P is for Parking Lot

Whatever team you root for, demand its best performance. That’s the way to win. If both sides give their best performance, we could end the game – with peace.

It is tiresome and counter-productive to argue that an arrangement establishing the State of Palestine, enabling Palestinian control of Gaza and the West Bank, would be an undeserved prize for the barbaric Hamas massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023 (and other occasions). We cannot write all the narratives, but we can tell our story, and we should. The Palestinian people have a story to tell too. Like ours, it has versions, told differently by different storytellers. The honorable story can be told and it’s not about a prize.

Meanwhile, Israelis need a story to tell about the release of 120 hostages still in Gaza, since October. It needs to tell a better story to itself and to the world, and Crime Minister, Mr. Abandonment – of the hostages and the people – could save a narrative that would still recall accomplishments under far too many years with him at the helm, as Prime Minister.

At every juncture I wonder if outsiders recall Israel once had a moral compass, faulty, rusty from desert floods over sand dunes, but rinsed, rendered effective, inconsistent, yet sending rescue missions when natural disaster strikes any site willing to accept its assistance, regardless of diplomatic relations. That misplaced compass matters not. It’s just an anchor to which I want to tie residue of belief in what Israel could be when rooting for my team’s best performance.

The headlines on my laptop screen this week sufficed. I knew the whole picture didn’t matter. The Prime Minister, flexing his muscles against the Minister of Defense was preventing the establishment of a field hospital for Gazan children on Israeli land. The idea comes with intuitive concerns about the identities of the mothers and possibly fathers who would accompany such children, and the security implications if just one of them is a member of Hamas or the Islamic Jihad, or just an unaffiliated budding terrorist who could seize an opportunity.

But the questions and risks, should have intuitive answers and responses: this is something that Israeli security forces can manage. Saving lives of Gazan children in a field hospital before they can be sent to other hospitals, whether in Egypt or Jordan or overseas transcends all other concerns.

If Israel, the Israel shown bombing Gaza to murder a band of terrorists, with innocent Gazan men, women, and children among the victims left lifeless, can save some of their lives, it would not bring back the dead. It would not remove the indelible stains on its reputation that have come with this war.

For the record, I am not condemning every act by Israel, but acknowledging horrors from lack of strategy, attacks with consequences beyond targeting sources of the attacks of October 7. For months, I went emotionally ballistic with responses ready when I heard voices calling Israel’s attacks genocidal. I still argue to the contrary, but I go emotionally ballistic in my anger for what Israel has done to make that claim have arguable plausibility.

If Gaza has no ports, no airways nor seaways to send children for medical care and a field hospital in Israel could provide an immediate response, and then a channel for reaching other lands for hospital care, my concern about Israel’s refusal to provide this option is not about how Israel is perceived by the world outside, just about its moral compass. The leader has lost his way. The leader has taken the people astray.

Democracy. We demand our best performance but cannot ensure we get it.

On Thursday evening, we had tickets for a play at the Jaffa Theatre, where Arabic-Hebrew culture meets, with its own repertoire and providing a home to others. It is celebrating its 25^th anniversary, as the director reminded me in a recent email exchange. That was his prompt for us to reserve tickets. Haim and I did not want an evening when the stage would replace the television screen with the heavy and the heartbreaking, characteristic of much of its repertoire describing or alluding to the conflict. I chose a play, ” Manegalian Passport,” written by a Palestinian citizen of Israel, awarded prizes at the last, annual Akko Fringe Theater Festival just days before October 7. With four actors and minimal props, on the fringe theater spectrum approaching the repertory, the synopsis describes an imaginary promised land, an Arab seeking a passport, for a better life there, but there is one condition.

Wrapped in humor, the script and the performance lightly delivered the heavy message: there is no alternative but to find the way to kicking your history in the rear, kicking your pain, your memory, your narrative, killing your demons to find a way to live here, even if you must fake your love for the other – it’s the only way. We understood it to work both ways, for Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel. The letter, P, for parking lot, covered the stage at the conclusion. Under the parking lot, a destroyed Palestinian village from the period of the establishment of the State of Israel. P, for Palestine – the Palestine then, and the Palestine of the future. The playwright acknowledged a Jewish Israeli narrative and portrayed the painful conflicts of his generation, his people, the struggle of Palestinian citizens of Israel, with equanimity, to be integrated into Israeli society, demanding reciprocity.

Before the performance, in conversation with the theater director, I told him about speeches by Rabin from 1994 and 1995 that I am translating. As usual, I commented on Rabin’s patronizing tone towards the Palestinians, but emphasized his bold steps towards peace. Rabin’s remarks repeatedly included recognition of controversy, with a unifying style, reflecting a shared Jewish, Israeli dream for peace. Perhaps the right, then mocked his remarks as I mockingly react to remarks of presumed unity by Netanyahu. Yet, Rabin unlike Netanyahu, gives credit to his political opponents, and expresses respect for the difficulty of some Israelis to come to terms with his peace efforts. My partner in discussion reminds me that Rabin, the general, went through a transformation. “If it were not for his assassin…” I say, and barely complete the thought, because my friend responds, “I am not sure it would have succeeded anyway.” My friend who I know remains committed to a vision of peace with our neighbors and equality within our borders.

The next morning, we awakened to the news that during the night the Houthi’s landed a UAV in Tel Aviv, killing one person, just meters from the US Consulate and Embassy Branch Office. Today, Israel retaliated in Yemen. Should we look forward to a night of attacks from every direction, or will these deter the Houthis and the Hezbollah? The US and the UK, the Saudis and the Egyptians have no misgivings over Israel attacking the Houthis.

Later yesterday, a Palestinian colleague from the West Bank shared a message in our binational team WhatsApp group. He was contacted by a Gazan, through our website. The man lost his wife, four children, his brother, and his father, he wrote, “from indiscriminate attacks by Israel.” He wanted to join our organization whose members are all bereaved Palestinians and Israelis who have lost loved ones to the conflict, and reached the conclusion that only reconciliation and peace will end the cycle of bloodshed. I only work for the organization, because the members are right.

Voices in another discussion address the implications of whether peace is first, or reconciliation is first, but I disengage.

I escape to the innocence of children, reflect upon conversations this past week with our 6-1/2-year-old granddaughter. She told another story Friday night, before dinner, before we lit the Sabbath candles. She was playing with her 2-1/2-year-old sister and pretending it was the little one’s birthday. She told her little sister to make a wish, serving her an imaginary birthday cake. As we do when lighting the candles on Friday evenings, the little one covered her eyes and began reciting the blessing, a prayer to God. I hope her wishes beyond that blessing are like mine. I hope the God she prays to is listening.

Harriet Gimpel, July 20, 2024