How often do we get to say this? The Times has a fabulous piece of reporting on the front page today by Ethan Bronner showing that Jenin in the northern West Bank has become a source of Palestinian tranquility and prosperity. Bronner cites 4 causes: the weakness of Hamas, the evacuation of settlements, the fact that the separation wall follows the Green Line for once, and the influence of Gilboa, just across the Green Line in Israel. Israeli Arabs have been barred from getting into the West Bank; yet quietly, Gilboa Arab investors have been allowed to get into Jenin. And in Gilboa, Jews and Arabs coexist. Bronner says:
is 40 percent Arab and 60 percent Jewish and the inhabitants have
worked assiduously to create their own kind of model — of Arab-Jewish
coexistence in Israel.
An example was on display
last month when high school students in Gilboa took part in what may be
the only one of its kind in the world — the finals for the Bible-Koran
contest. Twelve teams, each made up of one Jew and one Arab, were asked
questions in both Hebrew and Arabic about the holy books. A mixed team
of Jewish and Muslim teachers acted as judges. An Israeli Arab was the
master of ceremonies.
Isaac Herzog, Israel’s minister of social
welfare, was on hand and told the audience that Gilboa was a model for
Israel, that every Israeli Jew should learn the Koran, [emphasis Weiss's] that equality of
opportunity should be the norm.
The head of the Gilboa regional
council, Daniel Atar, is a Jew and his deputy, Eid Salem, is an Arab.
Together they have built a warm relationship with the Palestinian
governor of the Jenin area, Qadoura Moussa. The three meet frequently
to formulate plans for economic cooperation in agriculture and
commerce. Together, they have visited the French-German border area and
Switzerland, seeking models of coexistence.
“There are two kinds
of peace,” Mr. Atar said one recent afternoon in his office with Mr.
Salem at his side. “There is the one on a piece of paper that doesn’t
stand up to any test and there is the one built from the bottom up.
That is the one we are hoping to build. It is increasingly clear that
if Israeli Jews cannot figure out how to have good relations with
Israeli Arabs, there won’t be peace beyond the borders, either. We have
a choice in Israel of making peace or living in a bunker.”
The wisdom here is that government is almost always an abstraction in our day-to-day lives. My strongest impression of Israel on my one visit was how little the Jews had to do with Arabs. The story also serves my agenda of post-identity-politics, and suggests that there will be no healing in Israel/Palestine without some meaningful right of return. Two-state, schmoo-state. There must be respect for people's real relations to the land. This is the Middle East, not New Jersey. An Arab majority in rural areas is an inevitability, and who cares in the end what they call their states so long as minorites are respected, and Palestinians too can aspire. By putting this piece on the front page, the Times challenges all racial/religious ideologues, and suggests that American Jews ought to concentrate on living happily in the U.S. and leave the peoples of I/P to figure out their future together.
A great story. Thanks to Richard Witty for sending it along. (And a little self-promotion: this blog touched on parts of the Jenin story 3 months back at AIPAC and the NY Theatre Workshop.)
