The Olga Document
Prof. Anat Biletzki, Andre Draznin, Haim Hanegbi, Yehudith Harel,
Michel (Micado) Warschawski, Oren Medicks
The following document was written in a series
of meetings in Givat Olga, and titled after the location, The Olga Document.
For Truth and Reconciliation, For Equality and Partnership:
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The State of Israel was supposed to grant security to Jews; it has created a death-trap whose inhabitants live in constant danger, the likes of which is not experienced by any other Jewish community;
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The State of Israel was supposed to tear down the walls of the ghetto; it is now constructing the biggest ghetto in the entire history of the Jews;
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The State of Israel was supposed to be a democracy; it has set up a colonial structure, combining unmistakable elements of apartheid with the arbitrariness of brutal military occupation.
Israel, 2004, is a state on the road to nowhere. Fifty-six years after
its establishment—notwithstanding its many achievements in agriculture, science and
technology, and albeit a great regional military power, armed with doomsday
weapons—many of its citizens are heartsick with existential worry and fear for their
future.
Since its foundation Israel has lived by its sword. An incessant
succession of “retaliations”, military operations and wars has become the
life-support drug of Israel’s Jews. And now, almost four years after the beginning
of the second Palestinian Intifada, Israel is up to its neck in the mire of
occupation and oppression, while it goes on extending the settlements and
multiplying the outposts, repeating to itself ad nauseam that “we have no partner
for peace.”
Ten years after the Oslo Accords, we are living in a benighted colonial
reality—in the heart of darkness. Thirty-seven years after Israel conquered the last
of the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, over three and
a
half million Palestinians under its rule are penned up in their towns and villages.
The term “Palestinian State”—which for years embodied the peace option—is being used
by many Israeli politicians as a mirage phrase, a spin on the reality of occupation:
“In the future,” they whisper with a knowing wink, “the Palestinian entity in the
Territories may be called a ‘state’.” And meanwhile Israel is amplifying the
devastation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as if determined to pulverize the
Palestinian people to dust.
In the face of the large Israeli camp of supporters of the separation
walls—those, both right and left, who are terrified by the demons of demography,
constantly counting the populace to find out how many Jews and Arabs are born and
die every week, how many Jews and Arabs live in the entire country and in each of
its districts every month—it is vital to pose an alternative outlook, based on the
following principles:
Coexistence of the peoples of this country, based on mutual
recognition, equal partnership and implementation of historical
justice.
We are united in a critique of Zionism, based as it is on refusal to
acknowledge the indigenous people of this country and on denial of their rights, on
dispossession of their lands, and on adoption of separation as a fundamental
principle and way of life. Adding insult to injury, Israel persists in its refusal
to bear any responsibility for its deeds, from the expulsion of the majority of
Palestinians from their homeland more than half a century ago, to the present
erection of ghetto walls around the remaining Palestinians in the towns and villages
of the West Bank. Thus, wherever Jew and Arab stand together or face each other, a
boundary is drawn between them, to separate and distinguish between the blessed and
the cursed.
We are united in the recognition that this country belongs to all its
sons and daughters—citizens and residents, both present and absentees (the uprooted
Palestinian citizens of Israel in 48’)—with no discrimination on personal or
communal grounds, irrespective of citizenship or nationality, religion, culture,
ethnicity or gender. Thus we demand the immediate annulment of all laws, regulations
and practices that discriminate between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel, and the
dissolution of all institutions, organizations and authorities based on such laws,
regulations and practices.
We are united in the belief that peace and reconciliation are
contingent on Israel’s recognition of its responsibility for the injustices done to
the indigenous people, the Palestinians, and on willingness to redress them.
Recognition of the right of return follows from our principles. Redressing the
continued injustice inflicted on the Palestinian refugees, generation after
generation, is a necessary condition both for reconciliation with the Palestinian
people, as for the spiritual healing of ourselves, Israeli Jews. Only thus shall we
stop being plagued by the past’s demons and damnations and make ourselves at home
in
our common homeland.
For many years now, Israeli leaders have been exerting themselves to
depict the Palestinians as sub-human; and their exertions have been seconded and
assisted by members of the cultural elite, media barons, vain functionaries and
light-scribblers, right and left. We reject this racist arrogance with disgust,
knowing that the Palestinians, as all other people, are neither devils nor angels,
but just like us, are humans, created equal.
We are convinced that if we approach peace and reconciliation with the
Palestinians with an open mind and a willing spirit, we shall find in them what we
bring with us: an open mind and a willing spirit. For we are brothers and sisters,
not eternal enemies as the well-poisoners profess.
It is pointless, now, to guess the material future form of the vision
of life together: two states or one?! perhaps a confederation?! or maybe a
federation?! and what about cantons?! In any case, the primary condition for
advancing the vision of living together is self-evident, both as a supreme moral
imperative and as a practical matter of the here and now: an immediate end to the
state of occupation.
Only in this way will the Palestinians in eastern Jerusalem, the West
Bank and Gaza Strip be rid of the yoke of settlements, the nightmare of apartheid,
the burden of humiliation and the demons of destruction employed by Israel
unremittingly, day and night, for 37 years. Only when they are totally free will the
Palestinians be able to discuss and decide their future.
We believe that adoption of the principles stated above will lay the
foundations on which the people of this country can set up the proper common
frameworks for life together. We are not talking of fantasies or of a miracle move
that would lead us from our living hell to a heavenly
paradise.
We are talking of a road that has not been tried hitherto: being honest
with ourselves, with our neighbours and particularly with the Palestinian people—our
enemies who are our brothers and sisters. If we muster within ourselves the
appropriate honesty and requisite courage, we will be able to take the first step
in
the long journey that can extricate us from the tangle of denial, repression,
distortion of reality, loss of direction and forsaking of conscience, in which the
people of Israel have been trapped for generations.
Whoever has eyes to see and ears to hear knows that the choice is
between another “hundred years of conflict” ending in annihilation, and a
partnership among all the inhabitants of this land. Only such a partnership is
capable of turning us, the Jews of Israel, from foreigners in their country to its
real inhabitants.
We do not intend to start another movement against the occupation, or
another party (platform, institutions, leaders). We seek to start off a genuine
public discussion about the Israeli blind alley in which we live and the profound
changes needed in order to break out of it. Every Israeli knows that this is not a
matter of political trifles, but concerns the fate of the peoples of this
country.
Giv’at Olga, June 2004
| Prof. Zalman Amit | Ra’anan Alexandrowicz |
| Boaz Arad | Dr. Yossi Amitay |
| Nirit Ben Ari | Adi Arbel |
| Michal Aviad | Nili Aslan |
| Avi Gibson Bar-El | Dr. Ariella Azulay |
| Dr. Shiko Behar | Osnat Bar-Or |
| Miryam Beinin | Prof. Joel Beinin |
| Meron Benvenisti | Prof. Zvi Bentwich |
| Prof. Anat Biletzki | Dr. Shimshon Bichler |
| Prof. Victoria Buch | Prof. Daniel Boyarin |
| Ronit Chacham | Michal Chacham |
| Dr. Sami Shalom Chetrit | Lin Chalozin-Dovrat |
| Elias Davidsson | Dr. Raya Cohen |
| Dr. Diana Dolev | Talma Bar Din |
| Andre Draznin | Sharon Dolev |
| Dr. Nurit Peled Elhanan | Dr. Avishai Ehrlich |
| Pnina Feiler | Boas Evron |
| Prof. Ariella Friedmann | Pnina Firestone |
| Tamar Getter | Racheli Gai |
| Dr. Neve Gordon | Dr. Daphna Golan |
| Prof. Uri Hadar | Mirjam Hadar |
| Yehudith Harel | Haim Hanegbi |
| Prof. Hannan Hever | Dr. Talma Hendler |
| Rachel Leah Jones | Amos Israel-Vleeschhouwer |
| Dr. Orit Kamir | Roni Kalev |
| Dr. Katlin Katz | Einav Katan |
| Prof. Baruch Kimmerling | Gal Keinan |
| Noa Kram | Elinor Kowarski |
| Hava Lermann | Orna Lavi |
| Aim Deuelle Luski | Dr. Daphna Levit |
| Dr. Abraham Mansbach | Prof. Bezalel Manekin |
| Dr. Ruchama Marton | Ronit Marian-Kadishay |
| Rela Mazali | Dr. Nina Mayorek |
| Gil Medovoy | Oren Medicks |
| Tsachi Mitsenmacher | Racheli Merhav |
| Smadar Ben Natan | Avi Mograbi |
| Prof. Adi Ophir | Prof. Judd Ne’eman |
| Prof. Avraham Oz | Amir Orian |
| Dr. Nitzan Rabinowitz | Dr. Dan Rabinowitz |
| Dr. Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin | Dr. Uri Ram |
| Yael Roth-Barkai | Roee Rosen |
| Sergeiy Sandler | Catherine Rottenberg |
| Tali Shemesh | Herzel Schubert |
| Oded Shimshon | Prof. Yehouda Shenhav |
| Diana Shoef | Prof. Nomi Shir |
| Ora Slunim | Dr. Tali Siloni |
| David Tartakover | Kobi Snitz |
| Tova Tidhar | Amos Tidhar |
| Dr. Allon Uhlmann | Osnat Trabelsi |
| Dr. Haim Yacobi | Michel (Mikado) Warschawski |
| Prof. Oren Yiftachel | Sergio Yahni |
| Prof. Moshe Zuckermann |
