Whose Mess is It?

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Who will clean up this enormous, visible-from-space, pile of rubble and dirt?

“Not I,” said the rich uncle. “I gave you more than enough already. And look what you did with it! It’s true I gifted you the oversized sledgehammers and dynamite you needed to create this ugly mess, but don’t expect me to help you clean it up!”

“Not I,” said the rich cousin. “It’s true I gave them the cement to turn all that sand into a giant ant farm. It’s true they crawled up out of those tunnels to lure you back there, knowing you would wreck some destruction on your way. But don’t expect us to take the least bit of responsibility for the unholy pile of broken cement and twisted steel you left behind!”

“Not I,” said the next-door neighbor. “Honestly, all that noise has kept us up at night. There’s a reason we’ve made sure to keep things in your backyard and prevented them from spilling into ours. Good luck with the clean-up!”

“Not us,” said the lily-white snobs in the nicer suburbs. “We never liked you anyway. And we certainly can’t be expected to clean up after ourselves, much less you. But what could we expect from your type?”

For now, according to news reports, Israel has quietly agreed to undertake a test clean-up and sort of minor reconstruction in a small part of Gaza. Because this time, no one – rich uncles or distant relatives – will do it for us.

It will cost us. It is practically a truism that no one goes into war knowing the ultimate cost. It appears nowhere in the budget just approved in the Knesset, even now, when the war is either just about over or poised to escalate into armed conflict with Iran. But estimates, just of cleaning the rubble in Gaza, run to the billions of shekels.

If you can ignore the cost, it is an opportunity

Who will pay? I and my fellow Israelis – at least the shrinking number of us who work and pay taxes – will bear the cost. How will we pay? The government that led us into this mess in the first place will cut our services, slice into education, stop repaving the roads and raise the VAT on all goods and services. They won’t pay on a personal level by, say, cutting parliamentary salaries, cutting funding for new settlements, reducing the number of ministerial offices or even stopping the graft that seems to be everywhere these days.

Still, I have to appreciate the irony here. Because so many Gazans worked over the years in construction in Israel, building our cities and towns, walls and factories. Now it is our turn to send Israeli teams – and Israeli cash – to help rebuild their cities, towns, walls and factories.

And it is also, if you can ignore the cost, an opportunity. Because for over two years, the only Israelis Gazans have met have been armed to the teeth and shooting. Cleaning up Gaza will require cooperation between Gazans and Israelis. If we can, even in small measure, create interactions meant to clear the area, rather than destroy, we might just begin to rebuild the foundations for trust.

For now, the agreement is less an acknowledgement of our own culpability, more hope of a trade-off. We’ll play nice on this one while whining loudly about the need for demilitarization (a demand I agree with, before you start objecting). From my point of view, that could be a win-win.

Who will take credit for a shiny, rebuilt Gaza?

“I will,” said the rich uncle. “I waved my hand and made peace. Give me a prize, but don’t make me look at the unsightly dirt over there.

“I will,” said the rich cousin. “We know it took two long years to bring everyone into line, but without us, you would be dredging Gaza up from the ocean! You can thank us that it isn’t even worse!”

“I will,” said the next-door neighbor. “If we had not closed our borders, there would be no need to clean up any messes or to rebuild.”

“I will,” said the lily-white snobs in the nicer suburbs. “We refused to let them into our nice streets. We’re only fond of them in theory, not in person. But now we have an opportunity to shake our fingers at you and say we told you so, even before you let that unsightly pile of junk get out of hand.”

And Israel? Will we do something for which we can proudly take credit? Or will we bow our heads and grudgingly do the minimum necessary to meet the conditions of the peace agreement? Will we use the opportunity to fill in tunnels, remove rockets as we go, create a real haven for people who have lost everything? Or will we simply move the rubble to one side and tell those folks who are still living in tents they are free to rebuild – but without cement this time.

Will we provide better temporary housing for displaced families while this whole scoop-it-up-and-dump-it action unfolds – a process we are told could take years? Because until now, we have not related to the people in Gaza as “our problem.” Now we may be forced to do so, and in the process, view them as human beings with real needs and rights.

My point? It’s OUR mess. Time to start the clean-up. And while we’re at it, time for some clean-up within our own government, starting with an independent commission of inquiry to point us to the stains on our furniture that need removing, the not-so-dainty covers and cover-ups we need to peel off and toss.