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Composing peace as a picture

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Combatants for Peace rally in Beit Jala

Peace-making is an art, an art that demands much skill, patience, a deep, empathetic understanding of the human material of which is peace is made, and willingness to try and fail many times before succeeding. The bi-national Israeli-Palestinian group Combatants for Peace practiced its art of peace-making in its rally against the “Pillar of Cloud” war on Saturday evening, 17thNovember 2012. The movement was started jointly in 2005 by Palestinians and

Israeli contingent marching to Beit Jala

Israelis, who have taken an active part in the cycle of violence; Israelis as soldiers in the Israeli army and Palestinians as part of the armed struggle for Palestinian freedom. Not only have members of the group renounced violence in favour of dialogue and reconciliation, but they have also committed to working together, as former enemies, to achieve an end to the occupation and independence for Palestine alongside Israel.

Before the latest Gaza war broke out last week, Combatants were planning a remarkable event for that evening, a screening on the separation wall of Shelley Hermon’s documentary film, Within the Eye of the Storm. I blogged on another occasion about the Tel Aviv premier of that film. But to show a film about how two former fighters, bereaved by the violence of the occupation, came to be close friends on the very structure that embodies all the forces separating Israelis and Palestinians will be a deeply symbolic event. The war caused the postponement of the event, and in its place Combatants organized a joint demonstration calling for a cease fire and a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Organising such an event in short time is no easy feat. Israelis may not enter Area A of the West Bank, which is under full Palestinian Authority control, without a special permit, while the movement of Palestinians other than within the “islands” that Area A is composed of is restricted by the Israeli military. But a point was found in Beit Jala, by Bethlehem, that enabled access to the Israelis coming for the Tel and Jerusalem area as it is in Area C and which the Palestinian members of Combatants could also reach.

So, we marched separately, about 100 Israelis from where the buses dropped us off on a rural road on the outskirts of Beit Jala in the hilly countryside around Jerusalem, and about 100 Palestinians from within Beit Jala. With only a few onlookers, we Israelis (and others) chanted in Hebrew to those ancient hills: “The people demand a ceasefire,” and “War is a disaster, only peace is the solution.” But along the way, a little peace making had to be done. A couple of Palestinians saw the Israeli flag one member of the group was carrying, and signaled that it be taken down. The Israeli and Palestinian organisers had it seems agreed between themselves that an Israeli flag would be there, but not everyone present was happy with that, or knew about it. The Israeli flag is a symbol of occupation and oppression to Palestinians, not a symbol of Jewish freedom. But by the time we arrived at the meeting point, an acceptable arrangement was found: the two flags were held together. Yet, they were both dwarfed by a huge Palestinian flag being held by the youth across the road at which we met, a fabric affirmation that we were now in Palestine.

Short speeches were read out in Hebrew and Arabic, calling on both sides to cease fire, stop targeting and hurting civilians, stop the incitement, and reach immediately the same agreement that will be reached later in any case but after more casualties and pain. Then the chanting began again, the drummers got their rhythm going, and bodies began to move to it, relaxing the stiffness of two sides standing with placards, banners and flags. One Palestinian kid who was enjoying the rhythm was holding a placard with Netanyahu’s picture and the slogan “Peace refusenik”. Waltzing with Bibi. Maybe the bored Israeli soldiers standing in a line to stop us spilling over into other roads wanted to dance too. It was a Saturday night, after all.

One can’t say we all made peace with each other that day, or had a chance to make friends. The activists of Combatants in their grey tea shirts already knew each other, had worked together, consulting each other frequently to keep the event running as planned. But there we were together, Israelis and Palestinians, at a time of war when it is easiest to care only for one’s own pain and injured and dead, to use it as ground to hate the enemy, to demonize them, to believe that they don’t love their children as much as we do, or that they won’t stop until they’ve killed all of us. There we were, determined to find a place to insist together that the violence stop. But even before it stops, Combatants continue the painstaking work of making peace out of the ruins and desperation that the conflict and occupation have left. Last Saturday night, they another added another quick sketch to their portfolio. With much effort, many more helping hands, disagreements about flags and colours and exactly where to place lines, these sketches could become a tapestry of peace across those hills.

Cartoon bomb

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Netanyahu at UN 27 Sept 2012

Cartoon bomb

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu’s speech to the UN General Assembly on Thursday, September 27, 2012 was constructed around a piece of visual rhetoric. Having tussled with the US administration and embroiled himself, undiplomatically, in the presidential election campaign by picking a quarrel with Obama, Bibi came to New York to make his case, yet again, for the immediacy of the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon. Verbally, he knew which analogies to draw on to press the importance of drawing a red line – at the enrichment of uranium at weapon-grade level – that the Iranian government must not cross if it is to avoid military retaliation. Playing hypothetical history, Bibi argued that the Nazi regime in the 1930s and the Iraqi regime in 1990 would have been deterred by the drawing of such red lines, and wars could have been prevented. “Red lines don’t lead to war”, he said “they prevent war”. Faced with a red line, Iran will back down. Red lines save lives.

In Netanyahu’s rhetoric, peace is the prevention of war, even by military means. His notion of peace is the absence of war, the avoidance of any attack on Israel, the quietude of the security of arms, of superior force. This is a powerful image of peace in Israel, one that resonates especially strongly on the day after Yom Kippur, which will forever be inscribed in Israeli public memory as the anniversary in the Jewish calendar of the war that began on October 6, 1973. The memory was kept alive in the Israeli media this year by reports about a new book about the war and its battles, some recently reworked sound recordings of the opening bombardment of Israeli positions by the Suez canal, accompanied by an item about a woman soldier who allegedly had hidden rather taken part in an exchange of fire a few days before along Israel’s border with Egypt. In his speech, Netanyahu invited the rest of the ‘modern’ world to feel equally threatened, equally in need of brave soldiers who wouldn’t hide from bullets, when he spoke of the battle it faced with the medieval forces of Islamic extremism.  Israel, Europe, America, he said, faced an enemy that would extinguish freedom and end peace. And the Jewish people have a track record of overcoming those who would destroy them. So, in other words, don’t worry America, Israel has your back – or can you push forward into the next war.

But Bibi’s visual gesture undermined the gravity of his verbal delivery. This was not Colin Powell at the UN in 2003 presenting ‘evidence’ of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, to his later regret. This was a man with a drawing of a cartoon bomb that seems to have been borrowed from the Spy v. Spy strip. All the complexities of an atomic bomb reduced to a black and white outline and a fizzing fuse. The black and white figures of the Spy v. Spy cartoon also tell us about Netanyahu’s equally black and white, West v. East, good against evil Manichaeism. With a Manichean view of the world, peace can mean only victory over your enemy, never making peace with your enemy. In the battle which Netanyahu pictures of ‘modern’ v. ‘medieval’, there is no room for compromise, no security without might, no rest from drawing red lines to keep the evil out.

Spy-vs-spy