BOOK OF THE DAY: EAMON DELANEYreviews A Divided Paradise: An Irishman in the Holy Land; David Lynch; New Island; pp374; €14.99
DAVID LYNCH is a journalist and peace activist who has worked in the Palestinian territories and written about the experience for Magill, Villagemagazine and Daily Ireland, the defunct Republican newspaper.
On this basis I was expecting much that I would disagree with in this book, but to my great surprise there is little in its 374 pages with which one could not broadly concur. Lynch is studiously fair in mapping out the tragedy of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, of how it came to be and of how difficult it is to build the lasting trust which will enable peace to prevail. On this basis, he makes useful parallels with the Northern Ireland conflict and the way in which a confrontation of mutual exclusives managed, after great effort, to find a liveable compromise in the shape of the Belfast Agreement.
The so-called Holy Land has gone the other way, with an erosion of trust. However, this is the Middle East, where compromise is seen as weakness. Fear of being seen as weak is an Israeli hang-up which has crippled them. If over a million Arabs can live peacefully within Israel itself, then why can’t the two sides live peacefully within two adjoining states?
This book is a useful primer, and it certainly catches the atmosphere very well: the barren but beautiful landscape; the tension; the endless roadblocks. Lynch vividly describes the sudden terror of being under attack during a riot at Bil’in, and also quotes some Palestinians questioning the point of such rioting. It is an honest and inquiring account, and he travels not only to refugee camps in Lebanon but also to poorer towns of working class Israelis.
This is not to say that Lynch doesn’t have an ideological position. He sees Israel as a Western colonial project, supported by the British, then the UN and then the United States. Critics of Israel tend to gloss over the fact that it was created by a UN vote after the Arabs rejected the partition of Palestine that was offered. In opting for war, they got even less, and kept up their opposition.
This is my problem with the current debate on the issue: the lack of a bigger context. Israel was originally opposed by almost all of the countries surrounding it until it gradually won them over to peace. For Israelis, the issue is not just a bunch of downtrodden Palestinian kids throwing stones, and then rockets. The fear is that, for Palestinian militants, no compromise will suffice until the Jewish state is completely undone.
A moot quote leaps out of Lynch’s narrative. If the wrongs of the 1967 occupation “need to be addressed”, then surely the same needs to be done regarding the actions of 1948? This sets off alarm bells even for liberal Israelis (to whom Lynch addresses the question). What does “addressed” mean here? Already, the Right of Return has been conceded as a negotiating position but beyond that, it would mean that the whole Israeli state needs to be dismantled, and that is simply not going to happen.
Lynch seems to support the two-state solution – really the only plan in town, and it has remained so for decades. A major obstacle, however, is the continuing Israeli policy of building settlements in the West Bank. This is like driving nails into your own hand, and until such building stops there is no hope for peace.
Eamon Delaney is an author and editor of
Magill
magazine