Palestine, Israel, power and problems

Earlier today I was out on my pushbike getting some exercise. I was cycling down a relatively small but straight country road and there was a van parked on the left-hand side with its hazard flashers going. I approached the van with some caution and began to overtake it. As I began to move past it, it set off! As I got level with the driver’s window he realised I was there and paused allowing me to move in front of him. I was both annoyed and pleased with him. Annoyed because he set off without looking and pleased because he stopped when he realised that had he continued he would have probably knocked me off my bike.
I often go out on my bike in order to muse about difficulties that I am having with various topics or activities in my life. Just before I began to overtake the van I have been considering a number of conversations I’ve had with a close friend about the Middle East and Israel/Palestine in particular. Now I do not profess to be an expert in anything but least of all in this particular tangle of religion, politics, power and resources. It is a thorny problem that has defied a solution by the best minds (and some of the worst) on the planet.
After I settled down from my near miss with the van I turned onto a much larger road and I continued my musings about this apparently intractable situation. While I was continuing my thinking the van that I had overtaken earlier drove past me at speed. The road where he overtook me (and it was a male) was much wider and I was very much tucked in to the left-hand curb as I cycled along. However, the van driver seemed to think that it would be appropriate to drive as close to me as he possibly could, indeed so close that I actually brushed along the side of the van with my elbow as he went past. He then speeded up still further and drove off moving significantly to the right and closer to the crown of the road as he did so.
This action, which struck me as an apparently crude attempt to create some kind of emotion within myself, led me to begin to think about my earlier thoughts which were about Mark Serwotka’s comments in the last few days regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict. Even as I write the word conflict I am thinking that there are those who will protest at the use of the word. So perhaps I should return to the use of the word problem, though that seems a rather trite description of the events that occur on a daily basis in around Israel, the Gaza Strip and other areas where Palestinians and Israeli’s are resident upon the land.
Mark Serwotka, in a recording published by the Independent, PCS general secretary suggested the country (Israel) had created the story to hide what he called its own “atrocities”. The reason I made the link between this and my brush with the van and its driver was that while I appeared to be the injured party with regard to the initial situation where the van pulled out in the second situation the van driver’s behaviour was clearly intended to be intimidatory and the driver sailed sufficiently close to the wind to unnerve me but without actually doing anything that I could reasonably claim to be a deliberate act.
The friend with whom I had been having the discussions about the Israel/Palestine problem and asked me if I understood what Serwotka’s motivation could have been at this particular moment in time. As someone who works with people as a psychotherapist I made the profound error of making assumptions about motivations of which I could know nothing. Afterwards, I began to consider my own behaviour in that respect and began to realise that while it seemed to me that there were a number of possible reasons why Serwotka behaved in the way that he did and I have little doubt that from his point of view they were good reasons. I felt in much the same position as I had with the van driver who also had his own good reasons for behaving the way he did. However, neither set of behaviours appear to have added anything of benefit in either situation. Nor did I have any knowledge of the motivations for the behaviour.
The rest of the bike ride was taken up with considering the Palestine/Israel problem from a different perspective. One of the things that I have learned about the situation is that what isn’t made clear in much of the rhetoric and discussion has taken place over the past months is the relative positions of the protagonists in this extremely angry and polarised argument about anti-Semitism.
Whichever position this situation is considered from all the people involved no doubt have good reasons for behaving the way they do. Whether those good reasons are based upon facts, lies or beliefs doesn’t change the fact that those individuals, communities and nations hold onto those facts, lies or beliefs.
I do not propose to carry out an in-depth analysis of the Israel Palestine problem for I neither know enough to be able to make sense of it nor do I have the experience and analytic capacity to be able to make any kind of objective assessment. Therefore, I’m going to focus on two aspects of this situation that seem wholly incompatible to me.
The first is the right of Israel to exist as provided for by the arrangements made in 1948. Again, I do not propose to argue the ins and outs of how that came about and who was displaced as a result of that event. I’m sure there is plenty of historical fact and fiction that could create plenty of heat rather than light around who did what to whom. I am more interested in the reality that is today in which an Israeli state clearly exists and is recognised by majority of countries across the world. That Israel exists is vitally important to Jews throughout the world; it is a recognition that they are not stateless and that they do have a homeland to where they can go and be recognised as part of a Jewish nation. It also represents, ironically, a place of safety as well as identity.
The second is the demand of Palestinians to have a right of return and by this I understand that this is a right of return to the lands that they occupied prior to the existence of Israel in 1948. My understanding of the situation is simple, perhaps too simple but I understand from reading a considerable amount of material that there are many factions within the Palestinian groupings that believe implacably that Israel should not exist. And therefore, the right of return would also mean the end of Israel as a state.
My limited understanding of the Israeli position is that there can be no right of return for exactly the same reason – that it would be the end of Israel as a state. The reasoning from the Israeli point of view is quite different to that of the Palestinians. The Israeli viewpoint is quite simply one of numbers: if Palestinians were allowed to return to occupy the lands that is now Israel and had an equal right to vote and to elect the members of a government who would then govern the land, whatever it was called, they would very simply outvote and outnumber any Jews who were also occupying land in the territory and this would ultimately be the end of what might be regarded as a Jewish homeland.
My discussions and my explorations, albeit very limited, of this particular problem suggest that there can be no solution while both of these opposing positions are maintained. Therefore, I began to consider alternative approaches as I do in my work with individuals, organisations and communities.
When a problem is intractable it seems to me there is little point in continuing to consider it in the same light and in the same way time after time. As Einstein once said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”. It seems to me that both sides use the same kind of thinking and consequently come up with the same solutions. Those solutions being unacceptable to the other side on every occasion. The solutions also often lead to violence and destruction.
The question I want to ask and which we hear so little about is what are the aspects of this situation that both sides can agree upon? What are those things that do enable cooperation? What are those things that both sides are able to work on together and build trust? What are those small steps that both sides have taken to attempt to come together in some way and work on smaller problems that can be solved and perhaps in and of themselves be steps towards a different solution.
I am aware of many initiatives that have taken place between Jews and other members of the Israeli state and people who would consider themselves Palestinians and members of that particular ethnic group that have made progress, only to be destroyed by the demands of others with regard to the bigger and intractable differences.
This change of approach also has to take place in organisations like the British Labour Party which has become increasingly polarised by stances taken defending one side or the other. It is also likely that this position taking is not a straightforward desire to see justice for one side or the other but as an opportunity to muddy the waters still further using economic and purely political ideologies in either a positive or negative way. For example, citing the economic superiority and ability to use force of an Israeli state in relation to the Palestinians while conversely the Israelis citing their geopolitical weakness with regard to numbers and how any change of political status would radically alter their ability to exist as a nation. These tools become useful in the inevitable internal wranglings of such an organisation and can be used to manipulate leaders in unhelpful and inadvisable ways.
I can see the fear and anger and more importantly, the insecurity on both sides in the Middle East. I can see that fear, anger and insecurity in the differing factions within the Labour Party. Furthermore, I can see how the relative strength of the different factions will be undermined by even the smallest movement or concession toward the other. This intractable position then inevitably produces behaviours that reinforces existing behaviours by both sides. This in itself creates greater chasms and more divisions that leads to further misunderstanding, entrenchment and distrust.
No lasting solution can be built upon the quicksand of mistrust and disbelief in those with whom we attempt to communicate and work with. It is my belief that Mark Serwotka chose to act in the way that he did, not because he wanted to do anything useful, but because he wished to apportion blame (which is a largely pointless exercise in the situation) to Israel and furthermore he did not consider in any way the consequences of his actions and what they might mean to others involved both in the British Labour Party and in the Middle East. He is like my van driver who perhaps felt irritated by my inconveniencing of him enough to attempt to give me a scare so that perhaps in future I won’t be such a nuisance to van drivers who are clearly more important than I am as a cyclist.
One of the things that has come from my thinking about this is that this situation is driven by fear and fear of loss; loss of life; loss of land and loss of status. Perhaps it is time that the protagonists both in the Labour Party and in the conflict in the middle east for which it has become a metaphor, consider what they might do to begin to build something together that is worthwhile, rather than attempting to tear down that which they fear.
If that were to be the case, then perhaps protagonists might look more widely at some of the solutions that, while apparently much more distal with regard to the present day, are inevitably proximal with regard to our children and our children’s children. For if we are to survive as human beings then we need to consider the possibility that the squabbles we see today, not only in the Middle East and the British Labour Party but worldwide, could potentially bring about the end of our species either brutally in a final nuclear solution or slowly by the destructive overuse and waste of resources that could destroy our habitat and that of all the other species on this planet.