By Maya Savir
A major obstacle to peace is the widely held notion that people don’t change. But it is an historical fact that they do. They change as individuals, and they change collectively.
Following the publication of my book, On Reconciliation, which delves into the conflicts and reconciliation processes of South Africa and Rwanda, I’ve spoken to various audiences in Israel. For nearly a decade, and with audiences that vary in their political beliefs, the notions I conveyed about reconciliation and what it demands were generally well received despite the nature of my ideas, one that undermines the prevalent view of the conflict held by the Israeli-Jewish mainstream.
Odd, isn’t it? We would expect that a society that rejects the very notion of reconciliation to be less open to it. Understanding this ostensible paradox offers insight to the Israeli-Jewish mind, and to the changes it is undergoing. One of the reasons for this acceptance is that the examples I share on reconciliation are from Africa, which engages the curiosity and imagination of those who do not know it. But more importantly, it is due to a characteristic of Israeli-Jewish consciousness before 7 October, that of suppression.
For most Israeli-Jews, before 7 October and the ensuing war in Gaza, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was distant, and more importantly, controllable. In other words, their response to my ideas about reconciliation was essentially: sure, this is interesting, and one day, after we’ve tended to all the other, much more pressing, matters we have on our table, it’ll be relevant to us. 7 October changed that.
The elephant – that is, the conflict – is in the room, and it can no longer be ignored. Its steps are heard and felt. New audiences, including those that are not traditionally part of the peace movement, are engaging in conversations that they previously considered irrelevant. Sadly, too many Israeli-Jews are nonetheless currently fantasising about solutions that are both morally corrupt and completely unrealistic, but they are nonetheless acknowledging the fact that there is a conflict, and that it needs to be tended to. The importance of this development can’t be exaggerated: it is impossible to speak about what lies in a person’s blind spot.
People change. Just look at Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, at black and white South Africans, at Israel and Egypt, at France and Germany, and even at Israel and postwar Germany. Israeli-Jews can do so as well.
Maya Savir is an Israeli writer and human rights and reconciliation activist. She is the author of On Reconciliation as well as six fiction books. She serves as Search For Common Ground’s Israel country director
