israelinsider: Olive branch

Sharon Chaplik is a mother of two who lives in Yehud and immigrated to Israel from Kenya 11 years ago.

More from Sharon Chaplik

Price for peace?

Inside look

Ceasefire

Poetry and war

The noose tightens

Olive branch
By Sharon Chaplik March 14, 2001

These are times when the notion of peace no longer conjures up images of white doves and olive branches. When anger, hatred and frustration have become the backdrops for our fight and right to live. When time itself ceases to be a measurement of days passing by and instead becomes a collection of moments from one news bulletin to the next, one shooting incident to the next and on the other side - from one shelling to the next. Our hands are tainted and their hands are bloody, as we partake in a fight over a land that is our mutual fate.

We are trapped in a body count that increases steadily with each terrorist attack. We are held bondage by the acts of fanatics. And then, sometimes, time freezes in a split second of absolute silence before the explosion comes. This is followed by screams of sheer terror and pain that slice through the air and mingle with flying glass and mangled metal pieces. Do we not have the right to live and die in dignity?

Our children have been maimed; on the other side a nine-year-old was shot dead. We continue to beat at our chests. We keep on digging deeper into the ground to make room for our dead, looking for refuge and burying more as we sink further into this cauldron of bloodshed.

And yet we have a bond to the land; this has been the nucleus of our existence. The essence of Zionism has flowed in us through the generations and our history has nurtured from this.

At what price does this come? Do we have the right to free ourselves of the chokehold that has threatened for so long to wipe out the Jewish nation and cleanse ourselves by placing it on another?

We long to live full lives and through this all we are unable to shake off the tentacles of persecution. Our history at times hangs over us like a protective overcoat and at times like a noose. It tightens from time to time and yet leaves us with barely enough breath to carry on. We remember our history. We are living proof of our history.

How deceiving are the clear blue skies above, with their promise of warmth and wisps of white clouds, whose silver linings have long since abandoned this region.