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Perspectives: Land of Israel, Palestinian Homeland - The root and the stars
Michel De Goedt
The following lecture was given by Fr. Michel de Goedt to the International Rotary Club in Lille, France in 1981. An analysis of the deep, underlying motives for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can help us to understand better the tragic events through which we have lived during the past few months: war, violence, terrorism, so many inno¬cent victims, not only in Lebanon where there has been a confrontation between the Palestinians and the Israelis, but also in Europe and throughout the entire world where a subtle diplomacy has helped to rouse once again anti¬semitic feelings which one might have expected to disappear after the nazi tragedy and the Second Vatican Council.
As Fr. de Goedt suggests, we must avoid placing ourselves "upon a star" in order to play "the honest and objective broker". Rather we should try to promote an attitude of respect towards this drama involving others (for which our western Christianity must occept its share of responsibility), so that those of our friends killed in the course of it may contribute, in however small a way, to a dialogue which we trust will help to bring about a just and peaceful solution. (The editors)
Let me reassure you at the beginning of the game. You may have the impression that I am about to embark on a ski-run without realizing that a slalom is involved. To deal with such a subject in less than an hour without doing so superficially, to avoid the pitfalls of both party politics and theology and not to be satisfied with a few moral platitudes, is certainly a slalom, and a very tricky one at that. I realize this, and am relying upon the work of many years already devoted to this particular subject for the content of this talk.
Without wasting any more time, I want to look at several attitudes which can be adopted vis-à-vis the drama at the heart of which is a land called 'holy'. The first would be to identify with one of the protagonists. I do not want to unravel the processes of projection and identification which come into play in these 'options'. I will simply point out that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict gives opportunity for fulfilling a need to identify with the "greatest victim" (the expression is borrowed from Maxime Rodinson) or to make one's own the greatest sucess. A second attitude could be that of an honest and objective broker. There is one peculiarity here: it can be adopted only if one lives on Sirius, the "dog-star". The third attitude has its feet on the ground, between the two camps, in fact; it is adopted by people who force themselves to feel as much as possible the impact of everything which affects both camps, thus putting themselves on the firing line, if not in danger of annihil¬ation. This attitude can be criticized only by someone who has first held it long enough to discover the narcissistic pitfalls it contains. There is a fourth attitude also, one which is uncertain of itself, which constantly has to convince itself of the validity of the other three in order to have sufficient interest in a drama played out by others to be committed to those aspects of it which touch it personally and to wish to contribute, however little, towards a possible solution. There is a further attitude I will not classify as a fifth one because it is partly the result of "metapolitics". Underlying all these questions and our ways of dealing with them are options which are either not admitted or are buried in the subconscious and symbolism, the influence of which is so subtle it is scarcely recognized the first time round. I now want to look briefly at these options and this symbolism.
An Error of Early Zionism
All the drama of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was already encapsulated in one of the most celebrated slogans of early Zionism. There is a people without a land (the Jewish people) and a land without a people (Palestine. I will speak of Palestine in what concerns the period preceding the creation of the State of Israel. For a Jew, there is only "the land of Israel"). The "Jewish question" as it was called then, could be resolved only by gathering this people in this land, all the more so because the centuries-old memory of the people "in question" rejected violently any project to settle them in Argentina or Uganda. A people without a land ... if you admit that the Jews are a people, which works only if you subject the idea of a people to specific tests, if you admit that the entire Jewish people had been made aware of the danger they were running in remaining without a land of their own, the first part of the slogan cannot be denied. As for the ties between the Jewish people and Palestine, the facts are evident enough: loss of political autonomy by a violence whose fact has never been accepted; the uninterrupted presence of a Jewish community throughout the centuries (except during one century in Jerusalem); pilgrimages, the immigration of important groups from time to time who might be called pro-Zionists in the sense that Zionism, as conceived and organized by Hertzl, expressed in constant prayer the desire to return to Jerusalem.
What is the second half of the slogan? A Land without a people. This can be called the blind spot in Zionism, a spot which the great powers, by broken promises and shameful manipulation, helped to make a little more blind. There was, if not a people, at least a population in the land so much desired. This population had never been consulted; when it was, its opinion was not taken into account. It is true that Palestinian Arabs profited by Zionist immigration (the value of the land was raised and was often purchased at highly-inflated prices) and that this even gave rise to an Arab immi¬gration from Egypt and Iraq, something which should not be forgotten. But it is well to remember that this must be balanced against the fact that opportunities for reconciliation or compromise with the Arabs (certainly very difficult) were practically all missed by the Zionist movement, a fact admitted even by a historian such as Laqueur. Without going into any more detail, I suggest that two facts cannot be questioned. Even supposing that one could hold the proposition that Zionism, in its modern political dress, is an "historical error" (but the concept "historical error" is perhaps only a pseudo-concept, void of any scientific value. In any case, the "error" was provoked by the monster of antisemitism), and an error which has brought about a serious injustice with regard to the Palestinians. It must be affirmed strongly, however, that Israel's right to existence cannot be put into question. To question this, even if the answer were in the affirmative, is to fail to recognize that the door would be opened, by the imprudence of an unformulated hypothesis, to a more serious and terribleinjustice. It is to claim the right to ask a question to which we would not ourselves submit. Imagine if someone asked us, the French nation, taking everything into account, if we had the right to be a state? The second reality is the Palestinian reality. Being rooted in the same land, with a common experience of the same destiny and the same trials, has engendered in them a national consciousness which, though still embryonic and more "a-positive" than positive, cannot be ignored.
The Land — Not a Right but a Gift
To understand the tension which exists between these two realities, it is necessary to turn to the hidden symbolism which gives a conflict over rights its irresistible weight. For the Jewish people, the land of Israel is the promised land. In the most authentic biblical tradition and, it seems to me, in the tradition of religious Judaism (a religious Jew would not make that distinction), the land of Israel is a bride, not a mother; it is a wedding gift, not a "country". Abraham must leave his country and go to the land that God will give him. The Hebrew people must go forth from Egypt to receive the inheritance promised to the patriarchs. The characteristic of "gift" which distinguishes the land is to striking that, if the people do not fulfil the conditions laid down by God, the gift is, as it were, taken back, the enjoyment of it suspended for a time, even if it is finally assured. Scripture puts into the mouth of God these word: "The land is mine: for you are strangers and sojourners with me." (Lev. 25:23). But Zionism tends to speak of rights which is certainly legitimate in international law, and makes of the wedding gift a mother land, a country. On the other hand the Palestinians "have" a land which they see as their country and they demand that it should be recognized as such, and there is the paradox of a virtual country, called into existence by a promise, and the paradox of a land the maternal aspect of which has only been called into existence by history. Two opposite symbolisms confront each other and they each conceal the process by which they have been transformed. Perhaps both Israeli and Palestinian must symbolically leave the motherland and go, each by his own way, towards the same land seen in different ways, as 'promised', the paths converging thus to be 'acknowledged' each by the other, in such a way that what seems to be an inevitable collision becomes a hoped-for meeting. In biblical times, the institution of a year of jubilee was meant to recall that the land was not subject to absolute ownership.
"It was general emancipation of all the inhabitants of the land. The fields lay fallow; every man re-entered his ancestral property i.e. the fields and the houses which had been alienated returned to their original owners, except for the town houses, which could only be re-purchased in the year after thier sale... Defaulting debtors and Israelite slaves were set free." 1
The application of this utopian law is not vouched for by history. We should rather listen to the voice of the prophet Micah calling to mind the three fundamental attitudes God demanded of the Israelites: to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God (cf. Micah 6:8). Do justice, because social interchange is impossible without law and order. Love kindness... Here kindness must be taken in the best meaning of pietas (hesed in Hebrew: the virtue which upholds and tightens the bonds which hold together members of the same family, clan, tribe or any other group.) Kindness allows a man to truly know those closest to him and to be in solidarity with them. Without the respect and love engendered by this bond, rights are degraded and become no more than a mask for injustice. The exegete, the believer and the theologian linger over the third attitude rec¬ommended to the Israelite: to walk humbly with God. Here the emphasis is put on pietas. Isaiah warned of the evil that would befall "those who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is no more room, and you are made to dwell alone in the midst of the land." (Isaiah 5:8).
The prophet is probably inveighing against a mafia of large landowners. But even if the ways in which the land was acquired were above reproach, the invective loses nothing of its force. When the occupation of all available land ("until there is no more room") results in "grinding the faces of the poor" (Isaiah 3:15), pietas is jeered at and "rights' become a sinister parody.
A Confrontation between the Two Identities
Pietas in relationship to land is only possible when it is administered as a gift instead of being subjected to absolute ownership. The Israeli may be tempted to claim the whole area occupied by his motherland; the Palestinian may be tempted — and succumbs to the temptation in certain charters — to absorb, or to re-absorb the State of Israel in order to occupy fully the country which he finally considers to be his own. This is the infernal logic of original ownership, of fascination with a mother's face which prevents either from turning towards the other to exchange a word of the mutual obligation to share a gift with each other. To the difficulty, unhappily, of establishing a rule of conduct between Israeli and Palestinian and helping the develop¬ment of a consensus of opinion, is added another one, the intransigeance exhibited by the Great Powers over anything that touches Israel. The right of conquest (or of protection!...) is discussed little enough; nor do we speak sufficiently of other peoples (i.e. of peoples subjected to this right); for example, one would not dream of speaking of the right of the United States to exist; nor would one dream, I know, of recommending the creation of an Indian state, "lay and democratic" in place of the United States!... The smallest piece of land trodden on by the Israelis, however, is examined with a magnifying glass and, after learned investigation, at best it is said that "Israel has a right to exist". What suspect zeal, what an aberration to be given the name of concession! What is to be done? Recently, Elianne Amado Lévy-Valensi gave us something to think about: her work — "The Eleventh Trial of Abraham" 2 with the sub-title "Or about Brotherhood". The second half of the book is devoted to "The Palestinian identity". Madame Amado's meditation has something fascinating about it. "A book like this hopes to cast a spell over you" she says on the first line.
The author, who is a psychoanalyst and a philosopher, knows how to say what she wants. On page 157 we read: "We have said at the very beginning that we hope to cast a spell over you." On page 183 she returns to this idea yet a third time in order to show what she means:
"We said at the beginning of the book that we wanted to cast a spell over you and that something like a song or a dancing shadow would reveal its meaning."
What is, in fact, "revealed" here is, that once the question of rights and of facts is set aside as being completely indecisive if not downright fallacious, then the identity of the partners (Israelis, Palestinians) become like dancing shadows. In other words, the author would invite Palestinians to dialogue after having first defined them and their rights in her terms. I do not know whether such a "dance" can take the place of an invitation to a true dialogue, a dialogue which seeks honestly to be a brotherly one.
Sometimes it seems as if one approaches from a blind spot without knowing exactly where it is, in the hope that soon this spot will be clearly seen. Here is an example of this "sometimes": In Israel, contrary to what is thought in the Western world, there is a fundamental Jewish complexity which causes Israelis to put themselves in the place of the other too often rather than not enough. Peres, who is the present leader of the Labour Party, writes:
"The great mistake of the Palestinians has always been to ignore the existence... of Israel. We must not repeat the same mistake by ignoring the Palestinian problem" (cf. pp. 154f).
In spite of a certain narcissism and the involuntary admission of Zionism's initial ignorance about the Arab population of Palestine, this text arouses an interest which might have seemed forbidden. Alas! a truly unbelievable paragraph in the closing pages of Madame Amado's book shows to what extent the casting of spells can go.
"Can the Arab, the Palestinian, really deny us our few acres of land? The extent of his terri¬tories, his riches, his vast populations make it unnecessary. On the contrary, he will enrich himself by withdrawing — as God did in the Tzimtzum which took place at the creation of the world — which will leave to Israel the place dear to the memory of both, of which they are both sons. Abraham, 'the foundation of the world' — a title predicated also of Isaac and Jacob — never dies as it is written of him, but, through Israel, will bring back all peoples to their rightful place" (p. 241).
Thus the Palestinian, identified with the Arab nations, must withdraw in order to leave empty the place they remember as their own, because this memory is coupled with Israel's memory of its own origins. What dialogue is possible when one of those engaged in it shows that he knows in advance the position from which the other must speak? And when that other is invited to speak or keep silence as God, as God himself speaks or keeps silence, is not the honor a little onerous, a little suspect? Withdraw so that I can be myself, and learn to think of yourself as one who is like the creator who "made himself small" (like the Tzimtzum of the kabbalah) so as to leave room for his creatures!...
Clouds still form between the earth and the stars. Buried in the earth are roots that entwine and get in each other's way, while up among the stars are promises and dreams. On the day that the clouds of mirages and illusions are dispelled, then the rain will fall. This rain will then be truly what rain is called in the Middle East — a blessing!
Fr. Michel de Goedt, O.C.D. is the Provincial of his Order in France. A scholar in theology and philosophy, he lived, studied and worked for many years in Jerusalem before returning recently to his native France.
1. R. de Vaux, Ancient Israel, Vol. 1, Social Insti¬tutions. McGraw Hill, 1965.
2. E. Amado Levy-Valensi, L'Onzième Epreuve d'Abraham, ed. J. Claude Lattes, Paris 1981. Part I treats of the confrontation which Abraham avoided having with Lot; Part II, the Palestinian entity.
