Heart of darkness
It says something about humanity that the so-called Holy Land has been, since the discovery of writing, the scene of one well-documented slaughter after another. From the Old Testament tales to Josephus’s history of the disastrous Jewish rebellion against Rome in the first century AD to the Crusades to today’s front pages, the eastern Mediterranean laps against parched lands that seem never to tire of drinking blood. This is the birthplace of three of the world’s great religions – the fountain of Judaism, Christianity and Islam – that for millennia have provided comfort and solidarity to billions of the faithful. They have also constituted the borders with the Other, the lines in the sand over which eternal battles have been fought. And there seems to be no end in sight. Each person caught up in this area finds himself or herself a soldier in a battle that was joined thousands of years ago – and which is likely to continue for many generations. This is a war fought over historical rights and wrongs, and over the very specific territorial differences of the present. There is not enough land to distribute between Palestinians and Jews, there is not enough space to keep them apart. Each side is trying to hold battle lines and restore borders from an idealized past. The present is where these remembered glories intersect, where rage and violence are the language of the place, where rage and violence procreate. As each day passes the death toll grows. There are deaths by the dozen. And each one brings the threat of more. Any voices of moderation, of compromise, are drowned out – or they silence themselves or join the ranks of the furious. Each side believes that it will win, so it cares more about bending the other to its will rather than working toward any other kind of solution, such as a compromise in which they will be able to live with each other. That is what the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, said this week. The Palestinians had to be «hit hard» and they would negotiate only after they were «beaten,» he said. History would suggest that he is right. But it would also warn him that one can never know in advance who the winner will be. Because the Palestinians too want to win, and it appears that increasing numbers of them are prepared to die to achieve this. For Israelis, this is a fight for survival, both on a personal and a national level. For them, victory is life, whereas for the Palestinian suicide bombers, victory can be gained in death. For the Palestinians, there is no danger of their losing their homeland – they are fighting to gain it; there is no fear of dying, they are offering their lives. These factors have helped level the playing field, wearing away the advantage of the vastly superior Israeli military forces. Nothing will be easy in this war. For either side. The more violence that each side uses will further justify the struggle of the other. The tragedy in life is that everyone is right. And too often, blinded by the comfort we gain from those who (in our family, nation or religion) are like us, we cannot accept that the other side is right too. When this occurs, there is no room to maneuver. Any pragmatist leaders calling for a compromise run the risk of being branded traitors because they are seen as giving away something of the absolute that is currently in their side’s hands. When things are so dangerous, the easiest way out is to see things in black and white, on the assumption that the other side sees things that way as well. We cannot judge this or evaluate it. This is how things have been since life bubbled out of the mud and one amoeba bumped into another. The winner takes all. It is up to him to decide whether to deal magnanimously with the loser. The defeated have nothing to expect but death, slavery or charity. It is also part of human nature to trust that we will be good winners while our enemies will not be. The point, though, is to win. Then, perhaps we can be like the cutthroat adventurers who in old age turn into philanthropists. That is why the situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories today is perhaps the purest form of this battle for dominance between two very different groups of people in a very tight spot. We have seen this, to varying degrees, all over the world. The Greeks have experienced these conflicts with neighboring nations, and with each other, for just as long as the troubles in the Middle East have been going on. Remember the Trojan War. Remember Constantinople, Asia Minor, Cyprus. Remember the various Balkan misadventures of recent years. After all these millennia, there is still plenty of unfinished business in the world caused by the differences between groups and their common pursuit of limited resources: land, water, and the ability to pursue happiness. History has shown that it takes great leadership to break the conviction that peace can only come after one side has been defeated. And when such a leader does arise, he often falls prey to those on his side who feel threatened by the bridge that he builds across the moat – witness the fate of Yitzhak Rabin, consider Yasser Arafat’s decision to withdraw into the collective security of his nation’s struggle rather than bear the burden of a solution that would not fulfill the desire of every Palestinian. Reality – being tangible, demanding compromise – would be worse than an endless war that still holds out the dream of a perfect ending. History has shown that there is no limit to the violence that we may still witness. It has shown also that it is pointless, that the two sides will have to learn to live with each other at some point. But the dead will not return, and the broken lives will not be healed. Perhaps the Holy Land is holy because it is humanity’s open wound, in which the results of our passionate intensity are so clearly visible to all. Like the heart of a volcano piercing deep through our earth’s crust, we learn the mechanics of what would destroy us if we got too close.
