of ownership over their terrible living conditions was also leading to a dead end. That is what Khaled Abu Toameh, an Israeli-Arab journalist, had calmly stated over tea in Jerusalem’s Hotel Harmony. He was ashamed of the Arab world and its leadership. When Right-wing Zionist settlers had burned a mosque in the West Bank a couple days before, Israel’s government was on a manhunt for the wrong doers and publicly condemned the acts of violence. Yet when a synagogue burned, Palestinians were rewarded with high fives, cash, and a business class ticket to heaven. Toameh would later decry this in an online article. So there were some attitude roadblocks. Some.

Was there even a road somewhere?

As for the roadblocks identified by Palestinians, I could only extrapolate, as I had only heard a very short summary of little brother’s side of the story; the opinion of a UK-educated Palestinian professor and writer. He had briefly talked about the illegal settlements inside the occupied territories, about the security barrier. He had denounced the checkpoints – they stunted the Palestinian movement, he said – and of course, Israel’s refusal to recognize the Right of Return. Along the same vein, those Arabs living in Israel were apparently treated as second-class citizens, which didn’t help Israel’s case. It all seemed too simple.

I developed some hypotheses of my own on the bus. Nothing earth shattering. Israel seemed to be in the habit of killing flies with assault rifles, for one thing. If it really was the big brother it claimed to be, it still had the maturity of a hormonal teenager. But that’s an easy claim to make. Even grown-ups get pissed off once in a while. I thought about how I’d feel if I were Palestinian, which proved difficult as I had very few bearings. I figured I’d be sick of having Israel choke me with its tight grasp. Call me insightful. I’d hope for change; for Israel’s coexistence in a sustainable divorce. I’d stop giving a shit about the chicken and the egg. But I’d keep sight of my pride and my own barriers too.

I closed the notebook. Aside from the sunny weather, everything looked pretty bleak on this Saturday morning. We drove. I dozed off, and made a mental note to listen next time Uri talked.

I wouldn’t see more of the settlements. Nor would I see the insides of any of the Palestinian towns we passed on our way to Massada. I finally floated in the Dead Sea and the mud I scrubbed off my skin with salt water made it smooth and silky.

In the last few days, we’d hear about many more roadblocks we’d rarely get to see; more ideas, more PowerPoint slides, more anecdotes of lies and numerical injustice. I remained depressed by most things we heard. Explanations for dead ends were presented, one after the other. I did not know what to think then, and I still don’t think I do now, which is nice to admit 1900 words in. Attempts to further polarize my thoughts pushed me closer to the opposite pole. Everyone around me seemed to refute everyone else. “But again, you’re mistaking the cause and the effect” was the response to every criticism on Israeli action further restricting anticipated Palestinian reaction. The chicken and the goddamn egg again. The conundrums pissed me off, so in contrarian fashion, I disagreed with every view, even when I wasn’t sure what I exactly I should disagree with. I was acting like a barrier myself. My thoughts worked like those of Israelis. Like those of Palestinians. I wasn’t looking for the road. I was just staring at whatever was blocking the path, jotting down my own dead ends in my notebook.

I would be lying if I said the things I saw didn’t weaken me in the end. I’d be generalizing if I said no one was looking for real solutions. Here was country laboring to live fully despite the constant threats. I saw a people paranoid, and rightfully so at times. The simple Israel I had learned through written words was growing into a confusing world. I had met some of its people, dined with its families, drank cheap champagne with its students, and I could see a mirror image of myself in many of those I spoke with. I could feel their struggles. I could now understand why they felt the way they did.

Did I hear of a Palestinian whose grandparents were living in some refugee camp? Of abuse by Israeli soldiers working at terminals? Of arrests soldiers made every night in Ramallah? Of young mothers fearing Hamas might indoctrinate their teenage kids? Did I hear of children dying of dehydration or diarrhea while Israel battled to conserve its clean, modern, Western looking, Ma’ale Adumim settlement?

No. Not firsthand anyway. Those things are still words on pages. They’re still ideas I haven’t faced, unlike the Ma’ale Adumim settlement.

On my last day in Israel, I found small consolation in the streets of old Jaffa, near Tel Aviv. On a few fences, brick walls, and mailboxes, someone, presumably wiser than all of us or maybe someone full of crap, had written these words: “you are me now.” Even though my brain was running out of gas, I kept thinking about it again and again.

Maybe it wasn’t about a chicken and an egg, a maze and a roadblock and a road, a big brother and a little brother, a David and a Goliath, or any hokey figure of speech I’ve overused thus far. Maybe it wasn’t about ideas. I had “become” Israeli over the course of my trip. It was something you could feel. Ma’ale Adumim wasn’t only a dot on a geopolitical map. I had felt its palm trees, its houses, and its basketball hoops. The word “Settlement”, however tainted, now also invoked a world I could relate to. Yet, like the Jews who opened their home to me, I would never “become” Palestinian. I heard Arafat had wronged its people. Their life conditions were bad. They learned terrible things in their math books. But I hadn’t felt their struggles.

Most of the young Israeli students I met during the trip had never met a single Palestinian over the course of their life either. They hadn’t played football with the kids on dirt fields. They hadn’t felt the struggle of the families living in squalor. But they had plenty of ideas, analogies, and roadblocks to supply me with. And I had plenty of empty, better-than-thou rhetoric to offer them in return. But in the end, the rhetoric turned into a confused feeling. Empathy maybe?

So perhaps there lies one part of the problem. The over use of Rhetoric. Of analogies. Theory. Of terms like “roadblocks to peace”. What peace? Maybe because I’m naïve and because my water heater at home is gray, not Arab black or Jewish white, I keep feeling that in empathy, the reciprocal kind; the one described in those four words, “you are me now,” lies one part of the solution. But that’s empty rhetoric too. For now.

Note: I have little background in international relations, or foreign policy, or Middle Eastern conflict. My main political newsfeeds are SNL’s Nicholas Fehn, and The Onion. So I apologize in advance for misinterpretation of opinions presented to me while in Israel. Finally, a special thanks to Uri Goldflam, JJ Shneiderman, Noah Shack, Franck Azoulay, and of course, to the Tanenbaum family, for making the 2009 Israel Tanenbaum Fellowship an unforgettable experience.