Amos Oz wrote About the Jews in Israel: "What, then, is the heart of the fear?"

The Heart of the Fear 

WHEN A DEMILITARIZED Palestine is established alongside Israel and is at peace with us, it will be a country whose area is one-fifth the size of Albania and whose population is smaller than that of Kuwait. Every part of its territory will be within firing range of conventional Israeli weapons. 

How then can we explain the murky, primeval fear that the idea of creating such a Palestinian state inspires in the hearts of even rational Israelis? How explain the amazing fact that Israel would rather fight another ferocious war, and another, and yet another, against all of the Arab states—including Iraq with its fifty battle-hardened divisions, Syria with its hundreds of new fighter planes and thousands of tanks, and Saudi Arabia with its monumental arms stockpiles and endless resources—than make peace with a tiny Palestine? Israel behaves as though it is ready to withstand a protracted conflict against the entire Moslem world, against the entire Third World, against the Communist Bloc, the European Common Market, and perhaps even, one day, the United States—as long as it does not have to coexist with a tiny Palestine. Sometimes it seems that Israel is willing to suffer a deep internal rift that may destroy the willingness of half its citizenry to fight, rather than tolerate a two-state solution; to do anything to avoid living next to a fifth of Albania or half of Kuwait—and even that, only on condition that Palestine be demilitarized and free of foreign armies. 

How can we understand this lunatic phenomenon: Israel prepared to take on the whole world in order to prevent the danger of peace with a neighbor whose actual dimensions are going to be municipal, almost? Mr. Israeli, so it seems, is brave enough to challenge the whole world—and cowardly enough to fear a coexistence with a “pocket Palestine.” Heard on a bus: “This George Bush is a big hero inside his White House. Let’s see what he’s like when he tangles with us.” And, on another occasion: “If Arafat gets Qalqilya, he’ll be in Tel Aviv within ten minutes.” 

Primeval, dark panic. 

The courageous-cowardly Israeli will invariably respond with this stock answer: “If you give them Nablus and Gaza, tomorrow they’ll want Jaffa and Haifa as well.” 

And if you don’t give them Nablus and Gaza, they won’t want Jaffa and Haifa? And if they do want Jaffa and Haifa, what of it?

What, then, is the heart of the fear? What is the latent menace for us in a tiny Palestine? Why has the idea of a Long Island-size state between Hebron and Nablus turned into the straw that breaks the camel's back, into the pea that that disturbs the sleep of the Israeli princess who has lain, for tens of years, on the explosive stack of mattresses of several enemy nations?

Perhaps because Palestine arouses in us a dim, repressed sense of guilt: If retaining Nablus is a crime, then maybe retaining Jaffa and Haifa is also a crime.

If this is indeed the crux of the fear, the sourced of the mysterious sense o terror, then we need emergency shock treatment to bring us to the elementary understanding that the issue is not one of crime and punishment, the issue is the choice between life and death. We are talking nor about guilt and penitence but about concluding a sensible deal between two parties with no love lost between them. Retaining Jaffa and Haifa was not -- is not -- a crime, for an abundance of reasons, but thee  simplest  reason is sufficient: Without  Jaffa and Haifa we cannot survive. Nablus and Hebron are an entirely different matter, for a number of reasons, the simplest among them being that we can live very well even if we discard them. Only the blind cannot see that we can barely survive if we do not discard them. The time has long since arrived for us to part from them peaceably, under conditions which will prevent them from threatening us in the future.

And if the Palestinians deceive us? It will always be easier for the the Israel Defense Forces to break the backbone of the tiny Palestinian state than to break the backbone of an eight-year-old Palestinian stone thrower. 

Davar, 23 december 1988