Abstract
While the dialogues described below by Galia Golan and Zahira Kamal have not taken place explicitly within the framework of the five-stage process described in this book, the transforming essence of dialogue is breathtakingly captured in this account. In a way that inspires reverence, it reveals the mind and spirit of those who engage and persevere in sustained dialogue to make and consolidate peace. It also captures both the fear and suspicion that characterize potential participants in Stage One as described in Chapter Six and the remarkable experience of a civil society in which dialogues are proliferating beyond capacity to number them. It particularly highlights the special contribution and characteristics of dialogue among women.
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Notes
- 1.
Text was first published by: “Bridging the Abyss: Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue,” with Zahira Kamal in Harold Saunders (ed.), A Public Peace Process: Sustained Dialogue to Transform Racial and Ethnic Conflicts, St. Martin’s Press, 1999, pp. 197–220. The permission was granted by Springer’s Rights & Permissions team in Heidelberg on 9 October 2017.
- 2.
The Sinai, without Gaza, was returned to Egypt as part of the Israeli-Egyptian Peace Treaty of 1979.
- 3.
These included refugees from both the 1948 and the 1967 wars, as well as Palestinians who were outside the area at the time of the 1967 war. Some the latter were permitted to return over the years under the rubric of family reunification. In addition, there by 1998 close to one million Arab citizens of Israel, these are Palestinians who remained in Israel after the 1948 war.
- 4.
Historic Palestine includes not only Israeli of the 1949–1967 borders (armistice lines) and the West Bank of the Jordan (annexed by Jordan in 1951 and occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War), but also the East Bank of the Jordan. This East Bank became known as Transjordan, created as a separate entity by the British in 1921. Transjordan, today the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is not part of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute; moreover King Hussein of Jordan relinquished all claims to the (occupied) West Bank in favour of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1988.
- 5.
By ‘mainstream’ is meant Israelis associated with the Zionist parties, movements, or organizations, the most mainstream being those of the Labor Zionist persuasion.
- 6.
Hammami, while the pLO representative in London, was assassinated in 1978; Sartawi was assassinated at a meeting of the Socialist International in 1983 in Lisbon.
- 7.
At the PNC meeting, Arafat came out in favour of contacts “with all personages who recognize our rights as a people to self-determination and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.” See, Galia Golan, The Soviet Union and the Palestine Liberation Organization: An Uneasy Alliance (New York: Praeger, 1980), p. 175, citing MENA (Middle East News Agency) (March 17, 1977). These remarks, which would include Zionists, were said to have received applause (Golan, Uneasy Alliance, citing Middle East International (May 1977), p. 10. See also Alain Gresh, The PO: The Struggle Within (London: Zed Books, 1988), pp. 196–199.
- 8.
‘Mainstream’ in the Palestinian context refers to those identifying with the PLO, the most mainstream being Fatah and the large number describing themselves as Independents.
- 9.
The Israeli author remembers the day of the second or third meeting of the early women’s dialogue, held at a Palestinian woman’s home in Gaza. She did not even tell her husband she was going to Gaza because of the danger involved in being there in the 1980s. Indeed, while she was there, an Israeli was knifed to death in the town market.
- 10.
The Bir Zeit Professor Dr. Sari Nusseibeh, for example, was beaten up by Bir Zeit students on one occasion because of his activities with Israelis, and Professor Galia Golan’s regular appearances before the Knesset Foreign and Security Affairs Committee (as a Soviet expert) were cancelled because of her participation in meetings with Palestinians abroad.
- 11.
Apparently to sabotage the event, Israel declared a closure of the territories for the day of the Hands Around Jerusalem. Nonetheless, 15,000 Palestinians managed to get there, many from outside Jerusalem.
- 12.
The law was abrogated by the Knesset after the 1992 elections that brought in a left-center majority in the Knesset. It had banned contact with members of “terrorist organizations,” which was the way the government described the PLO. The ban basically applied only abroad, where PLO officials could and did meet with Israelis. Inside the occupied territories, Israel, as the occupying power, forbade membership in a political organization, so Palestinians kept any such membership secret. In the meetings abroad, which were, indeed, illegal, a number of devices were used to keep within the letter of the law and to protect the Israelis involved: participants from the two sides might refrain from sitting next to each other in public sessions; a third party might stand or sit between Palestinians and Israelis during breaks or in smaller sessions. Many absurd situations resulted until the ban was, in fact, totally ignored (although one Israeli, Abie Nathan, was jailed for this activity, and a group of others was brought to trial). The Israeli author remembers going over to a PLO official whom she had met in numerous previous dialogues and giving him a greeting greeting kiss on the cheek – wondering if that were included in the ‘contact’ banned by the Israeli law.
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Golan, G. (2019). Bridging the Abyss: Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue (1999). In: Galia Golan: An Academic Pioneer on the Soviet Union, Peace and Conflict Studies, and a Peace and Feminist Activist. Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice, vol 22. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95213-0_10
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