Just a few days after the Israeli victory in the Six Day War in June 1967, Amos Oz, still in army uniform, strolled down the newly captured streets of East Jerusalem. While most of his fellow fighters were reveling in their triumph, Oz was already entertaining the idea of advocating for a two-state solution. He could not celebrate because he believed the pre-1967 borders would be the home of peace for Israelis and Palestinians. Often in the chase after something, we end up running far away from it. In the chase after peace in 1967, Oz has long said that the Israelis ended up running in the opposite direction.
Forty-six years later, Amos Oz still believes that the very borders Israel tried to shed in the Six Day War will one day be their salvation. Now one of the most famous and controversial Israeli novelists and intellectuals, Oz continues to campaign for his genre of peace. However, unlike in his younger days when he fought with a machine gun, Oz has matured to use an arguably more powerful weapon: his words. After going to the army, Oz began to write. Since then, he hasn’t stopped.
The thrust of Oz’s political conviction is this: forcing enemies to live together in one state is like forcing a dysfunctional family to share the same roof. It will not lead to peace. Thus, the key to the locked doors of peace is to divide the house into two smaller ones. Oz believes that the current realities necessitate a compromise. Yes, compromise is difficult, and Oz understands that. “There is no such thing as a happy compromise,” Oz says. But, as unhappy as compromise may be, it is realistic just the same. Thinking that refusing compromise will result in peace would be a fantasy; the alternative to compromise is doom.
Politicians don’t realize that the alternative to compromise is not idealism and integrity. In a short anecdote, Oz shares, “I live in the desert in Arad. Every morning at 5 a.m., I start my day by taking a walk before sunrise. I inhale the silence. I take in the breeze, the silhouettes of the hills. I walk for about 40 minutes. When I come back home, I turn on the radio and sometimes I hear politicians using words like ‘never’ or ‘forever’ or ‘for eternity’- and I know that the stones out in the desert are laughing at him.” Nature understands man’s transience better than man ever will. Conflict that begins in the hearts and minds of people will not be solved beyond the horizon in some valley of vanishing Arabs, but rather in some ground in the middle, in compromise.
As a novelist, Oz’s basic doctrine is that of the open-endedness of humans, which is to say that besides for being able to surprise others, humans are most apt at surprising themselves. As an optimist, Oz still has hopes for the Israeli government. The boldness of humanity can bring peace. Israel was a dream, Oz notes. Now, Israel is a realized dream, a dream our grandparents never would have imagined. It is the same dream that currently prods us to end the fixation on the ideal and become more concerned with reality. Oz concludes, “The disappointment is not in the nature of Israel, it is in the nature of dreams.”
Oz’s liberal form of Zionism may run counter to the beliefs with which many of us have grown up. As Jews, we are a people who dare to believe, to defy logic, and have faith that if we sacrifice enough, dreams can come true. Liberal Zionism, however, teaches us something different about the nature of dreams. Israel has justified her battle wounds and emotional scars of the wars since the Six Day War by the hope of achieving the impossible: one state, indivisible, and peaceful. There is a reason, however, that they say that only in his dreams can man be truly free. It’s because the limitations of this world will always find their way to infringe upon our boundless visions. Unless we have the courage to dream within the confines of our reality, we are not giving our dreams a fair chance. Perhaps, for Zionists, the dream of a Jewish homeland has already been achieved, and now it is time to sacrifice not for the sake of fantasy, but for the sake of compromise.
In light of the recent elections, President Obama’s upcoming visit to Israel, and our ongoing fight for peace, it may be worth taking a moment to ponder Oz’s perspective. Even if we do not fully embrace his vision, Oz begs us to ask to ask a serious question: Can dreams really come true?
Maybe not, but they sure can be convincing.