Clueless in Gaza

For Israel, the land of the West Bank and Gaza--seized from Jordan and Egypt in 1967's Middle East War--is God-given territory, the land of their ancestors, and should be the one safe place in the world for Jews. To relinquish that heritage is painful and frightening; the Holocaust still dominates the Israeli mental landscape.

For Palestinians who were ousted from their ancestral homes when Israel was carved out of Palestine back in 1948, the map of their hearts has never been redrawn. A whole generation has survived in camps in Israel's "occupied territories" by telling themselves they will one day return home. Most Palestinian refugees still carry the keys to their old houses. Making peace with Israel means they will never again go home.

The new agreement allows Palestinians self-rule for five years, during which the two sides must negotiate final terms. Palestinians want the dignity of an independent state; Israel, justifiably afraid of Palestinian extremists belonging to rejectionist fronts and radical Islamic organizations, wants some measure of control. Susi's vow is testimony--as if any were needed--to the psychological challenge ahead for two societies deeply suspicious of each other.

Signing the agreement, for all its difficulties, was the easy part. Changing the heart and soul of two populations will be difficult. "The Palestinians are conditioned after 27 years of military occupation to obey orders. They've been conditioned for far too long with no sense of hope," says Jamilah Mina-Samaan, a psychologist at Abu Raya Rehabilitation Center in the West Bank. The transition from ruled to ruler, from dictatorship to democracy, is always a challenge, and for the Palestinians it has come in the form of a test: If they can organize themselves peacefully, they might achieve statehood. If not, they will once again be occupied by an Israeli army that thus far has functioned like a dictatorship. Palestinians could not vote, pass their own laws, decide where to build new towns, travel freely, choose which flowers to grow, read books such as Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice or United Nations resolutions pertaining to their plight, or avoid night raids.

To succeed, Palestinians will have to reweave the very fabric of their society, which over the last seven years of resistance--known as the intifada (Arabic for "shaking off")---has become lawless, unstructured, violent, and yet deeply religious, self-analytical, and intellectual--the typical plight of the proud refugee.

The intifada originated in one watershed moment six years ago, when an Israeli was in a road accident that killed four Palestinians. Rumor spread that it was murder, and Gaza exploded in a violent uprising that spread to the West Bank and still occasionally flares. Despite the initial euphoria after the peace agreement, more than 50 Israelis have since been killed by radical Palestinians. In one widely publicized episode, an American-born Israeli settler walked inside a mosque in the West Bank--the Judea and Samaria of the Old Testament--and machine-gunned 29 Palestinians praying toward Mecca.

Led by gangs of men in their teens and twenties, the intifada dragged on, leaving 1,500 killed by Israeli soldiers, 123,000 injured, and 250,000 imprisoned and shattering Palestinian society. The locus of power shifted dramatically, overnight, from revered parents to their outraged sons. Palestinian boys as young as 12 and 13 joined the shabiba--the young men in the street--forming the front lines in confrontations with Israeli soldiers, whom they pelted with stones. "The parents lost control of their children. Children had no respect for their fathers after watching Israeli soldiers beat them," explains psychologist George Abdo of the Abu Raya Center. The power shift from parents to children undermined the family-based social structure that had long held the society intact.