On the Footsteps of an Elusive Peace

 In Antisemitism, Honesty, Compassion, and Respect

Nael explains a bit of his history before we stroll around the area and enter the hotel. “You see, this is a map of historical Palestine. It has always been Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Our people believe there is no Israel. Israel has replaced all of our ancient names with their own, it is towns and cities that do not exist.” Maybe I don’t feel so safe anymore.

Nael parks the car alongside the graffitied wall. I see caricatures of Donald Trump, Larry David, and Morgan Freeman blurting out comical slurs, references to popular culture bridged with apartheid. I see political cartoons peppered with scribbles, ‘fuck Israel,’ ‘free Palestine,’ and ‘someday we’ll all be free’ in between. 

Much of the art is provocative: Israeli soldiers urinating on Palestinian babies. Some of the comments make me laugh: ‘This would be a fantastic place to come to if Jews were cheating on their wives,’ and ‘make hummus, not walls.’ Pain and suffering is real— art and language as a coping mechanism. On the other side, there’s pain too. That is a pain I know from family members and friends. The pain of the Palestinian people is one I will never truly understand, but seeing this side with my own eyes is the only way to get a glimpse. 

The elephant in the room: this hotel I talked about. Well, it’s famous for the view, of course: it’s the wall. This wall splits Area A from Area C with a buffer, Area B, in between. If you stretch it out, it’s longer than the country itself— 700 kilometers. Nael says, “Israelis don’t really need this wall. They just loot our land and keep taking more.”

This wall that divides two peoples is deemed an evil land grab, but it protects people like me from bombings and stabbings among other attacks. The wall is to say enough is enough. Reducing fear by increasing defense is the only solution. We will not live anticipating death. 

This hotel is not only fully-operating in its service enterprise, but is a museum of Palestinian history and artwork. Nael takes us through the museum and tells us how Palestinians feel: “The victims, the Jews in the Holocaust, became the oppressors. 1948, Israeli Independence and our Nakbah (catastrophe in Arabic) is like the Holocaust for us.” Yes, for Palestinians 1948 was a catastrophe, but there is not a single strand that ties these two tragedies together. Was 1948 a genocide, on the basis of targetted ethnic or religious persecution? No. Did Israeli-Jews ever regard the Muslim faith or Arab culture with disdain? No. Today, there are laws limiting some Palestinian-Arab privileges, but security comes first. Arab-Muslims and Druze sit alongside Israelis in the Knesset. And, with all the peace attempts proposed by Israel paired with international efforts by the UN among other countries to help the Palestinians— I have no words. 

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