It has been a difficult week in which to remain optimistic about the prospects of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Whether or not one is committed to a two-state solution, the dispossession and displacement of Palestinians – daily acts of the ongoing Naqba – push the chances of a just peace further over the horizon. Measures taken by different branches of the Israeli state upped the pace of creeping annexation of Area C of the West Bank. The military served notices – if being pinned to an iron post counts as serving notices – to some 300 Palestinian families from Ein Al-Hilweh and Umm Jamal in the north Jordan Valley that they must evacuate their homes and take all their possessions with them within a week. Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit ruled that it is legal to confiscate private Palestinian land to build roads to thirteen illegal outposts. That legalization of dispossession would reduce yet again the land in Palestinian hands and increase the fragmentation of Palestinian presence in Area C while solidifying the process of exclusive Jewish settlement.

Perhaps what got to me most this week wasn’t even that bad news. The steady flow of information I have about the harassment of Palestinian farmers in the north Jordan Valley by settlers and soldiers comes mostly from Guy Hircefelds’s Facebook page. Guy records what the grassroots activists of Ta’ayush  and other groups encounter when they go to work in partnership with the Palestinians there. There are some good days when his photos are of pastoral scenes of shepherding. There are much worse days when buildings have been destroyed, when the army block access to land, when a settler breaks an activist’s arm.

Guy leaves his page open for comments and by now he is well known to right-wing advocates of exclusive Jewish settlement. There have been some extended exchanges, mostly full of mutual insults and accusations, but the occasional hint of openness. Guy invites adversaries who claim there is no violence against Palestinians to come and see for themselves, and some settlers invite him to come and see how they live. Well, invitations of sorts.

Solidarity visit to the Jordan Valley, 18.11.17. Photo Guy Hircefeld

But the comment on his page that made me most glum came in response to his report of a relatively large solidarity action – the visit of a group of Israelis, including Combatants for Peace,  members of the Israeli Parliament, and Palestinian leaders. On Facebook Lital Miller mocked the activists as miserable, self-hating traitors, adding that their action would make no difference. And I thought she’s probably right about the last point. There will probably be a concerted legal campaign that will delay the expulsions, maybe similar to the one that has so far prevented the removal of Palestinian Sussiya. Perhaps some European consular staff will come to visit and their Foreign Ministers will send a rebuke to the Israeli government. But sooner or later, the creeping annexation will creep further, Area C will be emptied of Palestinians and so why (according to the Israeli consensus) shouldn’t it become part of the State of Israel? She could be proved right.

I couldn’t even comfort myself with the thought that Palestinian allies in the Arab world will muster to block this coming dispossession. It looks as if Prime Minister Netanyahu has succeeded in his goal of turning Saudi Arabia – and other Sunni Arab states – into a regional ally. So what if this relationship of common enmity to Iran might drag Israel into an unnecessary war with Hezbollah and maybe Syria, so long as it means the autocratic monarchs will let Israel do what it wants in the West Bank? Just as 40 years ago in 1977 when the Likud-led Israeli government opened itself up to a peace accord with Egypt, another Likud-led government seems to be doing better at making friends in the Arab world than the Israeli ‘left’. In other words, the Israeli government is going to get away with its intensification of the settlement project and its gradual Naqba.

PRESIDENT SADAT AND PRIME MINISTER MENACHEM BEGIN IN SERIOUS TALK AT THE KING DAVID HOTEL DINER IN JERUSALEM.

So is there any hope, even dark hope, as Ta’ayush  activist David Shulman calls it. Yes, precisely in the determination and commitment of activists such as Guy there is hope not only for the future, but more significantly hope in the present. Hope because I can see in his photos what peace looks like – the partnership of Israelis and Palestinians on the ground. Not all of them, of course, but enough righteous people for it to be worthwhile not to give up. Hope too in the memory of 40 years ago, when Israeli jubilation about Egyptian President Sadat’s visit showed what lies in Israeli hearts – to be accepted, to be understood, and maybe – as the wonderfully angled shot of Begin and Sadat apparently about to kiss suggests – to be loved in the Middle East. But goodness, most Israeli Jews, including those making nasty comments on Guy’s Facebook page, have a very odd way of showing that they just want to be loved by their neighbours.