AN APOLOGY AND A PRAYER
An open letter to the Palestinian people from Jews in Israel and the
Diaspora

In the period between the religious festivals of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Jews are enjoined to take steps to repair the wrong we have done to others. This is an attempt to reach out to you, our Palestinian cousins, to change the nature of the bloody and merciless exchange, which currently dominates relations between us.

We who sign below, ordinary Jews, want to tell you that we are sorry.

We are sorry for the calamity you experienced in 1948, for the loss of your homes and land, for your dispersal and exile, and for the families that have grown up for three generations in refugee camps without a sense of home or belonging.

We are sorry particularly for the Jewish part in your exodus – the expulsions, the shelling of villages, and those killings which created the climate of fear which prompted many to leave. We our sorry that our terrible century of tragedy became your tragedy. You did not ask for it and you did not deserve it. And we were blind to it.

Our people were blinded by our own suffering and loss, rage and grief, desperate to
survive, desperate for a home, a refuge, a place we could call our own. We were unable to see the magnitude of the sacrifice we were asking of you.

In 1948, and again in 1967, we were also blinded by the joy and relief of the military victories which secured our homeland.

We apologise unreservedly for the increasing harshness of our occupation since the victory of 1967, and for the further losses we have inflicted on the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza. Losses of land, of water, trees and homes, of dignity and humanity and freedom. This occupation has been perverted by greed and hubris, and it has corrupted our people as it has humiliated and angered your people. It has created hatred and a thousand new wounds between us. It needs to end.

We want you to have your own state, that you can take pride in, a refuge and symbol of hope for your own people, with Arab Jerusalem as its capital. We want to return to you that land and those settlements which stand in the way of the wholeness and territorial integrity of your state.

We will not now give up our own state. We have yearned for it for too long, fought for it too hard, and need its sanctuary too much to let it go. But we want our two states to work together as partners for the good of all our peoples.

We want your refugees with our help and the help of the community of nations to receive reparation and help to build new lives and re-settlement if they wish. We will welcome a certain number to Israel. They will not find the country that their forefathers left, but we hope they will find through this process a new climate of acceptance and tolerance.

We respect the determination of the people of the West Bank and Gaza to resist the occupation. But we ask you urgently to stop the suicide bombings and the shooting of innocent people. These acts generate a climate of fear, hatred and mistrust, and the belief that there is no rational partner in peaceful dialogue. For our part we will resist the aggressive and intimidatory acts of our own leaders. The shelling of villages and assassination and destruction of homes and crops must stop.

At this time of darkness and war, it is incumbent upon us to search out every glimmer of light and hope. We wish for our people and your people, for our children and our children's children, joy and prosperity, peace and God's blessing.

Sincerely,