After Mubarak stepped down as president of Egypt on Feb. 11, a popular question on Twitter—probably at lots of dining room tables as well—was, “which country is next?”
Like everyone else, I had no idea. But there is one country in the region that is ripe for an Arab youth-style revolution and has been for at least 44 years, if not 63 years: Israel.
Notice I say one country.
The young people of Israel and Palestine are just as wired, ambitious, internationalist and freedom loving as any of their Arab neighbors, if not moreso, given the higher standard of living and nods to democracy that Israel offers. In my experience, anytime these young people get together, they find that they share many of the same ideals and dreams but that the older generation with its Holocaust/Nakhba baggage and mutual religious obfuscation continues to snuff those ideals and dreams.
I asked a close Palestinian friend—the guy who originally showed me what it means to be Palestinian, back in 1997 at the Arava Institute—what Palestinian youth are saying now and he said roughly that they were doing nothing because they are stuck between a rock and a hard place with governance divided between Gaza and the West Bank and Israel’s thumb crushing any democratic aspirations anyway.
I can’t really see from a brief Web search what the Israeli peace camp is doing about the Arab revolutions either, if anything. Uri Avnery, the godfather of the Israeli peace movement, has written that Israel may now get left behind as neighboring Arab societies become more progressive:
Our future is not with Europe or America. Our future is in this region, to which our state belongs, for better or for worse. It’s not just our policies that must change, but our basic outlook, our geographical orientation. We must understand that we are not a bridgehead from somewhere distant, but a part of a region that is now – at long last – joining the human march towards freedom. —Uri Avnery writing at Gush Shalom
And some Israeli musicians have put out this video on YouTube:
Rabbi Michael Cohen, who officiated at my wedding, urged Israel to seize the moment in terms of a *final* negotiated settlement:
The next time the earth moves in the Middle East it will be much more violent. It would be another tragedy if that moment becomes the moment, and not the present moment, that we need to move the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations forward. —Cohen writing in Arab News
And another Palestinian friend, Fadi Abu Sa’da, with whom I attended a journalism training in Beirut a few years ago, hailed the non-violent aspects of the Arab uprisings:
It was odd, in Palestine, to listen to some people talk about the examples of Gandhi and Martin Luther King and their nonviolent struggle. But it was reassuring to know that people can, if they have the will, change their situation. —Fadi Abu Sa’da at fadisite.com
But each of these thinkers, all of whom I admire and respect, are relying on old paradigms of changing power dynamics—the pre-Tunisia paradigms. the new paradigm is to get rid of the people at the top who are blocking the way and in the Israeli-Palestinian case that is a lot of people all over the world.
The people I knew in Israel in the late 90s were already talking about the power of youth to remake society. We are all older now, so I call it “youth-style,” but my generation of Israeli and Palestinian youth should capitalize on this moment and at least hold an event together on the line. My dream was always to return to Israel for a big party: a giant music and politics fest somewhere near Bethlehem—this was before the wall, mind you—a party that refused to stop until the borders between Israelis and Palestinians were erased and True Democracy blanketed the region.
This sounds like hopeless dreaming now, but then again, it is not so far removed from what just happened in Tunisia and Egypt and what is happening in Libya and maybe in Bahrain.
I am an American youth-style Jew, sitting comfortably in the American heartland, sipping coffee and suggesting revolution for other people. But I know people are sitting at cafes in Tel Aviv and Ramallah sipping (better) coffee and wondering the same things. I have lost many of my ties to the region over the years because I cannot bear to watch the stagnation and repression. But I agree with Avnery that this is the moment for change, independent of any Western negotiator, the UN or the Old Guard. This is the time for a new way out of that quagmire.
There is an ongoing Twitter thread of revolutionary Arabic words. Thawra, revolution, is my favorite and is quite fitting for the Israel-Palestine situation. I’d like to add the first revolutionary Hebrew phrase to the mix: Yalla. It means “let’s go,” roughly equivalent to “vamanos” in Spanish.
And the best part: It’s the same in Arabic.
Yalla.
