Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor

by Yossi Klein Halevi

Gaza. Once again, Barak said yes, and Arafat said no. Later, Clinton blamed Arafat for the collapse of the peace process. This was the shattering moment for many Israelis who believed in the possibility of resolving the conflict. I know Israelis who had devoted their careers to convincing their fellow citizens that the Palestinian leadership wanted peace with Israel, that we only had to make a credible offer and your side would naturally agree. The tragedy for the Israeli Left was that it actually succeeded in convincing a large part of our public to trust its approach. And then the peace process literally blew up in our faces. In 2008, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert offered Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas the equivalent of full withdrawal from the territories, with land swaps. Abbas didn’t respond. Today, ordinary Israelis who desperately want to live normal lives in a normal country at peace with its neighbors regard those leftists who still insist that Palestinian leaders want peace as delusional. However horrifying the violence of the second intifada, its underlying motive was no less unsettling for Israelis: a denial of the Jewish people’s right to exist as a sovereign nation in any part of the land we share, a denial of the idea that this is a land that needs to be shared by two peoples. We experienced the terrorism as an expression of a deeper pathology: an intention to destroy the Jewish presence in this land. A revolt not against occupation but against Israel...