SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
After 470 days of war that began with the horrific Hamas attack on October 7 and resulted in the decimation of Gaza by Israel, an agreement has finally been signed for a ceasefire and return of the Israeli hostages. As a former Melbourne high school teacher who has been living in Jerusalem for the past seven years, the ceasefire announcement filled me with a mixture of relief and trepidation.
In Jerusalem, I work as a journalist for The Jewish Independent and as the education director of Kids4Peace Jerusalem, an interfaith-dialogue youth movement for Israeli and Palestinian children. In both of my jobs, I have heard hundreds of stories about how this war has devastated lives. I have friends whose children were kidnapped from the Nova party and murdered in dark tunnels, and colleagues whose extended families were annihilated in devastating airstrikes on Gaza.
To ensure lasting peace, both sides must make every effort not to dehumanise each other.Credit: Getty Images
The question of how to ensure Israelis and Palestinians never endure such horror again consumes me daily. While I have no political power, or the ear of anyone who does, what I can offer to this situation is my insight from experiencing and facilitating thousands of hours of Israeli-Palestinian dialogue. These encounters have taught me that of all the factors that make peace impossible, perhaps the greatest is dehumanisation. This process of depriving individuals or groups of their human qualities is something I see all around me, and it breaks my heart.
As a result of dehumanisation, the vast majority of us believe that the “other side” not only doesn’t want peace, but largely wants “our” side dead. We tend to think that the “other side” are all liars unless they are proposing views that reflect our deepest fears and stereotypes of them.
Consuming immense amounts of polarising information on social media causes many to suffer from a fundamental attribution error: we assume that our radicals are exceptional, while the other side’s radicals are definitive. On the flip side, in the cases where Palestinian and Israeli civilians or leaders express calls for peace or empathy, they are branded as liars or traitors who are not speaking the truth about their future dreams. Therefore, a key element for change is adopting a new way of thinking.
For us to share this land, we both must believe that when the day comes that we choose to stop inflicting violence, the other will respond by ending their campaigns of violence against us. Nurturing and spreading this belief was the key to ending the troubles in Northern Ireland, and it is a belief we will also need to adopt here.
For Jewish Israelis, this could mean returning to the approach of Rabbi Hillel from the Talmud, who taught: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour.” For Palestinian Muslims and Christians, this could involve re-embracing the Hadith of the prophet Muhammad: “None of you truly believes until you wish for others what you wish for yourself”, or the words of Jesus: “In everything, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
It will mean having more women in leadership positions who can bring a wider array of perspectives and creative solutions for conflict to the negotiating table, leading to structural changes that provide security for all.
To stop the violence, we need to believe that there are partners for peace on the other side, by embracing shared learning opportunities and building more social, religious and political institutions based on the principles of justice and equality. Without increasing lived experiences of coexistence, we will always go back to the memories of fear and hatred that have plagued this land for so many years.
One of the best ways to dispel the belief that compromise is a weakness is to take responsibility for the injustices caused in the name of our national struggles. To hold those who commit war crimes accountable in our own courts of Palestine and Israel before the International Criminal Court needs to intervene. To believe that our conflict has solutions, and that compromise is an act of strength and courage for the wellbeing of future generations. It must also involve acknowledging the massive power imbalance between Israel and Palestine.
It means Palestinians believing that Jews in Israel are not colonisers and that they have a deep historical connection to this land, and that their security fears are real and not just made up in response to the Holocaust. It means Jews believing that Palestinians comprise a real nation with deep roots in this land with the undeniable right to self-determination and freedom in their only homeland.
While I may not have the means to convince the majority of people of these truths today, I firmly believe that if we set our sights on making these beliefs mainstream within the next 10 years, it will be the most effective way to prevent the next war and eventually share this land with peace and dignity for all.
This piece is an adapted extract from Ittay Flescher’s new book, The Holy and the Broken: A cry for peace from a land that must be shared, published by HarperCollins.
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