Restoration Not Peace

I recently wrote an article titled “Peace is a Poisoned Word,” in which I argued that the definition of peace in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has come to mean the pacification of the Palestinian people. Therefore, it is time to replace peace with a new word, restoration.

According to the Wiktionary, restoration means “the process of bringing an object back to its original state.” While “peace” represents a state of being, “restoration” represents a process. The current condition of the Palestinian people is a fractured Diaspora community. This condition is a result of waves of expulsion, land appropriation and partitions over the course of the history of the state of Israel. This ethnic cleansing has come to occupy what it means to be a Palestinian. Restoration means returning Palestinians to their original condition: a people living and working in their own land, not a people yearning to do so. Restoration reunites them with roots that stretch across walls, fences, borders and oceans.

This is not a new notion. Restoration was integral to the narrative used by the P.L.O. before the concept of the two state solution appeared. In 1974, Yasser Arafat petitioned the UN General Assembly:

“I appeal to you, further, to aid our people's return to its homeland from an involuntary exile imposed upon it by force of arms, by tyranny, by oppression, so that we may regain our property, our land, and thereafter live in our national homeland, free and sovereign, enjoying all the privileges of nationhood.”

This does not just mean the return of refugees from abroad, although this is important. It also means resorting land to the hundreds of thousands of internally displaced refugees who were forced from their homes and into camps in the West Bank and Gaza. It means restoring the livelihoods of those Palestinians who remained in their cities during al-Nakba but were rounded up and put into camps and ghettoes in the wake of the founding of Israel, such as Wadi Nisnas in Haifa and Ajami in Jaffa. It means restoring the status of Jerusalem as the Holy City for all, not to be exclusively occupied and ruled by one group.

Restoration Not Justice

The call for restoration is different from a call for justice. Justice, in our understanding of the word, can be achieved with punishment for wrongdoers and reparations for victims. Reparations to the descendants of slaves, for example, are a form of justice. Or if one is found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison, we would call this justice.

However, reparations do not attempt to undo past actions, and a guilty verdict does not revive the dead. Justice, while offering a sense of public reconciliation, makes no attempt to restore the wronged to their original condition. Justice in these cases is vital, because neither slavery nor murder can be undone. But in the case of expulsion, the victims are still living and their original condition can be restored.

The answer to the question of Palestine is restoration. Only through restoration can the identity of a Palestinian cease to be defined by apartness from the land, but rather by existence in it.

Restoration Not Replacement

It is important to be cautious, however. Restoration does not mean certain things. Restoration does not mean punishment; it can be achieved with an admission of wrongdoing, but it does not mean revenge. Restoration is not nationalism. It is vital that restoration does not take up the Zionist ideals of returning a Diaspora to make an exclusive ethno-religious state. Restoration is also not replacement. Restored Palestine would be a place inhabited by Jews, Muslims and Christians living together equally and peacefully, as was the case in Palestine before the foundation of Zionism. Yasser Arafat said it best in his 1974 speech to the UN General Assembly:

“The roots of the Palestine question lie here. Its causes do not stem from any conflict between two religions or two nationalisms. Neither is it a border conflict between neighboring states. It is the cause of people deprived of its homeland, dispersed and uprooted, and living mostly in exile and in refugee camps. “

Action Not Pacification

Peace as pacification is a viable solution to a nationalist conflict, because it is the final acceptance of a condition of inaction. But if the question of Palestine is not fundamentally about conflict, as Arafat articulates, the answer is not passive acceptance. The answer needs to be realized through action.

While this action would be largely invisible, because restoration is an internal shift in perspectives, its physical manifestations would take the form of construction and decay. The infrastructure of attempted pacification (walls, watch towers, militarized playgrounds and textbooks, etc.) would decay from neglect. A new infrastructure would be resurrected in its place.

In order to bring about this change, we need to alter the infrastructure of our own language.

We need to articulate a realizable process that calls us to collective action in a way that peace as pacification cannot. We can begin with one word: restoration.

Matthew DeMaio, from West Hartford, Connecticut, is a junior and an Islamic Civilizations and Societies major at Boston College, currently studying and living in Amman, Jordan after having spent ten weeks in Palestine. He hopes to work in the field of education in vulnerable communities upon graduating from university.

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