We as Mice and the Flowers Around Us
 Dan Bar-On

Israel and Palestine seem right now like a giant laboratory in which green and blue mice (in order not to say black and white) have been raised. Now, as there are too many of them, the experimenters have decided to reduce the oxygen in the lab and systematically torture the mice through starvation. Their questions are: When will the mice start to eat each other? Will they eat more of their own sort or more of the other sort? And those who survive – will they develop a more peaceful and democratic relationship or will they continue to eat each other forever. The difference between the analogy and the reality in the Middle East is that we are both the mice and the experimenters. The oxygen is like the hope for a peaceful future that is fading away from one day to another and the torture through starvation is – for many of the Palestinians a reality, and for us, the daily sight of wiping the blood off the streets, the cars, the meadows.

This image came to me while listening to an old Arab lady in Haifa, where I conduct interviews with Jews and Arabs who remember Haifa before 1948. She just returned from a visit with her sister who lives near Damascus and tried to account for the fact that most of her family fled Haifa in 1948. Then they fled because they wanted to save their children from being massacred, and thought they would return when the war will be over. Today, after we have seen that for 52 years they can not come back, had it happened again we would sacrifice our children but would not move an inch from here. This frightening sentence made me see in another light why the Palestinians struggle with us today as they do. I had to ask myself did they internalize the notion that an Israeli General expressed in the Seventies, while addressing a top military audience (in which my brother was part of):

“Put your thumb between their ribs and push hard, again and again, until
they leave.” Each side is trying to push their thumbs against the other side
’s ribs, again and again, hoping that the other side will give in and leave.

That is how I reached the image of the giant laboratory and the violent, starved mice. It almost does not matter how we got to this stage: To what extent was it Barak’s failing policy or that of his predecessor, or – what many like to think these days – the failing policy of the Palestinian leader? One could expect that the right wing would celebrate at the present stage: “We told you, there is no one to talk to! They understand only force.” But actually, but for certain fanatical fractions, the more sober right wing looks troubled these days. Why? I think that they finally understood that the settlement policy they so vehemently promoted all these years (and which also Rabin, Peres and Barak continued) may soon boomerang on all of us.

Perhaps we have reached the point of no return. If they thought earlier that the settlements would force the Palestinians to search for an agreement with Israel, now these settlements may actually have become the major obstacle for a two-State solution between the Sea and the Jordan. If this solution will not be available anymore, we will be left with three hard options: A bi-national state, of the kind Edward Said is talking about, which will soon not have a Jewish majority. Another option is total war, as illustrated here through the scenario of the mice laboratory. The third option is the re-conquest of the West Bank and Gaza, controlling the Palestinians in an Apartheid regime that will burn out Israel as a civic society. A fear penetrates into my heart – the mice laboratory is right now the preferred scenario of both sides. Some people may even claim that this scenario is written into our genes, into our history, perhaps even into theirs. This may account for the fact that we currently lead each other into this scenario almost joyfully.

So, how did we get into this mice lab scenario? Some people will accuse the Oslo Accord. But that was only the beginning of a process. Oslo was based on an assumption which did not materialize – that a slow development of mutual trust, safety and mutual interests will enable both sides to confront the difficult issues toward the end of the process, the issues that no side could address when the process started. Therefore, instead of accusing the Oslo Accord, one should try to find out why this assumption did not materialize? Why, instead of the development of mutual trust, mutual interests and safety we reached the scenario of the mice lab. One could mention here a number or reasons and partially they are different for us and for the Palestinians.

I would like to focus on three issues and will discuss them only in regard to the Jewish Israeli population, though they may be relevant also for the Palestinians, perhaps in a different way. I would like to focus on our apprehension of the other, our ambivalence regarding our internalized aggression and our fear of the end of the conflict. Our apprehension of the other is related to our deep mistrust concerning the sincerity of the Palestinians' intentions. We are afraid that when they speak of peace this is actually part of a long-term plan to annihilate us. Our bipolar approach toward the use of force and aggression causes us to feel both very strong and powerful and very weak and vulnerable at the same time. This ambivalence reinforces our self-perception as eternal victims. This approach helps us feel mainly the harm the other side inflicts upon us, and be less sensitiveto what we are inflicting upon them.

Our fear of the end of the conflict is associated with the fact that many people have constructed their identity around the conflict and its end will demand a reconstruction: Who are we if we are not determined through our negation of the other and the hatred of the others toward us? It seems that the apprehension has became even stronger for many Israelis since the beginning of the Oslo process and one should ask – why is that so? Why are we more apprehensive today in comparison to 1993? Why did this apprehension determine the views of many Israelis concerning the last political steps in the peace process? This apprehension has two parts – fear for oneself, associated with the fear of loosing one’s identity, and fear of the other and their destructive intentions. These two fears reinforce each other in a vicious cycle that is very difficult to break away from.

These two fears are anchored in our long Diaspora heritage, in our insecurity as an autonomous civic society and in our hesitation regarding our integration into the Middle Eastern region, in which we will be a small minority and are right now also a hated one. Though we are convinced, and also others tell us that we are a military and economic superpower compared to all the Arab States together, we feel ourselves at the same time as a vulnerable minority that soon will be attacked and may even be annihilated. This ambivalence also accounts for the fact that when we cause pain to our neighbors we do not feel it. We only feel what they do to us, and no rational reasoning seems to help in this respect. And if, in spite of all this, the peace process would move forward we would be frightened of the possibility to disintegrate from within: How will we survive as an independent social entity without the external cohesive glue, based on the conflict?

In this complex situation one would expect our leadership to find ways to desensitize these apprehensions and help us integrate our own ambivalence regarding our own aggressiveness and vulnerability. But if we analyze the deeds of our leaders in the last years, regardless of whether it was Netanyahu or Barak, they actually intensified these anxieties rather than desensitized them. This leadership showed no understanding of long term social processes and focused mainly on short term political power games. In addition, the murder of Rabin created a kind of panic – are we at all capable of leading ourselves to where the majority wants to go? This murder intensified the fear that we are not capable of maintaining a civic society of our own. Different groups learned from the victory of the right wing after Rabin's murder that the use of force is worthwhile, and the more you exhibit or use it, the more resources you may gain. This became the name of the game instead of learning to restrain oneself for the benefit of the whole society, based on mutual concessions. The use of force intensified the fear: You have to beware not only of those who face you but also of those who are behind you.

Perhaps the apprehension of the threatening other (related to the Oslo Accord) and the fear of ourselves accounts for the fact that during the years after Rabin’s murder we delivered the Prime Minister’s role to two leaders who came from an elite army unit. Inferring from their behavior, in that unit people learn not to fear and to act forcefully to get what they want, never mind what is in their way. Therefore, in analyzing their failure, I would focus less on their personality and more on the non-democratic socializing school they came from and on ourselves – why did we let them control our lives and actually intensify our anxieties instead of reducing them?

If we still want to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, based on separation and a two state solution, we will have to find better ways to manage our anxieties, our ambivalence concerning our own aggressions and vulnerability. Perhaps we should say openly “We are afraid of ourselves and others," thereby replacing the slogan that Netanyahu used (“They are a-f-r-a-id of us”). We will have to devote time and energy to develop a new internal social contract that will help us overcome our fears regarding our incapacities to maintain a civil society. Perhaps we should also replace Arafat’s burnt-out slogan (“peace of the brave”), and start to talk about a peace of “the people who are afraid and violent.” For all these, we need a new kind of leadership that will be more aware of long term social processes, less committed to their own success and short term power games.

They will have to help us overcome our anxieties, make us more aware of our own unresolved aggressions and vulnerability and prepare us for the risks we have to undertake, so that we can move forward into a different and better future for us and for our neighbors. Until we do so, we probably will continue in the short run with the scenario of the mice lab, sticking our heads into the sand.

As part of my own head sticking into the sand I drove last week to see the beautiful desert blossoming in the Western Negev. Like many of my people I enjoyed the beautiful grace of nature this year that helps you put aside all difficult questions that have no immediate answers. One could stand there and disregard the fact that a few hundred meters from there a war was going on; that not far away from there, in Gaza, a whole population was suffocating. Even the ruins of the Arab village from before 1948 could hardly be recognized, as the red flower carpets hid them quite well. One can continue to stick one’s head in the sand as long as one does not watch the blood, on the news, being wiped of the roads, until the catastrophe does not hit you on your head.

Dan Bar-On is a Prof. at the Department of Behavioral Sciences, Ben Gurion University; co-director - together with Prof. Sami Adwan of Bethlehem University - of Prime: Peace Research Institute in the Middle East - and author -amongst others - of  The Others Within Us: Changes in the Israeli Identity from a Social-Psychological Perspective.