TEL AVIV, 22 June 2003 — Borders are usually static, stolid and immovable. But the Erez crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip is a living organism that changes almost daily.
When things are calm, the barriers are thrust aside and Israeli authorities permit thousands of Gaza workers to pass through, earn a living and return home at night. When violence erupts — as it did recently after the Aqaba peace summit — the bulldozers get busy again. Extra layers of concrete, razor wire, electric fences and mounds of rocks and dirt suddenly appear, sealing off not only access but hope.
Two nations, Israel and Palestine, are confronting each other at Erez, struggling to work out their terms of engagement. But so are two arguments, and that battle is one that reaches far beyond this border crossing.
On one side is “The Clash of Civilizations’’ — the view that the West and the Islamic world are in an inevitable existential conflict, and that the West must be aggressively vigilant in warding off Muslim terrorists who reject our democratic values and would subject us to a fundamentalist version of totalitarianism. That’s the side that seals off the border, builds high walls, adds more concrete and guard towers. The other side could be called “Live and Let Live’’ — the view that the West and the Islamic world, despite their profound cultural differences, share enough values and interests to coexist peacefully. It’s the side that opens Erez, constructs a jointly owned industrial park nearby, looks for what these two besieged peoples have in common and tries to build on it. In effect, Israelis and Palestinians are engaged in the same discussion that we’ve been conducting in the United States, and it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that Israel is at least one of the places where the winning argument may finally be determined, for better or worse.
If Israelis and Palestinians can learn to live together, then the precedent is set for the larger civilizations they represent. If not, the alternative for us may be a garrison West, with high walls, reduced freedoms and constant wary vigilance — a state of affairs, in other words, not unlike Israel today. And an Islamic world that feels just like the Palestinians: Embittered, victimized, and ready, willing and able to lash out.
