The ability to dream

A war needs no imagination. We see it on television, know the soldiers and the dead. The tension we feel is real, the sirens are real, and the destruction is measured in money. Peace, on the other hand, requires a great deal of imagination and even the ability to dream. A war mobilizes and unifies, its pretexts are always justified, and if there are no just pretexts, they are invented. Peace splits and fragments. In war there is a winner and a loser. Peace is a compromise that gives rise to discomfort. Peace is never “just.” Everybody loses in it, and its profits always seem to be marginal.

Zvi Bar’el in einem Meinungsbeitrag für Haaretz (30. Juli). Gaza, so der Autor, rechtfertige Israels Kontrolle über die Westbank und habe damit deren Schicksal besiegelt.