Apathy is the Enemy, Not the Other

NEXUS | The IGL Newsletter | Spring 2009

By James Kennedy

On the flight home from Tel Aviv, we would have been celebrating our successful trip if we hadn’t been so demoralized and emotionally exhausted. On paper, the New Initiative For Middle East Peace (NIMEP) fact-finding mission to Israel and the West Bank had been an admirable success; the eight of us had managed to conduct twenty-seven independent interviews with individuals in every corner of Israeli and Palestinian society and had covered numerous viewpoints of the conflict. But we were all unable to toast ourselves because our findings confirmed what we had most feared: that in both Israel and Palestine there was a pervasive feeling of pessimism driving members of both societies towards collective apathy, and this is perhaps the greatest danger the peace process has ever faced.  

Perhaps we should have not have been so surprised at this outcome. After all, the war in Gaza and Southern Israel that had forced us to postpone our trip from January until March left 1,300 dead, and Israeli elections had ushered in a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu and the king of controversy himself, Avigdor Lieberman. Already Lieberman’s appointment as foreign minister has proved thorny as Egypt has stated, retracted, and then restated that they would not allow him to enter the country. If this type of exchange exemplifies the relationship between Israel and nations with which it has peace treaties, we must brace ourselves for the reactions of its enemies. Under such conditions, apathy has become the rule and more and more people are subscribing to its ideology of mental (and occasionally physical) disengagement. 

Therein lies what troubles me most about what we heard in our interviews; those who have fought and struggled for peace for so long are tired of the constant frustration. Their efforts continue to go unrewarded and the blood continues to be spilt, so can they really be blamed? The optimists on both sides have either disappeared or their pleas for peace are being drowned out by shouts of fanaticism and anger. Even Sari Nusseibeh, a Palestinian who has arguably done more for peace than just about any other Palestinian or Israeli, is losing his faith in the two-state solution. He continues to discuss his concept of national referendums on both sides, putting his faith in the democratic nature of Israel and the democratic potential in Palestine, but even he is not immune to the sweeping phenomenon. 

Things are not much better on the other side of the fence. The Israeli Left – the former bastion of the peaceniks – was dealt a nearly knockout punch in the Knesset elections on 10 February 2009. When we spoke with former Meretz MK Avshalom Vilan, he told us that he had just come from a "meeting of the Israeli Left" and they were debating what they should do in light of their electoral defeat. He then asked if we had any suggestions. Though it was clearly asked in jest, I do not doubt for a moment that he would have truly been pleased if we had any useful advice to offer. 

Some have argued that this monumental wave of political lethargy and apathy may not be such a bad development because it shows that the people are tired of the violence that has permeated every level of society. Unfortunately, I cannot subscribe to this theory. If people are not engaged with the process, there will be no motivation for either side to actively pursue peace and it will allow travesties to be perpetrated by both sides because they feel no accountability to a strong public. In times of public political disengagement, the government is given a blank check and provided with tremendous and nearly limitless moral latitude to carry out its own agenda. 

What then will it take to re-engage people in peace building? There are only two answers I can think of, and only one that I can condone. The first is the greatest fear for those of us who desire peace: namely that matters will deteriorate so far that the public denunciation of violence will force the killing to stop. But given the history between the two parties, it is likely that only a tragedy of heartbreaking proportions would bring everyone to that same point. The second path to understanding (which itself is the first step towards peaceful co-existence) is to exchange your own viewpoints with those of the other side. This is not “love thy enemy” because it is right; it is “love thy neighbor” because it is needed. This is what NIMEP tries to do, but it can only do so within a limited scope. We can question our own biases and our own prejudices, but if Israelis and Palestinians attempt to close their eyes and pretend that their Semitic counterparts do not exist, we will never see the book of this conflict close. But we must be clear in our understanding that the two paths are currently diverging and propping the book wide open. 

James Kennedy participated in NIMEP’s fact-finding trip to Israel and the West Bank in March 2009.