Opinion | Why Israelis and Palestinians Need New Narratives

This political vision needs actually transformative national narratives of both people. I will start from us Palestinians. I think it’s time for all of us to acknowledge the collective history and memory of the Jewish people that is shaping their fears, insecurities and so on. It doesn’t in any mean to give them any legitimacy for what has been done for the Palestinian people in the last 80 years, but we need to understand these people, and these are very deep, psychological, deep aspects of any conflict that we need to acknowledge. The same for the Israeli Jews. They need to also have this national narrative transformation of moving from denying the nakba and what happened there and the injustices and to acknowledge this is something that they did. And in order to move forward, the acknowledgment is very important. And the reconciliation with our self-histories and memories and with the others’ are very important. If you would be 80 years ago in Europe and someone would tell you that in 75 years you would be able to move freely between France and Germany and your grandchildren will be able to reside in Berlin as French hipsters, you would say, “There’s no way. Lock her up.” But that’s the reality today. This was not that French and Germans were starting to love each other and to say, “How can we live together happily?” It was after hundreds of years of bloodshed and the realization that their shared interests can actually ensure their safety. It took 70 years, 60 years, 50 years to get to an arrangement of freedom of movement. That’s OK. I have 50 years to wait for peace. I don’t have 50 years waiting for what’s going on right now to continue.