An overdue visit – overdue solutions

As planned, I made a long overdue visit to Rahat this past week, to meet with a dear friend. His youngest pre-teen son was a little concerned by my American identity. Does that make me part of the entity he perceives as enabling Israeli attacks on Gaza? His parents put things into a larger perspective. My identity as a Philadelphian was redeeming. Philadelphia equals cream cheese. The bottom line remains that we are both Israeli citizens.

The day before my visit, Rahat experienced another murder. Rahat and Philadelphia share a dubiously high status on levels of national crime. In the case of Rahat, Israel has simply withdrawn its hand from law enforcement. So goes it in this Arab-Bedouin city, so it goes throughout Arab society in Israel. A long story. Victims. Victims of another dimension of the Jewish-Palestinian conflict within Israel.

The day of my visit was superficially uneventful in Rahat. My friend and I discussed, as usual, everything from the personal to the national, which is invariably personal, mixed with theories, statistics, more personal anecdotes. He mentioned a neighbor. He recently lost his mother who lived in Gaza. He had not spoken to her since October. Fear: Repercussions from Israeli authorities for making contact with Gaza. Visiting was of course an impossibility.

Bedouin society in the Negev includes many families divided by Israel displacing Arabs in the area, transferring them to Gaza at the time of the establishment of the state. Over the years, at various times, under dynamics of constantly changing circumstances, Gazans have married Palestinian citizens of Israel and settled in Israel. Several of Ismail Haniya’s sisters as a case in point. One notably arrested for her demonstration of support for Hamas. Whatever identity tags they choose – Palestinian, Arab, Bedouin – yet citizens of Israel lost dear Israeli friends and colleagues on October 7. Some ran to rescue Israelis from the Hamas attack. Some lost their lives in the process. Residents of Rahat and other Negev Bedouin towns were taken hostage by Hamas on October 7, while working at attacked kibbutzim or running to the rescue.

Among other injustices, like horrors imposed by settlers in the West Bank taking the law into their own hands, is largely overlooked silencing of Palestinian citizens of Israel. Largely overlooked by the media. Not on the radar of most Israelis.

On the surface, peace maintained within Israel among Jewish and Palestinian citizens of the state amidst growing demonization with Jewish Israelis barely aware of any distinction between citizens and their rights, Palestinians under Occupation and their rights, and the vast differences in their lives. The complicated identities of Palestinian citizens of Israel, loyal to Israel and identifying as Palestinians with the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, and in the West Bank. Their freedom to express their empathy is curbed. A Jewish Israeli is allowed greater leniency in expressing empathy for the plight of Palestinians. Most Jewish Israelis just don’t know it.

My friend in Rahat told me he deleted all contacts in Gaza from his phone since October 7. They could have been intellectuals and professionals. They could have been construction workers and menial laborers regularly allowed entry to Israel prior to October 7. He deleted them as a precaution, if not fear. He would surely be under greater scrutiny and more likely to have his phone tracked, even if arbitrarily and inconsistently, by virtue of his identity: Bedouin, Arab, Palestinian, and citizen of Israel.

The day after my visit in Rahat, mid-afternoon, a radio reporter announced another Israeli hostage had been saved from Gaza. A Bedouin citizen from one of the unrecognized villages on the outskirts of Rahat. (Unrecognized villages? A story of Israeli failure to resolve an issue embedded in the conflict.) Yes, Israelis were all thrilled by the release of this hostage, Farhan Kadi (52), father of 11 including a child who last saw him at the age of 2 months. He brought news of the maltreatment of another Jewish Israeli hostage who died in captivity. He had been unaware of the other Bedouin hostages. He was overjoyed, lying in a Gazan tunnel, hearing approaching voices in Hebrew.

One of those moments when Israelis seek to boast of equality in Israeli society. An example of a should-be a given. Like Israeli claims of pride in its assistance in rescue and aid at times of natural disasters in places regardless of diplomatic relations. Pride in Israeli achievements. Pride in examples of Israel doing the right thing. There are no balances of right and wrong that result in carte blanche justification of everything Israel does. Not by a long shot. Sadly. Doing the right thing is just that. Doing the right thing. The only thing that should be done. Israel should just do that. Israel should end the war.

After visiting Rahat, I texted a close friend in northern Israel in the early afternoon. She lives in a small community outside of Tiberias overlooking the Kinneret. Her daughter lives in the Golan. Networking. I wanted permission to give her husband’s contact info to my friend in Rahat for some professional advice. My friend’s favorable response began with an apology for a slight delay. First, if I was writing in the middle of the day, she had to check that I was not checking-in following a Hezbollah attack in her area, or her daughter’s, that she somehow might not have heard.

Another incidental evening twist resulted from picking up our almost 10-year-old granddaughter from a party. When I walked her to the door, we discussed our plans to take her with us to visit my sister in Dubai in December. She is looking forward to it: “I’ll be able to sleep. I won’t be afraid there when I go to bed at night.” She said she knows – thank you, Tik Tok – they don’t have demonstrations there, yet added her hope that it isn’t dangerous there.

Whatever differences of comparative measure we might find for degrees of post-trauma seem inconsequential when I contemplate, and I do, what the future will be like for Gazans, for West Bank Palestinians, and for Israelis – Jewish and Palestinian, and any other minority population of Israelis. Entire societies in a state of post-trauma, repeated post trauma.

Jewish post-trauma – from the Holocaust, from the Farhud in Baghdad, or persecution elsewhere – played its role in the establishment of the State of Israel. The Nakba another source of post-trauma. Whether the establishment of Israel or the Nakba, post-trauma.

The current statistic of over 10,000 post-traumatic Israeli soldiers is frightening. Frightening for them and those close to them. Frightening for Israeli society. Frightening if Israel needs to defend itself.

Frightening to think of the trauma of Palestinians in the West Bank, terrorized by extremist Jewish settlers as Israel’s police not slowly becomes the arm of an extremist government minister rather than fulfilling its rightful, proper role in at least a nominally democratic regime.

Frightening to consider the trauma of Gazans. Incomprehensible. The magnitude of the destruction, fear, helplessness. Blame Hamas. Blame Israel. Blame enabling regimes. Trauma.

Southern Lebanon. Northern Israel. Some evacuated residents of northern Israel from 40% of homes in Metulla destroyed by Hezbollah strikes. Just an example. Israeli homes in kibbutzim burned by Hamas on October 7 will be rebuilt. Gaza will be rebuilt.

Israel reduced. Sections of one screen overlaying sections of another. End the war. Assume it will be safe. Watch the news. Be realistic. Forces determined to obliterate Israel. Obliterating Hamas is neither a solution nor an option. Hezbollah. Houthis. Islamic Republic of Iran. A war of survival? Can it be ended? Will Israel survive? A war of denial? A war to end all wars?

Collective identities will retain narratives of pain and trauma. They can choose to evolve into narratives committed – in practice – to reconciliation.

For the day after, can we seize the opportunity for rebuilding that will measure up to, and exceed as it must, the picture left inside the mind of the naïve little girl left inside of me? Can we rebuild the north, the Negev, Gaza, the West Bank, a set of shared values of human rights – with the compromises that necessarily requires? Where Zionism failed, and Palestinian resistance failed, can moderate voices transcend and transform our societies, just to make them better? For all of us.

Harriet Gimpel, August 31, 2024