israelinsider: Ceasefire

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

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Ceasefire
By Sharon Chaplik April 10, 2001

Peace in this region seems like too much of an enlightened theory. Try as I might, I cannot love my neighbor. I will not forget and neither will I forgive, but we cannot escape from the fact that it is only one land and there are two peoples. So what option do we have?

In a country marked out and divided by lines of every imaginable color: a green line, a red line, a blue line - there is only a black or white fate. It is either war or negotiation; the gray lines we are immersed in now can only continue to choke us with misery until we have lost every sense of reason. Or we can continue to lull ourselves into a slumber of indifference only to be rudely awakened by the screams of a mother clinging onto her dead infant, begging her to breathe again. But death in its cruelty knows no mercy; it is deaf. Life is sacred. We do not create; we are bestowed with the miracle of life. It is not ours to destroy or steal under the cover of an ideology.

Morning creeps in on us as we sweep away broken glass and bits of shnarpel from ground that has turned into a slaughter field. Does the wailing of mourners not resound from every hill? Does it not echo in every valley? It bounces back and hits us with the stark reality of ourselves locked in an ancient battle with open bleeding wounds that defy time, that defy logic.

Harsh sunlight bares anguished souls that fight with every breath, clenching teeth at every blow. We have the army, the national defense forces that protect us, but these are children we are sending out to the front line. These are 19-year-olds coming back in caskets.

Pleas of reason and the voice of our country struggling to fully realize its right to Zionism are being engulfed by clouds of billowing gunfire smoke. We have unwillingly become caught up in a bloodthirsty hunt for justice and revenge. If we are attacked, we hit back. If there are casualties, we hit back harder. If miraculously an alert citizen detected the bomb now being detonated in a crowded market, we lessen our retaliation. After all there were no casualties, just a townful of terrified citizens.

In the end, it is only the white flag of ceasefire and not the white smoke of exploding missiles that will begin to forge a way for two sides to be able to live, one alongside the other. One does not have to love his neighbor in order to live, but he has to hate in order to kill him. The only option we have is to live. Death is not an option. It is a curse and no definition of Zionism can possibly equate a cursed land.