Preface: The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is deeply complicated, and I am no scholar in middle east history or affairs. I am merely deeply affected each time the violence intensifies, or when I think about the daily conditions of the Palestinian people. I know that there are many Israelis and Palestinians alike who work for peace and see the humanity in one another. I want for there to be peace for the people of Israel and Palestine, and I believe that people can make it so. This is merely my attempt to convey what I fear, believe, think, and hope.

Dear Gaza, Dear Israel, Dear Palestine,

I fear for you that there will never be peace, that your ancient wounds will never be allowed to heal, that forever you will battle one another like depraved lions in a cage, and that the reality of your children will be the long nightmare of bombs falling and streets in rubble. There will be no victor in this forever war you wage, except for the mercenary and the man who sells the weapons.

I see that a seeming minority of warlords and politicians drives the battle deeper, while the majority of your people long for lasting peace. I observe that there are those among you who each hear only the battle cry of your own race and religion, who cannot see past the proverbial walls you have built to know the injustices you rain down upon your mortal enemy, that you cannot see the world through the lens of the eyes of the other or view one another as simply human beings trying to bring about a world of hope and opportunity for your children.

Neither of you will have justice for as long as you deprive the other of it.

I fear that the rockets will always cross the hastily drawn borders that define the lands of Israel and occupied lands of Gaza and Palestine, falling haphazardly into homes and schools and hospitals, and that the only body counts you selfishly track will be those on your own side of the line. But every little girl matters. I mourn that your children will likely never know the innocence and security of peace that should be the right of every blessed child. I mourn that you bring this specter of forever war into the future of my unborn children, who even so far away geographically will be deprived of peace by your conflict.

The historical injustices you have brought upon one another are carved deep into your DNA. They are amplified by the deaf ears of the world. This story is your urban legend, it is your truth. Yet, you are mute to the stories of one another.

Both of you stake claim to these limited lands and overdrawn waters. Like Solomon, you make the world split the baby. In my eyes, you each hold claim, but the declaration of victor depends upon when in time you choose to make the declaration, for the sands shifted often in the Ancient World. You each won and lost the battles of long ago, many times over. You are each legitimate, you are each illegitimate. You each have waged grave injustice upon the other, you each have been the victim, each the spoiler.

Your death grip on your skewed telling of your history is tragic; you are all war-blind. You chant the same stories over and over about the security of your people, and then you violate the security of the other. You defend your actions by claiming that you defend the innocent, and then you each kill the innocent. You are right and you are wrong, and in the final measure, you cannot be right so long as you perpetuate injustice and violence.

There are factions within your lands that claim the other has not the right to exist. Yet each of you exists. You each want the world to recognize your right to exist, and so here it is: you each have the right to exist, but only together. One does not have the right to exist without the other. You must forge a path to mutual existence and peace. The world will not split the baby. You must learn to forgive. You must write a new history for your descendants.

Must one always be the conqueror, and one always conquered? Was not Abraham the brother of Ishmael? Did not both their hands together rebuild the Ka'ba in Mecca? Is not Palestine a holy place, no matter what name you have given to God? You both stake claim to the Holy Land, yet, I believe, neither of you is deserving for you desecrate it with your bombs and your fighting, with your bloodshed and your greed. I ask you to please listen more carefully to what God says.

This is no holy war, for war is the most unholy of human acts. Would that God or Allah fate you to an existence battling plots of land marked by temples built by men? Would that God see you turn altars of worship into altars of human sacrifice? Would that God have you turn your attention from your plows and the poor to your bombs and your political power bases? You fight no holy war, you fight only man’s war, a tribal war. So disguise this not as more than it is, it is a land war, it is a water war. It is the most ancient of types of wars and it is the responsibility of your elders to bring about a lasting peace. And if your appointed elders cannot do this, then you have the responsibility to find elders and leaders who can.

You each want the world to recognize that you have been mistreated by the other and ignored by the world. And so here it is: Palestine and Gaza, I am sorry that the world did not consider you when Israel declared itself a state and so many of your people were displaced in the subsequent conflict. Israel: I am sorry that the world did not intervene when the Holocaust began. Palestine and Gaza: I am sorry that Israel has deprived you of economic opportunity and ghettoized your people. Israel: I am sorry that Palestine bombs you. Palestine: I am sorry that Israel bombs you.

Israel, you are the one with the power in this game of life, you wield the weapons with haste, and declare your actions always just. I judge you not for this, for if bombs fell upon my roof, I would want your protection. Yet, you count not your incursions, only the incursions of the other. You, Israel, must look deep within yourself and then you must take the time to see the world from beneath the striped lines drawn upon the map of the occupied territories. Israel, you must honestly look at the plight of the people who live within the occupied territories and imagine if instead of being Arab and Muslim that these same people were Jewish, that you were they. Imagine that you too had been forcibly removed from your lands and forced behind borders drawn by others. This should not be hard for you to imagine. Imagine that the government of Israel were not Jewish and yet it exacted the current policies of blockade upon your people in the occupied lands. Consider being a ghettoized people, cut off from economic opportunity, forced like cattle into cramped living conditions without sanitation, cut off from the delivery of goods. Consider how any such people would seek to alleviate such oppression. Despair breeds a desperate violence. Israel, you do the world a grave disservice in your treatment of your neighbors, your brothers and sisters, our brothers and sisters.

Israel, You must commit to a path of justice and opportunity for your neighbors. You must recognize their right to exist, you must help them build safe housing and sanitation or stay out of the way of international organizations or other governments who strive to do so. You must provide them access to market goods and economic opportunities. Peace will not come to you without you first offering peace. You cannot say “stop bombing and then we will deliver finally upon the promises we have made over the decades”. You must deliver upon the promises now. Justice is not a prize given for good behavior, it is an obligation upon which you must deliver. You must treat your neighbors as though they are your beloved brothers, born of the same blood.

Palestine and Gaza: It is a deep hole into which you were thrown in recent times, and the world taunts you with ropes of freedom but always walks away leaving you still clamoring for the light of day, for a glimmer of something resembling hope and justice. I do understand that you were displaced from lands you considered your own, that the Jews once considered their own. But Israel now exists, as it did once before. You must recognize their right to exist. The world will have it no other way. You must recognize their right to live peaceably. You must treat your neighbors as though they are your beloved brothers.

The heroes in war are the ones who bring about the peace. And so may there be heroes in my lifetime, so that the children of my children's generation may know the joy of peace in the middle east.

May Peace Prevail on Earth.

with great hope,
Summer