    Is the Intifada over?

    (Reading Chaucer in the Holy Land)

    By Israel Shamir

    "The Palestinian Intifada is over, and the Palestinians have lost"- -
    thus proclaimed the Jewish American columnist Charles Krauthammer in the
    Washington Post[i] (June 18, 2004). Armed resistance has dwindled; there
    are no attacks on Israeli civilians; the Palestinians have been brought
    to their knees, thanks to the assassination of Palestinian leadership
    and to the Wall that has locked the unruly natives in their ghettos,
    wrote the Zionist stalwart. Is it true? Is the resistance over, and has
    the Holy Land been surrendered to the victor? Well, up to a point:

    Palestine can't be separated from the larger context: the battle for
    Palestine began in Jerusalem and Gaza, but now it rages in Falujah and
    Kerbala, notwithstanding the appointment of a CIA agent as a ruler of
    'independent Iraq'; before coming back to Jerusalem, the war against
    Judeo-American domination probably will spread to Teheran, Damascus and
    even European capitals. But the Intifada in Palestine unsurprisingly ran
    out of steam.

    The military might of the Jewish state knows no rivals in the Middle
    East and beyond. Armed to the teeth, equipped with the latest American
    weaponry and nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass
    destruction, it is probably able to take on any army on earth. Every
    Israeli man and woman serves in the Army, and his or her military
    exploits are the necessary requirement for any career, from minister to
    hairdresser. This militarised settler society easily overpowered the
    thoroughly disarmed native population.

    The usual weapon of a Palestinian is a stone picked up on his hillside;
    their famed 'suicide-bombers' were rather manifestation of their
    indomitable spirit than a threat to Israel; hardly more than a nuisance
    from military point of view. Ordinary road accidents kill more Israelis
    than the Palestinians. None had military training; cordoned off from the
    outer world, a Palestinian could not obtain arms save those bootlegged
    by the renegade settlers; no wonder he could not defeat the steely rows
    of tanks and air-to-ground laser-guided missiles.

    Moreover, the Jews have a powerful secret weapon at their disposal -
    their readiness to ruin the land. Their well-planned artesian wells
    killed the springs of water and turned the Holy Land into parched
    desert. This week I walked along the watercourse of Ghor (Arugot, in
    Hebrew), formerly a perennial stream. Home to mountain goat and leopard,
    this spring dried up, as the nearby kibbutz of Ein Gedi bored a shaft,
    laid a pipe and caught the water to bottle and sell in Tel Aviv. The
    gentle slopes of Samaria are disfigured by new roads to new Jewish
    suburbs. In the North of Gaza strip, a green land of fragrant orchards
    is turned into black wilderness of Mordor with smouldering stubs of
    burned trees. In the ruined land, the settlers prevail over the natives.

    And still Krauthammer's declaration of victory is premature. This
    immigrants-versus-natives confrontation over the sweet land of Palestine
    reminds me the Knight's Tale, this first fruit of Chaucer, that tells of
    two brothers, Arcite and Palamon, madly in love with King's daughter
    Emely, 'fresh as May with blossoms born anew, all mild and reverent, her
    body washed with water from a well'.

    In order to win her hand, Arcite appealed to the God of War, and Palamon
    pled to the Goddess of Love. In the decisive tournament, Mars-inspired
    Arcite defeated the love-stricken Palamon, but he was not destined to
    wed the fair maiden: after his military victory, he collapsed and
    suddenly died. The God of War could deliver victory, but only the
    Goddess of Love could deliver the maiden. The gentle King gave his
    daughter to the defeated Knight, and 'with all bliss and joyous melody
    this Palamon hath wedded Emely', concludes Chaucer. Thus the English
    bard prophesied an event unexpected by the hard-nosed Krauthammer:
    people who love their land will have her, even if military victory will
    be had by their adversaries.

    For the land should be loved as Emely was loved by Palamon, as woman is
    loved by man; and such a love is beyond the abilities of most Jews. Some
    of them see in Palestine a symbol of God's promise to the people of
    Israel or a pledge of Messianic days, but such symbolic love is doomed
    to fail. Likewise, my French socialist friend married a Russian girl,
    for she symbolised Communism and Dostoyevsky, but their marriage broke
    down under the heavy load of symbolism.

    My English politician friend has married to obscure his sexual
    preferences; he was tired to explain the voters why he did not marry.
    Likewise, many Jews were tempted to embrace Zionism as they were tired
    of explaining why they have no land of their own. But tiredness is a
    poor basis for marriage, and a real woman and a real land weren't made
    to provide an excuse.

    The worst of all are Krauthammers, the American Jews who believe that a
    land they did not plough and did not seed can belong to them for they
    have the deed, like a summer cottage they rarely visit - they know no
    love, but an impotent sultan's jealousy to his bought-and-paid-for slave
    girl.

    The settlers proved their lack of true love at their withdrawal from
    Sinai in 1980s. Leaving these places after a short sojourn, they smashed
    everything they could lay their hands on, dynamited every house and
    bulldozed every garden and vineyard planted by native and imported
    hands. And now, discussing withdrawal from Gaza, the settlers swear they
    will obliterate all signs of life on their lands before surrendering
    them to the hated natives. This is not the way to deal with a loved
    land: a poet spread his tenderness towards his beloved like a carpet
    under her feet as she forsook him, and wished her to be happy with her
    new man, ‘loved as much as he loved her’.

    Indeed, Palestinians never damaged their homes and gardens they were
    forced to leave, and beautiful old Arab houses and gardens in Talbieh
    and Ain Karim bear witness to their masters' love to the end. Not only
    their faith in eventual return kept them back from torching their trees
    and burning their houses down before fleeing to the refugee camps of
    Lebanon and Gaza - but their selfless love for the land and trees.

    The Holy Land is a common project by Our Lord God and by her people. He
    created her, and they attended to her, built her terraces, dug around
    olives, and worshipped her Lord on her high places. Just as the defeated
    Palamon won his fair Emely, the vanquished will inherit the land; while
    victorious in battle will perish unless they surrender to the Goddess of
    Love, love to the land and her people.