I wrapped my body with a talit – a traditional, four-cornered prayer shawl with tassels called tzitzit at each corner, each tassel biblically ordained to remind the wearer that all commandments must be kept. With the talit draped over my shoulders, I donned teffilin, wrapping the black, leather straps tightly around my left arm, palm, and middle finger. Then, I clamped a black box to my forehead with identical straps, the box containing Hebrew verses from the Shema: Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Eḥad – Hear O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One.
Adorned in the vestments of a religious life once lived, I swayed and mouthed words of praise I couldn’t believe, shielding my eyes ritually with a cupped palm as the Muslim call to prayer echoed from a nearby hill. As I prayed, eyes covered, the person I once was fled from my body and departed through an open window. It rose into the Jerusalem night, surrounded by the chanted supplications in Hebrew and Arabic making their way to the dimly lit heavens high above the Old City, circling and weaving to meet the day and the fate of that day as the cityscape winked alive.
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Jerusalem in Five Acts: Jerusalem is a traumatized land. It is a land that has been held down against its will and forced to witness the plunging of knives and tearing of flesh for thousands of years without pause. It has been the victim of a divine session of water-boarding, the land forced to drink an endless flow of blood. When Cain killed Abel – the first recorded act of biblical violence – God told the murderer, “The voice of the blood of your brother is calling to me from the ground.”4 The land has always borne witness. And witnesses rarely forget.
In the arc of biblical history, what follows may not be the first time a trauma came to Jerusalem. But for me, as a Jew, I cannot begin the story of this land anywhere but the moment God called to Abraham and said, “Take your son, your only son, the son whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, where there you will offer him up as a sacrifice.”5
Forget that Isaac was the child Sarah carried in her old age after a lifetime of barrenness, after a lifetime of praying for seed to grow in her belly. And forget that Isaac was the child God had promised Abraham, was the long-awaited heir God said would inherit the land of Israel. And forget that Abraham was living in the land of Israel because, when God spoke to him out of the blue at his home in modern-day Iraq and said, “Go to a land I will show you,”6 Abraham inexplicably went.
Forget all that. What should be noticed is the way God commands Abraham to commit filicide. “Take your son, your only son, the son whom you love, Isaac.” See anything unusual? The medieval rabbis – who viewed every biblical word as essential – sure did. Their question: Why did God identify Isaac in four different ways when commanding Abraham to sacrifice him? Why not just say “Take Isaac” and get it over with?
Many answers have been given, but one from Nachmanides, a thirteenth-century Spanish commentator, sends chills: “[God is repetitive] to make the commandment greater.” In other words, God’s intention is to make the task so fucking hard by hammering Abraham over the head with reminders of how painful it will be to kill his son that going through with it won’t just merit normal commandment-abiding points, but super-metaphysical bonus points as well.7
But the land. Jerusalem.
Abraham takes his son to a place called Moriah, drags him up a mountain of God’s choosing, and there builds an altar of stone upon which he binds Isaac with twine. This place, this land of Moriah, is a mystery. Where is it? With few clues, the medieval commentators artfully concluded that it must be Jerusalem. And the mountain? It’s the Temple Mount, the heart of Jerusalem’s Old City, where the Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock now dominate a political/religious space that has been the geographic fulcrum of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict for as long as memory serves.
And it is this space where Abraham raised the knife, prepared to plunge it into Isaac’s flesh, before an angel stopped the bloodshed mid-stroke. It is this space, in the heart of Jerusalem, where Isaac is traumatized by his father’s attempted murder. The Bible says nothing of this trauma, of course. But it doesn’t need to. Isaac disappears from the text for several chapters, is never seen with his father again, and only surfaces to attend Abraham’s funeral, unable to step forward until his father is dead and gone.
When thinking about Israel as a traumatized place, I begin with the Binding of Isaac because of its incomprehensibility – that such a trauma was orchestrated by God. The story makes little sense, the commandment going beyond any recognizable reflection of the good, humane world in which we hope to live. And His preferred place in that world for such an incomprehensible test of brutality? Jerusalem.
It’s been this way ever since.
Act I – Thursday, July 18, 2002: For several months during the spring and summer of 2002, high-level talks between Palestinian and Israeli officials had gone dormant, the negotiations for peace having been obliterated by unchecked violence. But by early July, after a time of relative calm, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres had quietly begun meeting with several Palestinian cabinet ministers.8 An attempt at a new beginning. Again.
Then, on July 16, predictably, the violence came, violence meant to railroad such talks. It worked.
Activists from Fatah’s Tanzim – the Palestinian Authority’s new-guard armed wing – ambushed an Israeli bus in the West Bank. Then, a double suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, leaving scores of civilians dead over a two-day span. So familiar.
In response, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon banned Peres from talking further with the Palestinians. Then, he ordered the borders immediately closed, borders which were virtually closed already, sealed since June.9 The Prime Minister, it appeared, wanted retribution after the attacks – as so often is the case, each side reacting reflexively. He was waiting for the right moment, the moment that would come, days later, the moment I refuse to accept.
But first, July 18, the day Peres was forced to abandon talks with the Palestinians, talks that would have focused on easing those travel restrictions keeping Palestinian workers home – travel restrictions meant to keep the terrorists out.10
July 18, when Israeli families held funerals for the innocent – for the mothers, fathers, and infants murdered by masked gunmen running and firing and screaming in Allah’s name.
July 18, when Jamie took me to breakfast at our favorite café, where we enjoyed an Israeli breakfast of eggs, cucumber-tomato salad, and toasted pita.
July 18, thirteen days before Jamie would bend down beneath a cafeteria table, reaching for a workbook, just wanting to study for an exam.
Act II – Saturday morning, July 20, 2002: On Saturday morning, something happened. And depending upon one’s frame of reference, it was either meaningless or extraordinary.
Sharon and Israeli military officials would reveal that, to them, what happened was meaningless. Much of the world would see it as extraordinary. In less than three days, it wouldn’t matter, for the event and the momentum it produced would be buried under rubble and the wailing of sirens in Gaza. Arguably an unprecedented moment in the Middle East. A moment that happened. A moment which disappeared in the desert sand.
Here is what happened: on Saturday, July 20, Palestinian Authority officials from Fatah – the Palestinian Authority’s largest political wing – met with high-ranking members of the Islamic groups responsible for the majority of terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. They met with Hamas. They met with Islamic Jihad. The goal? Convince them to discontinue the use of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians as a legitimate form of resistance. Convince them to stop killing innocent people. Convince them that terror wasn’t working. Never would.
Extraordinary. Or meaningless.
The meetings were the result of a European-led diplomatic effort supported by Jordanian and Saudi delegations, an effort described by journalists and Palestinian officials as unprecedented. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, one of several observers to the talks, indicated the groups had been productive during
initial meetings and had quickly begun working jointly on a ceasefire document – a document stating that it was time for the Palestinians to make a strategic shift in their struggle for independence.11
According to a key, unnamed Palestinian figure close to the talks, the shift was not only strategic, but social in scope, precipitated by the unease among prominent Palestinians about the destructive forces that suicide bombings were unleashing within Palestinian society:
In the past two months there has been a sea change in the way that Palestinians have looked on this strategy. They are really worried that their children are growing up with posters of guys wearing suicide belts. It’s not just a tactical point, many have begun to accept it was a moral mistake.12
Now, questioning the morality of suicide bombings against civilians, on the surface, shouldn’t impress. Nobody obtains morality points for questioning whether blowing up innocent people is a mistake. However, what does impress is this: those evil enough to have championed suicide bombings as a legitimate form of resistance were reportedly being pressured by Palestinian society – by political, economic, and social forces – to consider abandoning terror against civilians. Not solely out of a concern for Israeli civilians, it should be noted. But because such tactics were damaging the fabric of Palestinian society, were doing more harm than good.
And thus Hamas and Islamic Jihad, invited to sit at a negotiating table set by the Palestinian Authority, not only accepted, but engaged in productive dialogue. The talks generated a fair amount of optimism from observers not accustomed to seeing these groups meet, much less agree on anything. However, an anonymous official qualified this optimism by stating, “It [will] be hard for the Palestinian Authority to reach a deal to stop bombing attacks as long as Israel keeps carrying out military operations against the Palestinian people.”13
Propaganda. Political posturing. Prophesy.
Act III – Saturday night, July 20, 2002: Those in the Knesset, Israel’s seat of government, knew of the meetings being held on Saturday between the various Palestinian factions. They also knew of their significance, their theoretical potential. And it was this knowledge, perhaps, which inspired Sharon to send Peres – banned from speaking with Palestinian officials only two days earlier – back to the negotiating table. For on Saturday night, Peres met with the Palestinians’ chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, and Ahmed Razak Yehiyeh, the Palestinian Authority minister responsible for security forces and the lead negotiator for the ongoing ceasefire talks amongst Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Palestinian Authority.14
In their three-hour meeting, Peres, Erekat, and Yehiyeh discussed many issues related to Israel’s role in improving life for the Palestinians. They talked about easing curfews in the West Bank and about opening borders so that Palestinian workers could reach their jobs within Israel. They talked about scaling back Israel’s military occupation of major cities and towns. They talked about life’s quality and how to improve it. For the Palestinians, anyway. A one-sided conversation. A start.15
Few things were said publicly after the meeting concluded, though Israeli minister Danny Naveh, who also took part in the talks, indicated that Israel had a “clear interest” in improving its own security by improving the economic situation amongst the Palestinian people.16
The words weren’t empty.
Immediately, funds Israel owed the Palestinian Authority, funds which Israel had frozen since the Intifada ignited in the summer of 2000, were transferred to Yasser Arafat’s government. Not all of it, but a significant amount: $200 million. It was meant as a gesture, a show of good faith, something that had not been done in over two years, a time during which Israel refused to hand over customs and tax revenue to the Palestinian Authority for fear such money would be funneled directly to organizations of terror, would be used to support the violent uprising.
Now, after one of the first reported meetings between top Israeli and Palestinian officials in over three months, Israel was willing to hand over the funds, and Peres, on Sunday morning, indicated that if the money transferred was not misused, Israel would be willing to hand over all $420 million it owed.17 Just like that.
Just like that. The about-face was stunning. Perplexing. What was said in that meeting, at an undisclosed location, late that Saturday night? What did Erekat tell Peres? Did he implore the senior Israeli official to consider that, this time, things were different, that things were happening between Palestinian leaders that had never happened before? Did he reveal that Fatah officials had, for the previous three months, been flying secretly to Tehran to meet with Hamas’s senior spiritual leaders? And that these leaders had, for the first time, agreed to give “silent support” to a ceasefire calling upon the cessation of civilian terror? Did Erekat continue by revealing to Peres that Fatah’s jailed leader, Marwan Barghouti – whose popularity among the young, armed members of the Tanzim was unparalleled – had given his support to such a ceasefire?
Much of this must have been revealed to Peres, for in their meeting Erekat handed him a report revealing the significance of the ceasefire declaration – then a work-in-progress – that Fatah officials were hammering out with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, a report that implored Israel to cease its targeted assassinations in order for such a ceasefire to succeed.18
I wonder if Erekat slid the actual declaration across the table, allowing Peres to see its text, to understand intimately the significance of the words being agreed upon by rival, militant factions. Is that what created more momentum toward peace in a twenty-four-hour period than had been achieved in the previous two years?
After finding an archived copy of the ceasefire declaration – along with a letter to Israel that would have accompanied it – I can only conclude one thing: Peres was handed some papers. And after scanning them, he blinked and thought, Please let this be the moment history demands of us.
Intermission – The Declaration: What follows is the text of two documents – one the ceasefire declaration, and the other an accompanying letter – that would have been delivered to Israel on Tuesday, July 23. They were obtained by The Times of London.
Text of the ceasefire declaration:
We, the representatives of the Tanzim and Fatah, in the names of our members and the political organizations that we represent in all of the cities, towns and villages of the West Bank and Gaza, declare that we will end attacks on innocent, non-combatant men, women and children in Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza.
We call on all Palestinian political organizations, factions and movements to end all such attacks immediately, and to do so without hesitation or precondition.
We will immediately cease all such operations, we will work with other Palestinian political organizations to gain their support for this principle, we will police our own memberships to make certain that no such operations are planned or carried forward and we will engage in a national dialogue to convince our people of the wisdom of this program.
Our efforts will be relentless, our actions tireless, our commitment permanent. Our revolution goes forward under a new principle. We will continue our struggle. We will defend our people. Aggression against our cities and our families, the confiscation of our lands, the destruction of our orchards, our businesses, our homes, the closings of our schools, the detention of our young men in squalid camps, the curfews and closures, the demonization of our leaders and their assassination, the deportations of our people, the slow, purposeful, seemingly inexorable destruction of our society and our dreams – the continued Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza – will be resisted.
Excerpts from an accompanying letter:
We understand … how you feel about us. We are a gang, and a bunch of murderers … We can’t be trusted.
But maybe, just this once, you should drop these prejudices and listen …We, the leaders of the most influential political movements among the Palestinian people; we, who represent those who, like you, have been orphaned and widowed; we who desire the comfort and securit
y of not just a state but a home – we choose the future.
We will do everything in our power to end attacks on Israeli civilians, on innocent men, women and children, in both Israel and in the occupied lands of the West Bank and Gaza. We make this declaration without seeking or demanding any prior conditions.
Why now? The bombings of the last few months have transformed your society. Those bombings horrified and angered your people, and sent your nation into despair. It did that to us. It sparked a rethinking of who we are as a people. It marked a shift in our perceptions – not of you, but of ourselves.
For a time we were able to put this horror out of our minds … Our eyes look out to see what you are doing to us in our towns and villages every day, but the same eyes look in at the hardened hearts of our children. It may take a generation for us to teach our children a new way, to soothe their bitterness, to erase their hatred, to teach them that there is hope for the future. But we must begin. It is for them, for their future, that we have made this historic decision. The rivers of blood that have so embittered our people will be staunched. The suicide bombings will be brought to an end. By us. Now.
We will not stop fighting for our land, we will not renounce our dream or betray our birthright … This is not a surrender, this is not a retreat. We will continue to fight every moment of every day for our rights and for our state. We are certain that we will achieve this, that we will be victorious.
Act IV – Late Monday night, July 22, 2002: Ninety minutes after the ceasefire’s text was finalized, Israel attacked. It was an American-made F-16 that dropped the one-ton bomb in the crowded Gaza neighborhood. The blast killed Sheik Salah Shahada, a senior Hamas leader, and demolished the apartment building in which he was sleeping. It also partially destroyed two adjacent apartment buildings, killing along with its mark children, the elderly, entire families.19
What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist who Tried to Kill Your Wife? Page 4