On Three Years in Jerusalem

Emma Williams is a British physician and journalist WHO has written extensively about the second intifada in the early 2000s. She has recently published a memoir on the subject, It's Easier to Reach Heaven than the End of the Street (Olive Branch Press, 2010).

In your book, It’s Easier to Reach Heaven than the End of the Street, you make a point not to ascribe greater blame to one side or the other for the “situation” in the West Bank and Gaza. Was this hard for you to do while living in Jerusalem?

Like most visitors arriving in Israel, I had assumptions about the situation, derived mainly from exposure to media in the West. If, however, you venture into the Occupied Territories or East Jerusalem, it doesn’t take long for these assumptions to fall apart. Of course, if you avoid certain places and realities - as I'm afraid many visitors, especially from the United States, tend to do - you can leave the region none the wiser. The immediate cruelties involved are certainly hard (in the sense of painful) to witness. On the other hand, it is also difficult not to want to try to understand the backgrounds behind, and driving, these cruelties. One political scientist described the process thus: first, you arrive thinking it’s all terrorism and self-defense; second, on seeing the reality you realize this isn’t the case; third, you get fired up by what you see and convinced that, if only the outside world knew what was really going on, the international community (and the United States in the main) would be forced to bring the occupation to an end for the sake of both sides. Lastly, the hopeless intransigence of both sides’ leaders, and the myopia of the international community, makes you despair of any solution. In short, emotional reactions to the situation are inevitable, but not helpful.

You write about how problematic Ariel Sharon’s history was preceding his election as Prime Minister. How much do you feel that elected leaders like Sharon are symptoms of popular feeling?

A sizeable proportion of the Israeli population always detested Sharon for actions he had been involved in – over a nearly 50 year period – including some that many Israelis call war crimes, and yet in the elections of February, 2001, he was elected Prime Minister with a large majority. His insistence on walking onto the Temple Mount along with a thousand Israeli police at a time of huge tension (the Camp David talks had just collapsed) in order to undermine the Israeli Government of the time was undoubtedly a provocation. As Arafat predicted in his pleas to PM Ehud Barak not to allow Sharon’s planned walk, the walk led to exactly what Sharon wanted – an uprising. The Palestinians played into Sharon’s hands, first by responding to his provocation at all; and then, after several unarmed protesters were shot dead, by resorting to bullets; and, ultimately, after weeks of IDF siege and the killing of over a hundred Palestinians, to bombs, including spectacularly vicious suicide bombings. This virtually destroyed the Israeli peace movement of the time, helping to push the Israeli electorate to the right. Meanwhile PM Barak announced that he had ‘no partner for peace’ ignoring the fact that, if one is genuinely interested in finding a solution, there is no choice but to negotiate with the enemy. The information that no negotiation partner existed, thereby – apparently – leaving overwhelming force as the only option, led a large proportion of the Israeli people to vote for the strong man whose reputation they trusted in time of crisis – even the one who had deliberately provoked the crisis in the first place. So yes, Sharon’s election was a symptom of popular feeling, but he was amply assisted by his political opponents, Palestinian and Israeli.

Was the election of Benjamin Netanyahu and the appointment of Avigdor Lieberman similar in scope to the election of Sharon?

It has often been pointed out that violent episodes in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have led to rightward shifts in Israeli politics. It isn’t surprising that the reaction to violence and threats is to seek protection from those political forces that dwell on the differences between the groups involved and who promise strong-arm tactics to counteract them. Israelis, being particularly vulnerable to existential fears, are no exception. It takes a courageous leader to seek a longer-term view, as did Rabin when, in 1992, he pointed out to Israelis that it was time to drop the politics of victimhood. Unfortunately, such courage is rare. It is more common to see fears, legitimate or otherwise, manipulated and stoked up. PM Benjamin Netanyahu has manipulated Israelis’ vulnerability in order to bolster himself politically (for example, in 2006, he drew a direct analogy between Iran and Nazi Germany), to silence critics, and further the expansionist agenda that is so destructive to Israelis’ and Palestinians’ futures. The rise of Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the far right Yisrael Beitenu party, is an extreme result of Israel’s shift to the right. As for ‘scope’, one Israeli commentator warned that the appointment of the ‘unrestrained and irresponsible’ Lieberman, ‘constitutes a strategic threat in its own right.’

You also write that the Israeli settlers represent a fairly extreme minority, yet they seem to play a significant role in shaping Israeli policy. How much of a role do they play and is its size warranted?

The recent visit to Israel of Vice President Joe Biden, and the resulting shift in US-Israel relations, has brought into focus the role played by the settlers. In Jerusalem to confirm American support for Israel and to promote peace negotiations, Biden was greeted with the humiliating announcement that Israel was to build 1600 more Jewish-only housing units in East Jerusalem. This news directly threatened peace negotiations. Also, when the apology came it was not for the substance – i.e. yet more settlement building – but merely for the embarrassing timing of the announcement. In other words, settlement expansion would go ahead (more have been announced since the visit). Whereas most settlers are there for material reasons, a minority are hard-core nationalist religious groups who often claim possession on the basis that God promised the land to Abraham, as well as some extreme nationalists who are secular but determined to do all they can to prevent a two-state solution. They may be a minority but they wield disproportionate influence as they or their supporters hold significant posts throughout Israel's bureaucracy and military. One commentator has called this “Israel's settler-security-industrial complex”. With this increasingly powerful base they can and do, as we have seen so clearly since Biden’s visit, promote their own interests at the cost of Israel’s.

You write of an Israeli Lieutenant Colonel who noted that Israel’s actions towards West Bank Palestinians and Israeli Arabs were hardly in keeping with the values of a democracy. Is Israel running the risk of deteriorating its democratic institutions?

Running the risk indeed. An increasing number of Israelis realize that Israel cannot maintain its control over the land and its subjection of millions of Palestinians and remain a democracy. The greater population grown rate among Palestinians means that very soon there will be fewer Jews west of the Jordan than there are Palestinians. If a genuinely viable two-state solution is not established, Israel is left with three choices: first, living in a state of Jews and Palestinians that is democratic, but by definition (since the majority won’t be Jewish) not a specifically Jewish democracy; second, maintaining its rule of the Palestinians by force, not allowing a democratic society, i.e. apartheid; or, third, widespread ethnic cleansing to drive the Palestinians from their homes in the occupied territories. This happened in 1948, as Israeli historians have meticulously detailed. Other factors giving many Israelis concern for their country’s democratic future include growing repression, e.g. harassment of the largely peaceful demonstrators in places such as Bili’in, Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah, arbitrary arrests, imprisonments, and declaring areas ‘closed military zones’ to deny the right of protest. Additionally, settlers enjoy an increasingly obvious immunity to police action; human rights groups are attacked by the state (e.g. by making access to the occupied territories increasingly difficult), and there have been attempts to disenfranchise Israel’s Palestinian citizens.