The region I live in has both Jewish and Arab towns. From the news, you would get the idea that we are constantly at war with one another. Don’t get me wrong, there have been some terrible acts in the five years we have lived here. People have been killed in gruesome terrorist acts including a young man from Neve Daniel. We are aware that many Palestinian children are indoctrinated to hate Jews from very young ages.

We recently replaced the glass windows on our car after an Arab threw a rock through one of them. Yet terror does not characterize our lives. In fact, if you think about how close Arabs and Jews live to each other out here, the acts of terror have been few and far between. So when something happens, I do not demonize the entire Arab race. I demonize the demon who performed the demonic act. Meanwhile, we live at peace with the vast majority of our Arab neighbors.

Of course a lack of open warfare does not really indicate peace. Arabs and Jews eye each other warily. We use Arab labor to build our homes because Arabs work for a fraction of the price as Jews. Yet it is a relationship based on need. They need jobs and we need cheap (for us) labor. We never see each other as equal human beings. We see them as either bomb throwing terrorists or guys carrying buckets of cement all day. They see us as evil land-stealing thieves or guys who can afford to pay them more than what they would get working for their brethren.

So while I can denounce those who slap the label “Apartheid” on Israel because it paints a picture that does not exist, there is no question that we lead separate lives than the folks in the village just over the hill.

So I was pleasantly surprised by my first visit to the new supermarket in the region. It sits at a crossroads and is equidistant to Jewish and Arab towns. While I expected to see a lot of Arabs working there, I was surprised by how many Arabs were shopping there. For some reason, seeing an Arab woman with kids in her shopping cart trying to find the banana yogurt made me feel really good.

It wasn’t just her. The place is teeming with a mixture of Arabs and Jews, religious and secular. While it does not look so weird to see people working behind the counters together, it does look different to see all these different types of people shopping together. And then it is no longer Arabs and Jews shopping together, just different people looking for the best deals on favorite foods.

Am I being naive for believing that just because we like the same yogurt we can all get along and find peace? Yeah, I know I am. But if you have read any of my earlier posts, you know that I am an optimist. I don’t accept when people say “that’s not possible” because I know there would be no State of Israel if everyone had thought that way.

Peace will never come through long winded documents that have no connection to realities on ground. It will not be established by the UN, the EU, the U.S., or the likes of Bibi Netanyahu or Mahmoud Abbas.

No, peace will always have to be based on people seeing each other as human beings with the same hopes and desires. It will take a very long time, decades perhaps, but it has to start somewhere. And in the yogurt aisle is as good a place as any.

Last week I was sitting in my kitchen and the Palestinian working next to me calmly turned to me and said, “Jar-dan, give me a knife please!” After being surrounded on a daily basis by Palestinians with an assortment of drills, hammers, saws, and other tools which could have dismembered me in a few seconds, I realized how silly it would be to suddenly refuse to hand him my knife. So I did and wondered what had happened to my previous notions.
A few days later I was working on an article on the Palestinian “educational” system. On the computer screen in my office was a picture of Palestinian kids being taught how wonderful it is to become a martyr by killing Jews. A few meters away, another Palestinian was installing some light fixtures. He looked to be in his thirties or forties and I assumed he had a few kids. I wondered if they were being taught that Jews were the source of all evil in the world while their father was working for one.

How on Earth do we deal with the fact that we are at war with the very people who have built almost every house, synagogue, and building in our Yishuv? Are they simply working here because there is nowhere else that they can make comparable money? Are we simply employing them because there is no one else who will do the same work for comparable money? Are we locked together in some sort of weird and terrible dance that must one day end tragically? Probably.

Or is it possible, even remotely so, that one day we will return to the days before the “peace” of the Oslo Accords? People tell me of the pre-Oslo, pre-Arafat, pre-Hamas days when you could buy humus, furniture, or even a new car in Bet Lechem. Is it beyond the range of possibility that one day people can once again have good relationships? To be honest, after so much blood has flowed, I don’t know.

Now I am a realist, I am a Jew, and I am not embarrassed to wear the title of “Settler.” I sincerely desire peace, but I do not believe that turning over my house to the Arabs would bring peace any closer than when we turned over all the houses in Gush Katif. Clearly, retreat only strengthens our enemies. Doing so will not bring back the pre-Oslo days. On the contrary, it will bring war to our doorstep (just ask the people of Sderot).

Yet I also believe that not all the Arabs want to kill us. For many of them, their goal is not a Palestinian State with Jerusalem as its capital. They couldn’t care less about the millions of “refugees” currently imprisoned by their Arab brethren. They want to work. They want to work and not have to worry that the gangsters of Hamas or Fatah will come calling for their children.

So I admit, I might be being naïve. Political peace may not be possible with the Arab nations, but maybe personal peace between individual Arabs and Jews is. I would love to reach the point where I can give a Palestinian worker a knife without thinking twice of the risks.

But to be honest, I’m not there yet.

Shabbat Shalom from our blessed nation.