When 85-year-old Israeli Yocheved Lifshitz was released from Hamas’s underground cells, she was filmed gripping the hand of a hooded fighter who had probably been part of her prison guard while saying “shalom”, the Hebrew word for peace. It was a startling moment of humanity in a frighteningly divided world. At a press conference, Ms Lifshitz said that she had been treated well in captivity despite a harrowing and brutal capture from her kibbutz.
A peace activist, Ms Lifshitz’s views surely influenced her words, as probably did the knowledge that her husband was still being held by Hamas. But in these bleak times, Ms Lifshitz offers an important lesson: that a small gesture of kindness towards a person who represents your enemy can stop time, can show in an instant that we are all human, as opposed to an impulse for revenge that reinscribes the past, setting off an endless chain of attack and reprisal.
Israelis feel hurt and angry. Hamas’s massacre of 1,400 people and the taking of a further 220 hostages are heinous crimes. But justice should be meted out within an institutionalised framework that prevents innocent Palestinians from being punished. Israel’s offensive on Monday exacted the highest single-day death toll since the start of the war in Gaza. More than 5,700 Palestinians have died so far – nearly half of them children. Hamas’ war crimes against Israeli civilians do not justify Israeli forces committing war crimes against Palestinian civilians.
Many more hostages must be allowed to leave Gaza. The majority of Israelis understand the pain of unnecessary anguish. A poll for campaigners Avaaz found this week that 57% of Israelis “support a plan where Hamas will release the children and families it holds hostage, in exchange for the Israeli government releasing Palestinian children held in Israeli jails”. Abandoning people should not be an option for any Israeli government, but the window of opportunity is closing to get women, children and the elderly out of Hamas’s clutches.
The shuttle diplomacy has been helpful, with the US president, Joe Biden, urging more time for hostage negotiations and pushing for the delivery of aid to Palestinians. Better still would be to heed the call of UN secretary general, António Guterres, for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in Gaza. The World Health Organization warned that thousands of hospital patients’ lives are at risk as clinics run out of fuel in the coastal enclave. Their needless deaths would be a stain on the world’s conscience.
Israel must have an eye on the future. Mr Guterres is right that the attacks by Hamas “did not happen in a vacuum” and Palestinians had been subjected to 56 years of “suffocating occupation”. What comes after Hamas requires a better answer than irreconcilable conflict. Yet Israel’s political leadership has long convinced itself that peace with the Palestinians is not at hand. This can turn into a dangerous belief that it never will be.
Israelis and Palestinians have been locked into a spiral where each side seeks to avenge a wrong. Even when one side thinks they have got their revenge, the other does not think the score has been evened. The result is never-ending destruction. This has disastrously determined the recent history of bloodshed in the region. But both sides need to see themselves as they see each other so their violence can become part of history rather than part of the present.
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