I24news.tv..
06 August '13..
People get married, they have kids. The kids need space. They grow up and get married. They need a home. They may want to live near their parents, and maybe not. Everywhere in the world they can choose where to live. It’s called “life.”
I live in a prefab home, in a settlement in the Judean Desert. When I first moved in three years ago, my husband and I had a sweet one-year-old baby. We had moved from a wonderful Jerusalem villa to 42 square meters that even Ikea designs couldn’t organize in a way that would enable three people to go a whole day without injuring one another by mistake, not to mention maneuvering around a crib, a baby cot, a pram, a playpen, an activity mat and a high chair.
Now, three years later, my oldest son is four. His baby brother was born nine months ago. Three boys (two children and one childish father) and an hysterical mother need space. Believe me. For the sake of family harmony. So when you say “freeze settlement construction” you’re actually saying that we can’t build a house, right? That we have to remain in 42 square meters and hope for the best, or envy our Arab neighbors on the adjacent hill?
Because the Arabs are building. As much as they want, as much as they can. Upwards, sideways, without interference, without Europe or the US telling them what to do, without Peace Now sending drones to take pictures and rat them out. Why? What is the explanation for allowing Arabs to build but forbidding the Jews? There’s no agreement with the Palestinians, and until now, no matter how much we offered the Arabs, how many gestures we made and good will we showed, how much trust, weapons, power, territory and authority we transferred to them – there is still no peace. Just more and more suffering.
It sounds negligible, like a little pinprick and it’s over – but a freeze on construction is an edict the public cannot withstand. It is not democratic, it’s not humane, it’s very expensive for law abiding citizens and makes their lives miserable. Whether intentionally or not, its rooted in pure and fundamental apartheid: Jews are not allowed to live in certain places, not allowed to build, not allowed to grow, be the reasons what they may.
So in order to prove to the world that we are a-ok, so that everyone can see that we want peace, in order to soften the hearts of the Arabs, Americans and the Europeans, a construction freeze in the Judea and Samaria settlements is on the table as “a gesture”?
Well, actually, it’s not. I am not a gesture. I am a human being who wants to live a normal life, who wants to sit down calmly with an architect and engineer, without being afraid that tomorrow the authorities might order me not to pour cement or wall off a porch. Leave us alone. When an agreement is reached, if an agreement is reached – call us. Until then, let us be. Let us live. You’ve done enough damage.
And having mentioned “peace,” let’s think about this word for a minute. At our house we’re not allowed to use it because the connotation is so negative. I used to believe in peace. I believed that when there’s true, mutual will, it can be as wonderful as love. The older I grew and the more I saw the disasters wrought by “peace,” the extent of bereavement and destruction, of expulsion and tragedy, I started hating peace more and more, until today I use the word in loathing or cynicism, but mostly in fear. Because I know with a bleeding heart that the Arabs don’t want peace, they want Judenrein, a land clean of Jews. And their vision has no room for two states for two people, there’s only one people and one state – Palestine for Palestinians. And I don’t blame them. It’s a legitimate desire. What’s illegitimate and distorted and sick and works like a self-destructive mechanism is that we help them over and over again by moving toward a political agreement, negotiations, gestures and withdrawals. Because unilateral peace is like a one-sided love: it’s barren, it hurts, it’s bad, bad, bad.
Link: http://www.i24news.tv/en/opinion/130802-karni
Karni Eldad is a musician, married, and a mother of two, a resident of Tekoa (West Bank).
Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.
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