EXPANDING UNIVERSE: A Fool for Peace

Time was once taken away from Bassam Aramin — for raising a Palestinian flag in the ’80s; for throwing a hand grenade at Israeli soldiers. Seven years of jail time led him to join Combatants for Peace, an action/dialogue group of Israeli/Palestinian former fighters.
I’ve come to talk to him because his story in the New York Times flew at me like shrapnel. His daughter Abir Aramin, age 10, had been killed in Anata by an Israeli rubber bullet aimed at rioters whose path she’d crossed. Bassam was quoted as saying, “I want my daughter to be the last victim. There are partners on the other side who believe what I believe.”
That was in January 2006. Today, beneath a tired rawness, I sense something that resembles joy in Aramin. He is a holy fool for peace. Sitting for his interview at a hotel in East Jerusalem, cradling his cell phone the way a Tibetan Buddhist lama cradles his mala, he waits to be spoken to, and when he finally answers, his voice barely reaches across the table. He tells me that jail was a place of transition. It was in jail that he first began to question the wisdom of armed struggle. “I heard people on both sides saying the conflict can’t be solved by military means. But still we saw the conflict going on, with the same bloodshed, the same killings. Everyone knows what the final solution will be: the ’67 borders. Why does anyone have to die?”
With weary tenacity, he keeps coming back to the conflict’s absurdity: “Israel has hundreds of checkpoints on the West Bank. Their purpose is to create more security, but all they do is create more enemies. The soldiers look at us as suspects. We look at them as victims. The Israelis, too, are being occupied — by the darkness of the occupation, by its immorality. We need their help. I believe in nonviolent change. But we Palestinians can’t do it alone.”
As we walk, I finally ask the question I came to ask: “After what happened to Abir, did you re-think, even for a moment, your decision to dialogue with Israelis?” Aramin leans toward me. He looks the way I imagine a Palestinian militant would look when he is about to drum into a stranger’s head the blunt logic of armed struggle. Instead, he says, “My determination to make peace with Israel became stronger after Abir was killed.” He challenges me with his eyes to challenge him. “It would be easy for me to go out and take revenge. But I would be part of the same circle of violence I am against. Look,” he says, pulling out a Raggedy Ann carrying bag. From it he removes a couple of cookies in cellophane, two and a half shekels in plastic, and a stick of Cadbury chocolate — reminders of his daughter’s absent presence.

Robert Hirschfield