Second wind...

I spent some time looking over other people's blogs and, even though I'm sure no one reads this, I discovered that my posts are too self-involved to merit any sort of comment, interest, or remark. So I will fulfill the title of this blog and get back to talking what it is like to be a sabra.

My father first started calling me "sabra girl" when I was a little kid, one of the many nicknames I've collected. I'm a first generation Israeli, born in Israel and raised there for the first five years of my life. My parents left me and my older brother Joshua with my Israeli cousin Tal for five years, raised in a kibbutz in the resort town of Eilat. Tal and his wife Rina gave me an afinity for Jaffa oranges, salt, and handcrafted jewelry; this I remember. I also remember Barak, Tal and Rina's youngest son as well as a teenager, Itai, who became a sort of mentor to me. I learned to respect water and life at a very young age.

My parents, who had been securing a home for me and Josh in the US, returned before my sixth birthday. I was sad to leave what I fondly call my homeland and my family and I make trips back there as often as I can. I feel Israel's tug on my soul; there is still sand in my hair.

I am in love with Israel. It is my first love, my heart is there. Ani ohevet yisrael.

But anyway, as a sabra, I have opinions on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, which is a long and complicated struggle which cannot be given justice in one blog entry. The stuggle is one of the most enduring conflicts in history. Three groups identify Jerusalem as "The Holy Land": Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Although these groups have different traditions, religious differences are not the sole source of conflict, even though each group have complex motivations.

Essentially, it is a struggle over land.

Until 1948, the area was known as Palestine. As Britain and France scrambled for allies during WWI, they made many promises they didn't intend on keeping, including the Husayn-McMahon Agreement (if anyone has seen Lawrence of Arabia). Before the Husayn-McMahon Agreement, the land of Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. However, this area did not constitute a single political unit. The northern districts of Acre and Nablus were part of the province of Beirut. The district of Jerusalem was under the direct authority of the Ottoman capital of Istanbul because of the international significance of the cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem as religious centers for Muslims, Christians and Jews.

The British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, secretly corresponded with Husayn ibn `Ali, the patriarch of the Hashemite family and Ottoman governor of Mecca and Medina. McMahon convinced Husayn to lead an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire, which was aligned with Germany against Britain and France in the war. McMahon promised that if the Arabs supported Britain in the war, the British government would support the establishment of an independent Arab state under Hashemite rule in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, including Palestine.

At the same time, Britain made other promises that conflicted with the Husayn-McMahon understandings. In 1917, the British Foreign Minister, Lord Arthur Balfour, issued a declaration (the Balfour Declaration) announcing his government's support for the establishment of "a Jewish national home in Palestine."

A third promise, in the form of the secret Sykes-Picot agreement, was a deal that Britain and France struck between themselves to carve up the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire and divide control of the region.

After the war, Britain and France convinced the new League of Nations (precursor to the United Nations), in which they were the dominant powers, to grant them quasi-colonial authority over former Ottoman territories. France obtained a mandate over Syria, carving out Lebanon as a separate state with a slight Christian majority. Britain obtained a mandate over the areas which now comprise Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jordan.

Arabs were angered by Britain's failure to fulfill its promise to create an independent Arab state, and many opposed British and French control as a violation of their right to self-determination. The situation in Palestine was heightened by the British promise to support the creation of a Jewish nation. Palestinian Arabs opposed the British Mandate because it thwarted their aspirations for self-rule, and opposed massive Jewish immigration because it threatened their position in the country.

Clashes broke out between Arabs and Jews in which roughly equal numbers of both groups were killed. In the 1920s, when the Jewish National Fund purchased large tracts of land from absentee Arab landowners, the Arabs living in these areas were evicted.

Without passing judgement on either side, displacements, rising tensions, and further arguments led to increasingly violent confontations between Jewish and Arab settlers. And the conflict goes onward in long deadly throes that are both exhausting and depressing.

Stripping all the complications, complexities, and religious/cultural differences, it all boils down to this: they bomb us. We kill them in retaliation and they bomb us again in retribution and on and on. But it'll never end. Because Arab children are growing up in refugee settlements to hate Israelis and vice versa.

In the words of a jarhead,

"We are still in the desert. We are always in the desert."

A common saying of sabras when speaking fondly of Israel,

"In the end, I want to be standing at the beginning with you."

I'm not really sure what that means, given what I've just said.