Remembering the facts - building settlements in Israel - Column

Christian Century, June 19, 1996 by James M. Wall

Marda Dunsky, former Arab affairs reporter for the Jerusalem Post and now a teacher at Northwestern University, observed recently in the Chicago Tribune that Shimon Peres, in his dialogue with the Palestinians, focused exclusively on Israel's security, ignoring the concept of Arab security. This partisan view could have been the deciding factor in Peres's electoral defeat. According to Israeli press reports, Israeli Arab voters, about 18 percent of the population residing within the state of Israel and 12 percent of the electorate, cast 96 percent of their votes for Peres. But angered by Peres's decision to close borders in the West Bank and Gaza and his bombardment of Lebanon, an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Israeli Arab voters abstained from casting any vote for prime minister, while an estimated 19,000 voted for Netanyahu. This turnout deprived Peres of the margin he needed to win.

Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have gained some control over their daily existence through the peace agreements, but they still suffer the degradation and deprivation of occupation. The peace agreement gives Israel the right to enter areas controlled by the Palestine Authority "in search of terrorists," and Israel still controls its own borders and can, at any time, block Palestinians from traveling into Israel to work or from traveling between Gaza and the West Bank.

The election centered on "peace and security." But as Peres discovered through his loss of critical Arab votes, Jews are not the only citizens in need of peace and security. One of the more valuable insights of liberation theology is the realization that those who hold power shape the debate in ways that accrue to their benefit. What we remember and what we determine to be of significance is shaped by those in power. The questions asked by those out of power are not deemed important by those in control.

In his novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera reflects on the pubic significance of what people remember and forget:

It is 1971, and Mirek says that the

struggle of man against power is the

struggle of memory against forgetting. . .

The bloody massacre in

Bangladesh quickly covered over

the memory of the Russian invasion

of Czechoslovakia, the

assassination of Allende drowned

out the groans of Bangladesh, tee

war in the Sinai Desert made people

forget Allende, the Cambodian

massacre made people forget Sinai,

and so on and so forth until

ultimately everyone lets everything

be forgotten.

When the focus of public debate is on the "rights" of religious Israelis to have access to sacred places, or on the need to provide peace and security to the people in power, it is easy to forget that Hebron is an Arab city, with an historic Islamic mosque at its center to honor both Abraham and Sarah, both of whom are as sacred to Islam as they are to Christianity or Judaism. It is also easy to forget, as the debate over the future of Jerusalem unfolds, that the overwhelming majority of citizens living in the old walled city of Jerusalem are Palestinians. And it is easy to forget, now that the Israeli government has constructed a series of apartment complexes that form a massive wall to separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, that East Jerusalem is an Arab city.