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The Mount of Olives, a summer evening in 1974, on my first visit to Israel. Saladin's stone walls glowed pink in the light of the setting sun. They glittered, displaying their jewel, Jerusalem. I didn't know where to look. My gaze wandered up to the immense shadows tumbling out of the walls, then to the town, up to the gold of the Dome of the Rock; then like a bird (the gods made it a dove) I stared down at the tangled alleys swarming with different faiths.
Back over the wall and across the valley, the olive trees of the Mount were filled with unimaginable, limpid peace. I looked down towards the city again, this time noting the terrain. Between the Mount of Olives and Jerusalem, a short valley divides two hills. Its slopes hold two cemeteries, one Jewish, one Muslim, face to face, peaceful, creating a historical continuity. The dead do not mix but they acknowledge each other and even seem to hold hands to reach the holy city.
Can peace between Arab and Jew, Palestinian and Israeli, and between followers of the three great monotheistic religions, for all of whom this place is a cradle, be only the peace of the dead? History says no. It was the Crusaders who massacred the Jews, after seizing the city; not the troops of Saladin when they retook it. The Jewish doctor and theologian, Maimonides, knew a peaceful, liberated Jerusalem. He had been born in Moorish Andalucia, and left when its old spirit of tolerance evaporated; he took refuge in Fez in North Africa and then in lands ruled by Saladin. There he finished his work, dying in Cairo in 1204. From the Roman Empire, through the Crusades to the 20th century, the West, in good or bad conscience, has sowed seeds of sorrow in this place.
The success of Zionism at the end of the 19th century and between the two world wars owed much to growing anti-Semitism and pogroms in Central Europe and Russia. The Holocaust did the rest. Twice Christianity has expelled the Jews: first with the Spanish Inquisition in 1492, then with the dreadful modern massacres. This is how Jews from all over the world — victims, persecuted, colonised, attacked, despised, denied — found themselves in the tiny land of Palestine.
The Palestinians, conquered by the Turks, colonised by the treacherous British Empire, were treated at best with disdain, at worst as cannon fodder by Arab monarchs and dictators with only their own interests in mind: glory and petrodollars. As far back as we can trace, history shows that it is easy to get people to fight each other, even to get them to make war by proxy in the name of powerful supporters and doubtful friends, who are thus spared from having openly to recruit mercenaries to do their dirty work.
Here are two peoples, at any rate two communities, but only one land. And what a land, holy to the protagonists as well as to foreign powers whose conflicts have created this powder keg. Besides the fight for territory, recognition and dignity, and the exorcising of sorrow, we have the hallucinogenic of fanaticism. There are all the ingredients in this cauldron for a bitter potion — anxiety, frustration, hatred, murder, revenge.
It has all been said and denied a thousand times. The survivors of the camps and the pogroms, full of the legitimacy conferred by their suffering, and with their energy increased tenfold by the knowledge that they cannot risk defeat, win — and in turn become the oppressors. First they had to win, no matter how. The results were coalitions in which the Jewish people lost their soul: with the British and French during the Suez crisis in 1967; with South Africa under apartheid; now as the guardian of the interests of the United States in the region. On the other side, the desperate Palestinians, exchanging one yoke for another, became the scapegoats, accused of all the crimes that have been committed in the West against the Jews.
Recent events show that the worst may still be to come, that the spiral may descend still further into the unbelievable if we do not improve the situation in time. The descent started with the frustration of the Palestinians, disappointed by the impasse in the Oslo process; the provocation by Ariel Sharon on Temple Mount was added to the permanent provocation of hundreds of Jewish settlements on Palestinian territory, ever growing, ever more populated.
Then came the intifada, repression, blockade of the territories, unemployment, poverty, an unbearable despair which creates a fertile ground for fanaticism and the culture of death. If you are a Palestinian aged 20, unable to see any future in this world while heroism and paradise are gloriously described to you, how can you be immune to the idea of sacrificing yourself to hurt the enemy? Human bombs in cafes and discos, young people torn apart, eye for eye. And tooth for tooth, tanks, bulldozers, killings. Madness.
This has been going on for more than 50 years. Children who are beaten become violent adults, and abusive parents. So perhaps we will find ourselves, in another 50 years, with the same certainties, mutual denunciations, the same violence, reprisals, counter reprisals, revenge. It may happen unless those who kill and those who suffer (and often they are the same), and those who support and manipulate them, agree to tell the truth: everyone has suffered, everyone has reasons to fight, and no one can win.
Whatever the fantasies of the most extreme Islamist groups, the Jews will not be thrown into the sea, nor the state of Israel overthrown. For obvious reasons, historical and psychological, the peoples of the West will not allow it. And whatever the nostalgia for a Greater Israel, there will not be a lasting Jewish state from the River Jordan to the borders of Sinai. Demography, law and the uneasy conscience of the West preclude it.
One day, in two or 100 years, the peoples who live in the land of Palestine will each have their own state. There may be 2,000 or 100,000 deaths. But Jews and Arabs, whose dead already share the valley between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives, will have to turn this city into a capital for both peoples.
The responsibility of the West, Europe and the US, for creating the Arab-Israeli maelstrom means that their word will not be enough. Solidarity, responsibility, means not just stopping opposing sides from disappearing; it means repairing, building, always trying to convince.
Mistrust, even hatred, will continue, but it is not necessary to love one another to co-exist: it is enough to be convinced that it is the only solution. Violent enmity between the two peoples is not so old. Once they recognised each other and co-existed. So there must be peace now, for the price will be even heavier tomorrow. Those who fight against peace betray their people. If a child born in this land is to see anything but terror and vengeance, the glory of sacrifice and death, the settlements must be dismantled, Israel must have secure borders, and the Palestinians must have a proper state, viable, recognised and respected.
When I was in my teens a friend, who was active in a Zionist movement, took me to one of her group's parties. I can still see the posters: "Israel will win, in peace if God wills, if not through war". War? Can God want that? It will not guarantee Israel's future. Only peace and mutual recognition can do that. Who will posterity call Israel and Palestine's true heroes? Rabin and Sadat, or Sharon and Sheikh Yassin? Uncertain hope or certain misery?
Is that really a question?
* Geneticist, director of the Cochin Institute and author of Et l'homme dans tout ça?, Nil editions, Paris, 2000.
Translated by Wendy Kristianasen