By Alexandra Alarcon
Instead fighting against one another, Israelis and Palestinians must fight together against a system that hurts everyone, say peace activists Rotem Levin and Osama Iliwat.
Levin, a Jewish Israeli, and Iliwat, a Palestinian from the West Bank, are traveling internationally, holding public conversations to spread a message of coexistence as war rages in Gaza. Earlier this month, they spoke at UC Santa Barbara at an event sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, to discuss the importance of listening to others and changing a system that has left many hurt, angry, and hopeless.
“We cannot live under this system. There is no peace under this system. … we can guarantee our safety only by liberation and equality,” Levin said. “Military force and bombs and all these lies — they will never guarantee safety to anyone.”
Israeli peace activist Rotem Levin spoke to a UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center audience. “I could see the pain in their eyes. So I just couldn’t stay indifferent to their suffering,” Levin said of his first Palestinian friends.
The two men are urging others to challenge presumptions about one another that were created to divide. “We do this by sharing our personal stories. It’s about our narrative. It’s about where we came from and how we live on the land,” Levin said.
He and Iliwat have participated in conferences in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Israel. They have also appeared on podcasts, television, and radio around the world. They spoke at a joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day ceremony hosted by Combatants for Peace, and they were nominated for the Stuttgart Peace Prize in Germany.
Recently, the two spent six months on a speaking tour in Germany, and since August they have been traveling on the East and West coasts of the United States, as violence between Israel and Palestinians continues — and has expanded to include Lebanon and Iran.
During the conversation at UCSB, Iliwat said collective freedom is the only solution to ending the violence. “This is apartheid, and this is not right, and this will keep us fighting. The only way to protect the lives of the Jews and the Palestinians is to give people their freedom because there is no peace,” Iliwat said. “If there is occupation, there is no justice, and that’s the only way we can make change.”
Born in Jerusalem, Iliwat grew up in Jericho after being displaced during the 1967 war. He has been advocating for peace for 15 years, and is co-founder of Visit Palestine, an organization that promotes discussion by bringing Israelis to Palestinian territories to educate others on the meaning of occupation and discrimination.
In 2010, Iliwat’s friend brought him to a peace activism event, where he met Jewish Israelis who were working for peace between Jews and Palestinians. Meeting these individuals led Iliwat to question narratives he believed.
He thought to himself, “‘How come there’s a good Jewish person who thinks that I have the right to exist, or think I am here?’” he recalled. “I started to think about how maybe there are different ways. Maybe we shouldn’t keep fighting each other. Maybe we need to fight to find a way to fight together because we all are paying the price,” said Iliwat. “We all are suffering…There is no safe person on the land.”
Iliwat then went to Europe to meet more Jewish people and hear their stories. “I decided to go to Europe for the first time in my life to see what happened to the Jewish people, not because it’s my fault but because I want to reach their hearts to know their fears, their traumas, where they came from,” he said.
“I came back with this conclusion that we Palestinians and Israelis have to meet and see each other because the system is keeping us separated and discriminated.” After returning, he helped co-found the organization Visit Palestine.
Palestinian peace activist Osama Iliwat spoke at a UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center event about his life experiences and overcoming preconceptions. “We all are suffering. We all are paying the price,” he said.
Levin, Iliwat’s peace partner, was born and raised in Ein Vared in central Israel, and is a physician by profession. He became a peace activist after attending an intensive dialogue seminar in Germany with 20 Palestinians. Levin went on to organize intensive dialogue programs in Jordan for other post-military Israelis, Palestinians, and Israeli medical workers.
Prior to that, Levin, like most Israelis, served in the Israeli army. At the UCSB event, he recalled a night serving in the West Bank that changed his thinking. An army commander had asked him and another soldier to throw shock grenades into a Palestinian yard. “I remember I didn’t think twice. I was so focused on following the order, I took the grenade, I threw it, there was a big boom, then silence again,” Levin recalled. On the way back to the base, the other soldier called him to say he regretted what they had done.
“I remember it caught me unprepared… actually, I was confused. How come I didn’t think about it myself? It didn’t even cross my mind. I was so much in the moment of ‘I have to do the mission’,” Levin said.
He was released from the army after three years of mandatory service, but he couldn’t forget that night in the West Bank. Levin said he had been programmed to be a soldier who follows orders and doesn’t ask questions and he wanted to break out of this mindset. So he travelled outside of Israel.
“I took my ‘privilege passport’ — because we Israelis, compared to the Palestinians, can travel quite freely around the world — and I went out, and I started to self-reflect and to ask myself questions about reality and what is happening. But I still couldn’t have the whole picture of what occupation means,” Levin said.
A year or so later, he met a friend who was going to Germany to participate in a dialogue seminar with 20 Palestinians from the West Bank. Levin was shocked to learn that he could meet these people. Curious about their stories, he joined the seminar.
Levin learned that these Palestinians were born and raised in refugee camps, but their parents are originally from Israel. He learned that over 400 villages were destroyed, causing two-thirds of the Palestinian population to be expelled from their homes and sent to refugee camps. “And honestly, it was too much. The gap between the narratives, what I was raised on, and what I just learned in Germany was too big,” Levin said.
During the 10-day seminar, Levin became very close with the Palestinians. “We sat there in Germany from morning to evening, sharing our feelings, our stories, our pain, our catastrophes, and I connected to these people on a very human level,” Levin said. “They became my friends. I started to care for them. I could see the pain in their eyes. So I just couldn’t stay indifferent to their suffering.”
Levin and Iliwat believe it is crucial for Israelis and Palestinians to educate themselves, and not blindly believe one narrative. Listening to one another’s stories, resisting indoctrination, and opening up space for compassion, is the only way Israelis and Palestinians can break out of a system that uses violence to control and subjugate others, they said.
Alexandra Alarcon is a fourth-year UCSB student majoring in Sociology. She is a Web and Social Media Intern with the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.