Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor

by Yossi Klein Halevi

Zionism’s intention was to resettle the Jews, not dispossess the Palestinians.

In this decisive phase of replanting an active Jewish presence, there was no land confiscation. The Zionist movement bought land from whoever was legally entitled

to sell.

And I mourn for your people, neighbor, for the people in the sultan’s photographs whose lives are gradually disrupted and, as the conflict between our sides reaches its seminal moment in

1948, uprooted and destroyed.

My definition for the Jews is this: We are a story

we tell ourselves about who we think we are. That’s why the central Jewish ritual that most Jews continue to observe, no matter how far removed from Judaism, is the Passover seder, the retelling of our ancient origins as a people.

The war against Zionism began in earnest after World War I. As Jews deepened their presence in the land, Arabs responded with increasing violence.

The worst occurred in 1929, in the holy city of Hebron, when sixty-nine unarmed Jews—members of the pious old yishuv—were butchered, many literally cut to pieces, by an Arab mob.

This event was a turning point in Zionist thinking. Until then many believed that coexistence was possible, even likely in the long term. After that, though, David Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders began preparing for protracted conflict.

Meanwhile, in the Arab world, the threats against its nearly one million Jews

intensified. One of the most prominent Palestinian leaders, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, spent World War II as Hitler’s guest in Berlin, broadcasting appeals to the Muslim world to align with the Nazis and encouraging ...

The final stage began on November 29, 1947, with the UN vote to establish “independent Arab and Jewish states,” in the language of the General Assembly resolution. That decision was accepted by most of the Zionist movement and rejected by the entirety of the Palestinian national movement, which declared war against the Jewish presence. The day after the UN vote, Jews were attacked throughout the country. And when Israel was established six months later, on May 14, 1948, five Arab armies

invaded, with the intent of destroying the Jewish state at birth.

An American Muslim friend once explained to me why Arab and Muslim nations unanimously rejected partition. The UN, he said, was in those years a white man’s club, which had no right to divide up land in the Middle East, just as the British Balfour Declaration in 1917 had no right to grant the Jews any part of Palestine.

The Israeli Declaration of

Independence cites Jewish historical roots and attachment to the land as proof of our legitimacy—“The land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people,” it begins—and only afterward notes the UN’s endorsement of a Jewish state.

Palestinian refugees were

dispersed in Syria and Lebanon and Jordan, in the Jordanian-held West Bank and the Egyptian-held Gaza Strip.

Nearly one million Jews lived in the Muslim world in 1948; today, barely 40,000 remain.

I hear the predawn call of the muezzin or, rather, multiple calls from minarets on surrounding hills, not quite in sync, echoing each other. Allahu akbar, God is great. I am soothed by the quietly insistent voices, a gentle awakening, preparation for the imminent stirring of the day. “Prayer is preferred to sleep,” they call out. Remember: We are here only temporarily; don’t be a sleepwalker through your own life—don’t waste your time,

caught in the illusion of permanence. And then, abruptly, silence.

We live in such intimacy, we can almost hear each other breathing. What choice do we ha...

Jerusalem Day, commemorating the reunification of the city on June 7, 1967, during the Six-Day War.

Sometimes even sacred principles need to be tempered, to accommodate others’ needs and sensibilities.

The Syrian and Jordanian armies joined together with the Egyptians, encircling Israel.

I discovered something essential about myself in those days: I couldn’t live in a world without Israel.

On the morning of June 5, 1967, I awoke to see my father hovering over the

kitchen radio. War had begun.

Even as Israeli paratroopers surrounded the Old City’s walls, the Israeli government hesitated to give the order to invade—though the area

contains the holiest Jewish sites, to which we’d been denied access ever since the Jordanians seized them in 1948.

Israel’s borders expanded in three stages: first, through the land purchases in the pre-state era, then in the 1948 War—and finally, in the Six-Day War.

The first West Bank settlement—Kfar Etzion, just south of Jerusalem on the road to Hebron—was founded in September 1967, barely three months after the war.

Six months later a group of settlers moved into Hebron—Judaism’s second-holiest city, after Jerusalem.

Hebron, burial place of Abraham and Sarah, is of course the basis for the Jewish biblical claim to the land.

when he realized that the Arab world wasn’t prepared to accept Israel’s legitimacy in any borders, he came to believe that a land-for-peace agreement was

naive. Palestinian terrorism reinforced the message to Israelis that there was no chance for compromise.

Labor’s ability to control the settlement movement

began to unravel on a precise date—November 10, 1975. That’s when the UN, voting 72 to 35 with 32 abstentions, declared Zionism a form of racism—the only national movement ever singled out for such opprobrium.

1977 electoral victory of the right-wing Likud.

That’s what happened in 1977, when President Anwar Sadat of Egypt came to Jerusalem and declared his

acceptance of Israel. In response, the Israeli public supported a total withdrawal from the Sinai desert, which Israel had occupied in the Six-Day War, including uprooting all its settlements.

Simchat Torah, the festival when Jews dance with Torah scrolls to mark the completion of the annual cycle of biblical readings in the synagogue.

I saw Jews raising Torah scrolls, which contain the injunction to remember that we were strangers in Egypt and so we must treat the stranger fairly,

The insistence on empathy with the stranger appears with greater frequency in the Torah than any other verse—including commandments to observe the Sabbath and

keep k...

But like many Israelis, I am ready to partition the land—if convinced the trade-off will be peace, and not greater terror.

There are times when as a soldier you may have to kill. But you

are never permitted, under any circumstances, to humiliate another human being. That is a core Jewish principle.

I emerged from the first intifada convinced that Israel must end the occupation—not just ...