http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,677454,00.html

'Israel is a clenched fist, but also a hand whose fingers are spread
wide in despair'

Novelist David Grossman on how constant fear and anger have robbed a
nation of reason

Tuesday April 2, 2002
The Guardian

Six days ago, as Israel was celebrating Passover - one of the Jewish
people's most meaningful holidays - more than a score of Israelis
were murdered by a Palestinian suicide bomber who planted himself in
the centre of a room where they were seated around their holiday
tables. Survivors relate that the man took a long, slow look around,
examining their faces, and then calmly detonated himself.

In response to this, and several more deadly attacks that followed,
the Israeli government ordered its army to call up 20,000 reservists
and to launch a large-scale campaign against the Palestinian
Authority. Today, Israeli tanks are surrounding Yasser Arafat's
compound in Ramallah in an act that lacks any political reason.
Suddenly, one bullet, accidental or deliberate, can change the face
of the Middle East and catapult all of us into a war. Every day,
meanwhile, Palestinians are exploding in the streets of Israel,
killing dozens of Israelis.

There is not an Israeli who does not feel that his life is in danger,
and the despondency and dread that this insecurity causes are again
exposing the odd paradox of Israel's position. On the one hand,
militarily and economically it is one of the strongest countries in
the Middle East. Its citizens also have a powerful sense of sharing a
common fate and a firm determination to defend their country. On the
other hand, it is also an amazingly fragile country that is
profoundly, almost tragically, unsure of itself, of its own ability
to survive, of the possibility of a future for itself in this region.
Israel is today a clenched fist, but also a hand whose fingers are
spread wide in despair.

Excuse my dramatic exaggeration, but I'm writing this from the
frontline - or at least one of them. That means that I'm sitting in
the neighbourhood coffee shop, in the shopping centre near my house,
in a suburb of Jerusalem. I'm the only customer in the restaurant
which, until a few months ago, was generally packed around the clock.
A few shoppers scurry past, their expressions indicating that they
would rather be at home. They look from one side to another,
constantly checking their surroundings. Any of the people nearby
could be their murderer. That man over there, for example, who has
been standing motionless for several seconds at the top of the
escalator leading to the second floor. He's putting his hand in his
pocket now, and I notice that around me other pairs of eyes are
watching him nervously. Without even realising that they are doing
it, people step back, towards the walls. What am I supposed to do?
What does one do when it happens? What should I be thinking about?
The man draws a box of cigarettes out of his pocket, that's all, just
a little coloured box of self-destruction of a normal, comprehensible
type. Smoke it in good health, my man, and the film that stopped in
freeze-frame for a second continues to roll, until the next moment of
panic.

There is, of course, a clear imbalance of power between the two
peoples, Israeli and Palestinian. But there is symmetry in their fear
of each other and in their ability to send themselves and their
neighbours sliding into the abyss. Each side bears its share of the
responsibility for bringing us here - each side, when stood at a
crossroads made the wrong choice.

The occupation itself resulted from a war that the Arabs began
against Israel in 1967. The settlements that Israel began to build in
the territories it occupied in that war created a situation in which
it is almost impossible for Israel to detach itself entirely from the
West Bank and Gaza Strip. Arafat made a fateful error in July 2000,
when he categorically rejected the offer made by Ehud Barak. Arafat
then set off the current Intifada, instead of continuing to
negotiate. Ariel Sharon helped make things worse when he visited the
Temple Mount, and with the aggressive and humiliating policy he has
pursued against the Palestinians since being elected prime minister.
Arafat bears heavy responsibility for having incessantly encouraged
acts of terrorism and suicide bombings and for having released
potential suicide bombers from prison. He is also responsible for the
past month's unbridled spiral of violence. He could have lowered the
flames had he responded positively to Israel's restraint in its
response to three particularly deadly terrorist attacks that occurred
in recent weeks.

Without minimising Israel's responsibility for the current
deterioration and without ignoring the immense suffering that Israel
has caused the Palestinians during 35 years of occupation, I feel
today that it is the Palestinians who have brought about the current
intolerable escalation of the conflict. It is the outcome of their
choice to use the weapon of suicide bombings against Israeli
civilians.

We must recognise this in order to be able to deal with the new
situation we are facing. The suicide bombings have injected into an
already complex conflict an element that is irrational, insane,
inhuman from any perspective, immoral in a way that we have not yet
seen, even in this grubby conflict.

Suicide bombing is a weapon that no one in the world knows how to
confront. Its use, on such a large scale as to make it almost
routine, is liable to lead to extremely dangerous Israeli responses.
It may well lead Israel to stop thinking with the rationality that is
so urgently needed in this sensitive situation.

So here it is. A series of mistakes, of mutual injustices and
cruelties, has led the two peoples to the most dangerous juncture yet
in the century-old conflict between them.

Today, as the Israeli army besieges Arafat's office, as another
terrorist makes his way - of this we can be certain - to an Israeli
street at this very hour, as in a scene from a convoluted epic novel,
full of reversals, two men face off against each other: Sharon and
Arafat, two crafty old men, wizards of survival, grand masters of a
bizarre game of chess in which they cause the most damage to their
own pieces.

Twenty years after Sharon trapped Arafat in Beirut in the war of
1982, and after Arafat slipped away to Tunis - striding along the
dock at Beirut, in the crosshairs of an Israeli sniper forbidden to
shoot him - the two are facing off again.

The sordid reality that the two of them have created for their
publics is in their own image. Each of them has "succeeded" - each in
his own way - in fanning the flames of violence, hatred, and despair
among their peoples. Their opponents say that they have no policy and
no vision beyond the will to survive. But look how today's reality is
the inevitable outcome of their chosen paths, their deeds, their
aspirations, and how much the present state of affairs reflects their
warlike, suspicious and aggressive view of the world. For them it
confirms, in a hermetic, circular way, just how right they have
always been.

Now each of them plays the role he has perfected over so many
decades. One is the super-warrior, a sort of gigantic military relic
of the new Jewish history. The other is the persecuted, isolated,
besieged martyr, wallowing in the desolation from which he knows how
to draw a startling strength and forcefulness.

Both of them will fail just as they have failed in the past. Sharon
won't succeed in eradicating terrorism. Even if he captures all its
planners and strategists, even if he confiscates all the large
quantities of weapons that the Palestinians now possess, he will not
succeed in excising from the hearts of the Palestinians the thing
that makes them do what they do. That is their despair, the sense of
humiliation, and their hatred of Israel. It will only enhance all
these and encourage further waves of terror that will make Israel's
position even more precarious.

Arafat will not get what he wants - which is to draw the Arab
countries into the conflict. They, no less than Israel, fear the
internal unrest that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict causes, and
fear even more the Islamist religious extremism that Arafat
encourages and which is liable to harm them as well.

The world continues to abandon Israel and the Palestinians to drawing
each other's blood.

More seriously, Arafat's gambits, the encouragement he gives to the
suicide bombers, his grotesque hope, as he recently stated, to
himself be "a suicide bomber on the way to Jerusalem", only pushes
the establishment of a Palestinian state further into the distance.

Evil things are happening to both peoples. Fear causes no less damage
to the soul than explosives cause to the body. Israeli society is
becoming more and more violent, aggressive, and racist, and less
democratic. Palestinian society is undergoing an even more dangerous
process. A society that becomes accustomed to sending its young men
and women on suicide operations aimed at murdering innocent
civilians, a society that encourages such actions and glorifies their
perpetrators, will pay the price for this in the future. The price
will be paid in their attitude towards life itself, life as an
inalienable sacred value. It will also be paid in a more practical
way - the minute that the possibility of such a horrifying action
takes form in the consciousness of a nation, it will not disappear.
It will rear its head again in the people's internal dialogue. It is
not at all surprising that moderate Palestinians are no less alarmed
by the suicide bombers than the Israelis are.

They know the bitter truth - the weapon of suicide, which has proved
itself so effective against the Israelis, is liable to be used
against them as well, when the Palestinians have a state and commence
their internal struggles over the character and image of that state.

That's the way things are right now. It's a situation of despair and
disintegration. How can we get out of it? Only through dialogue,
through renewing negotiations immediately, without any preconditions
from either side, through obdurate but pinpointed fighting against
terror. Arafat must do this with all seriousness and intent, as he
has never done before. Sharon must withdraw from the Palestinian
Authority's territory and conduct negotiations with the same
determination that he is now deploying the army.

Palestinian terrorist attacks will, unfortunately, continue for a
long time to come. But if there is also, in parallel, a move towards
peace, a process of concessions, of ending the occupation, of
conciliation and recognition of the suffering incurred by the other
side, there is room for the hope that the Palestinian public's
support for terror will decline, and the Israeli public's confidence
in a peaceful resolution of the conflict will grow. Is there a chance
that this might happen? Every thinking person realises that Arafat
and Sharon are incapable of creating this opportunity. What remains?
To live through this nightmare to its end, to go from funeral to
funeral and to try to survive each passing moment. Thoughts of peace,
of mutual understanding, of coexistence between the two peoples now
sound like the last signals of life from a ship that has already sunk.

· Translated by Haim Watzman.