Bird’s Eye View of the Holy Land – Jewish and Palestinian Bird’s Seeing Different Realities on the Ground

David Lamarre-Vincent

July 30 – July 31, 2008

Jerusalem, Israel

Two days listening to young Israelis and Palestinians of generosity of spirit and good will have shown us the world here from their perspective. We speak of the reality on the ground and getting perspective by having a bird’s eye view.  Here one must ask is this view through the eyes of an Israeli bird or a Palestinian bird. The reality on the ground shifts tremendously based upon the eyes through which the world is seen.

Four Israeli students from Hebrew University, three of whom have served earlier in the military, speak with all the love and passion for peace they can muster. If you are looking for black and white solutions ... one state – two states – whatever, look elsewhere. Here the world is defined by finer and finer shades of gray. Complexity built upon even greater complexity.

Having grown up in a world since 1980 defined by the first and second intifada, with the narrative of the founding of Israel in 1948, Israeli young adults speak with both hope and frustration and hopelessness of their sense of a very short time left for establishment of a lasting peace.

This is a future earnestly desired but virtually impossible for them to envision.  Imagine the life of someone starting out on adulthood with only a vague and fleeting sense of a permanent stable, secure and lasting future.

The view from this bird is of an Israel that must be always a Jewish State with a Jewish army. The memory of never again and never forget the holocaust is palpably present and colors their future.

Young Israelis seek to break the sixty year impasse of contention with their Arab Christian and Muslim neighbors. Strikingly they relate that the vast majority of Jewish citizens have virtually no contact with Palestinians nor any desire or need to fill this gap in their lives.  They along with many other Jewish Israel citizens see a free democratic Jewish state with a Jewish army to ensure their protection.  This results in the two edged sword of being powerful militarily while feeling constantly vulnerable to threat from the other.

A young adult, former soldier, prepared to engage in dialogue with Palestinians and Europeans this past month. He went in with this complex and foggy sense of the future. He was prepared to acknowledge the imperfections of Israeli rule in exchange for admission of good and ill on the part of his Palestinian dialogue counterparts.

He was totally unprepared for the deluge of feeling from both the Palestinian and the European who see the State of Israel’s rule very differently.  His wished for acknowledgement of good and ill on both sides was foiled.

Palestinians have a totally different impression of life on the ground. Their bird’s eye view is of being in a prison with Israeli jailers in their own historic land. The free and democratic life is beyond their lived reality.

Israeli young adults find it remarkably difficult to envision a world of hope. A vision of a better life without threat to their existence is a constant and haunting presence in the background. Their bird’s eye view is of Israel as both their salvation and security immersed in a world without stability and security being surrounded internally and externally by threats to their lives.

Where does the Jewish Israeli bird or the Palestinian Arab bird find a vision of a better life?