Quotes of the Day

Sometimes, it's hard not to wonder what you would have done had you been on the other side of the conflict. It's a simple exercise, and doesn’t require any intellectual skills. You just have to concentrate for a second, take a deep breath and dive into a fundamental, emotional level — without complicated excuses, just a very humble "if".

We don’t tend to do it often here, in the Middle East. There was a famous and very public exception four years ago when then-prime ministerial candidate Ehud Barak was caught off-guard by the journalist Gideon Levy. Levy, in his cable TV interview show, led Barak to confess: "Had I been a Palestinian in the right age, I would have entered, at a certain stage, one of the terror organizations". Barak was heavily criticized for that, and apologized. But terror was not the major issue in the 1999 elections and despite this rare moment of honesty, Barak still won.

I was among the majority who voted for him, though I did not like this statement at all; I would have preferred him to understand the Palestinian point of view, and see the processes that led to it, rather than identify with any violent activity that only feeds a vicious cycle of unnecessary killing. Ironically, once he became Prime Minister, Barak showed a total lack of comprehension of the other side's motives, fears, feeling and doubts. Although full of good intentions, he managed to become one of the most impervious prime ministers Israel ever had. According to the results of the Or commission (which investigated the October 2000 deaths of 13 Israeli Arab citizens in riots in Northern Israel) released last week, Barak ignored the warnings about escalating tensions between the establishment and Israeli Arabs. For that, he bears a bitter responsibility for the grim outcome of the mayhem. He also managed to be so thick-skinned (and thick-headed) towards Palestinian expectations in the peace process that when it all collapsed in Camp David, he was blind to his own faults and blamed the entire calamity on Arafat. While the Palestinian leader deserve his own great share of blame for the outburst of the intifadeh, Barak’s mantra that “we were willing to give the Palestinians everything and they, in return, opened fire” made it very hard for the Israeli public to see itself in the shoes of the other side.

Sharon’s and Arafat’s shared tactics of demonization — each of them describes the other in vividly evil colors — contributes nothing to any current or future understanding of the other party. This total lack of sympathy is hardly suitable ground for negotiations, not to mention agreements.

Both people, as well as their leaders, know very well what the solution is. Sharon has publicly admitted that the occupation cannot endure. And polls among Palestinian refugees show that a majority are willing to exercise the Right of Return only to the future Palestinian state, and not to Israel itself. But the growing gap between the way each side’s view of their own behaviour and the perception of the other side’s reaction, stands as a wall — a sinister divide — between the two populations.

• MICHAL LEVERTOV
• Can an Israeli politician put himself in a Palestinian's shoes, wonders Michal Levertov