Israelis and Palestinians

I just finished reading The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan. I recommend it highly. The book tells the story of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in some detail, but it also recounts the story of an Israeli peace activist and a Palestinian activist for return of the Palestinians to their pre-Israel lands. That the Palestinian was born and lived as a child in the same house that the Israeli grew up in, that they were friends for decades, and that they made that house into a center for Palestinian children in Israel makes the story truly exceptional.

I have been reading a fair amount about the Israeli-Palestinian situation over the past month, including No Man's Land: Despatches from the Middle East by Richard Crowley, another good book.

As a result, I have come to fear that a settlement of the conflict is quite unlikely in any reasonable time frame. Looking at the facts on the ground, Israel is taking over more and more control of the land west of the Jordan, and the Israeli's and their allies who wish to see the two-state solution abandoned in favor of a Jewish state seem to be gaining their desired ends. This leaves more than five million Palestinians in limbo.

It is a wonderment to me how the beliefs of people affect their actions. I assume that all people want good lives for themselves and opportunities for good lives for their children. Lots of Israeli Jews have opted to immigrate to Australia or the United States in search of better lives and more security than they can find in Israel. Lots of Palestinians have opted to immigrate to other Arab lands or to the United States for the same reason.

Yet millions of Israeli's continue to live in Israel. Many of them do so, I assume, out of love of the land and the local community, including their family and friends that continue to live around them. Many do so out the desire to live in a Jewish nation, although the majority of Israeli Jews are secular.

So too, millions of Palestinians continue to seek a return to historical Palestine, even though more than four million live in refugee camps with little realistic hope of every returning. Large numbers support Fatah and Hamas striving for goals that appear to be very distant at best, and often their actions result in great personal danger and sacrifice.

I am the child of immigrants, having lived in three countries and worked in more than 35 myself, the father of a child born in another country, with family members who have lived in a number of other countries. I live in the United States, where people move from house to house frequently. Here there is a common belief that if there are no good jobs in the state in which you live, you should move to a state where there are good jobs. Increasingly Americans believe that one have to have an education which prepares one to change not only jobs, but also careers several times in a working lifetime. Giving up opportunities for oneself or for ones children for love of place seems profoundly unintuitive.

Yet most Israelis and most Palestinians seem to find it equally unintuitive that one might leave one's home and one's land for greener pastures. Of course, most Palestinians look back on themselves or their immediate ancestors having left their homes and suffered in the aftermath of that move. However, most Israeli's look back on their own or their immediate ancestor's immigration that in fact achieved a better life.

The answer of course is "culture". Israelis and Palestinians have internalized a cultural value on remaining in what they regard as their ancestral land. Their parents and neighbors shared that value, they learned it as children, and it is reinforced in their adult lives; the value is reinforced and reinforces the cultural institutions of their societies. But that is no answer at all! Why does that value persist in spite of the fact that so many Israelis and Palestinians have migrated and the fact that so many of the migrants have found success and safety abroad?

The more I learn, the less I seem to understand!