By DAVID IZRAELEVITZ
Los Aamos

Several conversations keep coming to mind as I read the upsetting news in the Middle East. The first occurred in 1978 when I worked the summer of my college freshman year as a gofer in a welding shop.

I happened to meet a welder who had grown up in the West Bank. We never had a long conversation, maybe we were both too reticent, but I do remember his sadness and longing for home. I had never met any Palestinian before nor have I since.

When I visited Israel for the first time in 1981, I heard hateful words about Palestinians as a people from some in my own family. I felt the revulsion arising from knowing someone, specifically, who was being maligned.

Roll forward to 1991, in the middle of the First Gulf War, and I had a much longer conversation with a fellow worker at a defense firm in Boston. He was not sympathetic at all about the legitimacy of the Israeli view.

I asked him whether the Kurds deserved to return to their homeland, a pressing issue at the time, and he said yes, of course. I then said Jewish people have been pining to go back home for 2000 years, and when is that dream supposed to die? He did not have an answer.

When is the dream to go home supposed to wither away… is it in 10, 100, or 1000 years?

There is a natural tendency while observing a foreign conflict to divorce ourselves from the perspectives of each party, to take on the pseudo-objective view where all, or none, are equally at fault. The Palestinians deserve a homeland; the Jews deserve a homeland. Some Palestinians demonize Jews; some Jews demonize Palestinians. Violence is inflicted on Jews; violence is inflicted on Palestinians. Isn’t it all a tragedy with no good guys, and no good answers?

To some, that is a comforting middle ground. Hamas proclaims their goal is the eventual conquest of all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. The Israeli ultra-right wants nothing less than the expulsion of all Palestinians and the creation of a Greater Israel.

But the analogy ends there. There is no acceptance by any recognized Palestinian leadership in the West Bank, or even more unquestionably in Gaza, of the legitimacy of a Jewish state in the region. Israel has made or accepted multiple negotiations toward peace since 1948, but at the negotiating table, the battlefield, at a concert for peace, those offers have been refused.

My second trip to Israel was in December 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic. Terry and I traveled throughout Israel escorted by Segev, a garrulous Israeli whose family had fled Yemen in the 1950s, proud of both his Israeli and Yemenite heritage. His parents served us Yemenite food, and we saw their collection of Yemenite clothing and artifacts. But there was no pining for Yemen from this refugee or his family. They had returned home.

He was also our driver, and as we looked over the beautiful, verdant hills of Galilee, reminiscent in some ways of Northern New Mexico, we talked about America, Israel, and politics. I asked him whether there was any hope for peace in the region. He said simply that the peace faction in Israel was dead for now. It will only be revived when there is a partner on the other side, and who knows if that will ever be.

Looking out at the mountains, I did not want to believe him. I believe him now.