8/6/2019 "Palestinians March, Israelis Repress", Merav Michaeli

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/palestinians-march-israelis-repress-merav-michaeli 1/2

Palestinians March, Israelis Repress

The Israeli public has been repressing the big drama of the Nakba and  Naksa day marches and the arrival of the Palestinians at the fences on the

border with Israel, no one is arguing about it or complaining about it, the

 public is simply not saying a word.

By Merav Michaeli

June 13, "Haaretz" -- Sources in the Israel Defense Forces are of theopinion that the scenes of Nakba Day and Naksa Day are unlikely to repeat

themselves. The marches undertaken on those two day s by Palestinianrefugees to the border with Israel, they say, were not an act of solidarity

with the Palestinians and a demand to realize the Right of Return, butrather an attempt to divert attention away from what is happening in Syria.

This is how the army wraps up the events in its familiar language - just as itdid on the days when the events took place. Then, military officials and themedia first spoke about a surprise in terms of intelligence and then aboutdealing with it in terms of armed forces and shooting. This is how the army

assists the Israeli public in repressing.

And the public in Israel does repress. It denies and completely ignores the

 big drama of the march and the arrival of the Palestinians at the fences onthe border with Israel - not then and not once since then. No one is arguing

about it or complaining about it. The Israeli public, which is au courantwith media developments, which by and large watches news broadcasts,

and which is used to chatting about the headlines as part of everyday small

talk, is simply not saying a word about it. Total repression.

At first glance, this is surprising. On second thought, it is completelyunderstandable: It is terribly frightening. It is frightening because that iswhat they frightened us with. Here they are about to rise up against us - as

we say every year during the Passover meal - and more specifically, tothrow us into the sea.

On Nakba Day, I wrote here that the citizens of Israel were suffering from

schizophrenia. How am I? "Personally, excellent." Personally it can't beanything less than excellent because collectively we are a -f-r-a-i-d (as Netanyahu once said about his critics in the media ). But the truth is that

 personally, we are afraid too. So we don't speak about it, about how t hemass marches by Palestinians to the border are a watershed event that havesuddenly created a new option, and a very concrete one at that. It has also

8/6/2019 "Palestinians March, Israelis Repress", Merav Michaeli

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/palestinians-march-israelis-repress-merav-michaeli 2/2

created a new level of repression because in addition to being terribly

frightening, there is no answer to it.

 No answer not as in shooting at legs or firing tear gas, but an answer in

terms of what do we say to them. What shall we say to their demands that

seem to be so much more justified from close up? And most of all, they aresuddenly seen.

This march to the border has turned the words "refugees" and "borders",

which had become cliches, into something totally concrete - flesh and blood, human and close, very close.

Writing on these pages, Aluf Benn compared the Palestinians' march on

 Nakba Day to the illegal Jewish immigrants' boats [during the time of theBritish Mandate in Palestine] that created an awareness of homeless

refugees who wished to find refuge in their land. (Haaretz, 18.5 )

The Palestinians are frustrated and helpless. There is no lon ger terrorism,there is an initiative by the Arab League, there is an agreement between

Hamas and Fatah. What more do you want?

Out of this frustration and sense of helplessness, they are going to theUnited Nations, out of this frustration and sense of helplessness they come

here in their masses and stand at the border and ask: "What yes?"

The citizens of Israel are also frustrated and feel helpless. It is "no" to aPalestinian state, "no" to an agreement about the 1967 borders, "no" todividing Jerusalem. Okay, fine; but what yes?

Benjamin Netanyahu is certainly not the first to reject all these ideas - far 

from it. Except for Yitzhak Rabin, all Israel's leaders since 1967 have

rejected them, either explicitly or by holding barren negotiations, or bydisengaging.

But what can one do: It so happened that on his watch, the Palestinians

started marching on the borders that he calls defensible.

Repression is an effective mechanism that makes it possible for the

individual to function despite a trauma. But many times, at a certain stage,the repression and denial are likely to lead to disaster. Netanyahu must stop

repressing and denying, and must respond - not to them, to us: What yes?