Amos Oz
Some 2004 quotes from liberal Israeli novelist Amos Oz reprinted in David Remnick's Reporting:
Suppose Sharon gave a Sadat-style speech to the Palestinian National Assembly expressing empathy, saying we'll do anything to heal the Palestinian wonds short of committing suicide, saying it will be hard but you will have an independent state with a share of Jerusalem. Suppose he said it on the anniversary of the massacre of Palestinians at Deir Tassin. Can you imagine the earthquake? And suppose Arafat went on Palestinian television and said that after a hundred years of bloody wars I finally realize that this is the Jewish national home, too. We need a two-state solution. I realize that this is not a likely scenario, but this is what was missing in the nineties. Imagine the reverberations in every Palestinian refugee camp and the entire Muslim world. But no one is ready to do it.
...
Many Americans and Europeans are sentimental about conflict resolution... They think the first thing to do is solve the hatreds, make friends out of enemies, and only then make peace. But, historically, dealy enemies, swearing inwardly to cheat and betray, sign peace treaties. This would be a divorce that rsults not in a honeymoom but in an emotional de-escalation that will take generations. Look at the Europeans. It took them a thousand years to make peace. Even as they wag their finger at use like a Victorian governess, they have a history of rivers of blood. I will risk a prophecy: it will not take the Middle East as long to make peace as it did Europe. And we'll shed less blood.
...
[T]he children of the same opprssive parent can often be the worst of enemies. The Palestianians look at me, the Israeli, as an extension of white, sophisticated, colonizing Europe, which returned to the Middle East to do the same old thing: dominate, humiliate, like European crusaders. The other side, the Israelis, see the Palestinians not as fellow victims but as pogrom-makers, Cossacks, Nazis, oppressors in kaffiyehs and mustaches playing the same ancient game of cutting Jewish throats from the fun of it. You will hear this in many synagogues: they are pharoahs, the goyim, and we are the lambs surrounded by seventy wolves. Neither party will ever give up this sense of victimhood and will forever dispute who was David and who was Goliath.
...
The Arabs were deeply injured by the creation of Israel, by its relative prosperity, by what they regard as an endorsement of Israel by most of the West. The Palestinians were injured by the fact that they lost a signficant part of their homeland. But this is not war of civilizations. Just the term - 'the clash of civilizations' - is a hopelessly Hollywood thing, kind of like Star Wars. This is a conflict about hundreds of thousands of people who lost their homes, Palestinians and Jews from Europe and the Arab countries... It is about one very small country inflicting a terrible, humiliating defeat on a people who have not had a military victory since the days of Saladin.
Pretty moving stuff, hey?
Suppose Sharon gave a Sadat-style speech to the Palestinian National Assembly expressing empathy, saying we'll do anything to heal the Palestinian wonds short of committing suicide, saying it will be hard but you will have an independent state with a share of Jerusalem. Suppose he said it on the anniversary of the massacre of Palestinians at Deir Tassin. Can you imagine the earthquake? And suppose Arafat went on Palestinian television and said that after a hundred years of bloody wars I finally realize that this is the Jewish national home, too. We need a two-state solution. I realize that this is not a likely scenario, but this is what was missing in the nineties. Imagine the reverberations in every Palestinian refugee camp and the entire Muslim world. But no one is ready to do it.
...
Many Americans and Europeans are sentimental about conflict resolution... They think the first thing to do is solve the hatreds, make friends out of enemies, and only then make peace. But, historically, dealy enemies, swearing inwardly to cheat and betray, sign peace treaties. This would be a divorce that rsults not in a honeymoom but in an emotional de-escalation that will take generations. Look at the Europeans. It took them a thousand years to make peace. Even as they wag their finger at use like a Victorian governess, they have a history of rivers of blood. I will risk a prophecy: it will not take the Middle East as long to make peace as it did Europe. And we'll shed less blood.
...
[T]he children of the same opprssive parent can often be the worst of enemies. The Palestianians look at me, the Israeli, as an extension of white, sophisticated, colonizing Europe, which returned to the Middle East to do the same old thing: dominate, humiliate, like European crusaders. The other side, the Israelis, see the Palestinians not as fellow victims but as pogrom-makers, Cossacks, Nazis, oppressors in kaffiyehs and mustaches playing the same ancient game of cutting Jewish throats from the fun of it. You will hear this in many synagogues: they are pharoahs, the goyim, and we are the lambs surrounded by seventy wolves. Neither party will ever give up this sense of victimhood and will forever dispute who was David and who was Goliath.
...
The Arabs were deeply injured by the creation of Israel, by its relative prosperity, by what they regard as an endorsement of Israel by most of the West. The Palestinians were injured by the fact that they lost a signficant part of their homeland. But this is not war of civilizations. Just the term - 'the clash of civilizations' - is a hopelessly Hollywood thing, kind of like Star Wars. This is a conflict about hundreds of thousands of people who lost their homes, Palestinians and Jews from Europe and the Arab countries... It is about one very small country inflicting a terrible, humiliating defeat on a people who have not had a military victory since the days of Saladin.
Pretty moving stuff, hey?
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