Homecoming

This is a bit of a long story.

Last year I had the amazing opportunity to travel to Belize and work on an archaeological dig site in the jungle for a month. One of the staff members on the team was an archaeologist from Guatemala. She is a fascinating and lovely woman. I really enjoyed working with her. 

Many conversations we had in our test pit were about politics. We talked about the American War on Drugs and its effect on life in Latin America; we talked about education, about arts and literature, everything. 

One day we got unto the subject of Latin American history and the pan-Latin American guerrilla and revolutionary movements during the Cold War. Both sides of her family had been involved in political and revolutionary movements and she has known many people who were part of guerrilla movements in the past. 

Now, at that time, the federal election had just ended and as a social democrat I was feeling a little depressed. I told her about the prorogation of parliament over the detainee abuse scandal, about the living conditions for first nations, oxymoronic defence spending and foreign policy and the fact that despite of this and the Conservative government breaking the law, they still achieve power. 

Finally my Guatemalan friend said: “if things are as bad as you say, when will you take to the hills?”

“What?”

“When will you become a guerrilla?”

Hmm. I really don't know. 

The use of violence to achieve political change has always been an ethically grey area for me. I would never condone violence resulting in the death. But at the same time, I can understand those the reasons and the desperation associated with the use of violence.

This weekend I was planning to visit Bethlehem and a few other cities in the West Bank. However my plans changed at the last minute and I was advised that this might not be a good time to go.

As part of deal that was made between Israel and over a hundred hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners, the remains of some 90 Palestinians who were killed carrying out attacks against Israel were repatriated to the Palestinian Authority. Some of the dead were killed as far back as 1975 and had been in Israeli possession.

Now this is a classic ethical conundrum in the Middle East. On the one hand an exchange like this could be interpreted as a confidence building gesture that could get Israelis and Palestinian back to the negotiating table. But of course, emotions are running high.

This gesture is allowing the families of those killed to grieve back in Palestine. There are many Islamic traditions associated with burial and the grief process.  Hopefully it will help families to heal. 

Of course this situation has also been heavily politicized. In Gaza, Hamas fighters treated the bodies to military funerals and 21 gun salutes. For many of the families the deaths of their children will be canonized as symbols of Palestinian Islamic residence. But treating their sons and daughters like martyrs will never bring them back. 

For the Palestinians, these young people were freedom fighters, combating an oppressive regime and struggling from independence from occupation.

For Israelis, these people were terrorists, who had come to wreak havoc on innocent civilians and this gesture is purely a bargaining chip to appease a people that want to see them destroyed. 

Emotions are high in Israel and Palestine. 

I’m not really sure where I stand on this. I thought I knew a lot about the situation in Israel and Palestine before I came here. Now I feel like I know nothing. To truly understand what life is like here you really do have to live here. You really have to experience the abject poverty, distrust and desperation of the Palestinians and the deep fear, sorrow and anger of the Israelis first hand to truly conceptualize the complexity of the conflict. 

I don’t know when I would turn to violence if I had lived a life in the shoes of an Israeli or a Palestinian, or a Guatemalan. But I can imagine that I would experience a nightmare the likes of which I have never experienced before. 

Nonviolence is the answer to crucial political and moral questions of out time; the need for humanity to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Humankind must evolve for all human conflict a method, which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. 

–Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

 All I know, is that it is a time of grieving and healing for many families who have lost sons and daughters on both sides of this conflict.

Now, more then ever, it’s important for people to turn away from violence and the community of Neve Shalom/Wahat-al-Salam carries on.

If we are to live together in peace, we must come to know each other better.

 –Lyndon Baines Johnson

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18276354
 http://www.haaretz.com/news/national
 http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/05/20125315123640683.html