What refugees do

By MICHAEL BOYDEN

Jerusalem Post. August 23, 2005

Has anyone heard of Breslau? My grandparents lived there, and it was where my late father spent his childhood. Once it was the third largest city in Germany. It boasted an ancient university and a tradition of German scholarship that produced eight Nobel Prize winners. But then came World War II.

Afterwards the Poles took control of the city for the first time since the Middle Ages, and what was once Breslau became Wrocslaw. For them, this was "recovered territory" and those German citizens who had survived the Russian siege of their city were ousted from their homes and forced to move west.

In their place came Polish refugees who had themselves been displaced by the Russians from their former homes further to the east. Sound familiar?

It is a story that accompanies war all over the world. The French may have been ousted from Algeria, but the settlers made their way to the New World - whether to the United States, Canada or Australia - were successful in overcoming the local, native populations and claiming the land as their own.

And if you say that it all happened a long time ago, well, the story still goes on. Back in 1982, Great Britain dispatched its armed forces to the Malvinas (sorry, Falklands) to maintain control over territories she had previously taken by force from Argentina back in3. BUT LET'S go back to Breslau. My family was forced to flee their home back in the 1930s, when the Nazis came to power. And so a Jewish community that had lived there since at least the 12th century was uprooted and destroyed. And the world remained silent.

What waue of my father's family was, of course, true for millions of other European Jews. Forced to flee from the pogroms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and threatened by Adolf Hitler's Final Solution, they fled and built new lives in England, the United ates, Australia, South America and elsewhere.

Unlike so many of the Palestinians, who go around with the keys of their former homes in their pockets, claiming a right of return to Jaffa, Acre and Lod, they built new lives. That's what refugees do. The past century is replete with similar tales of displacement and renewal.

If the Palestinians are ever to live in peace with Israel they will have to stop playing the old tapes and come to terms with reality. When an individual undergoes a personal trauma, the way to future growth, health and well-being involves surmounting the past and movingon. It is time for the Palestinians to move on.

During these past days we have witnessed the sight of thousands of traumatized Jewish settlers being removed from their homes. Gush Katif was conquered by Israel in the Six Day War forced upon us by Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Israel has as much right to the settlement ofveh Dekalim as Britain has to the Falklands and Poland to Breslau. Perhaps more so.

And yet, Israel is different. Where else would you see soldiers and police ousting their fellow citizens from their own homes and houses of worship in the quest for peace? These things don't happen in the real world, where power and force determine sovereignty.

Is, and particularly the citizens of Gush Katif, have paid a high price to try to move beyond the current impasse in the Middle East conflict. The question now is whether the Palestinians will have the good sense to discard old dreams and fantasies and reach a realistic accommodation with the Jewish state.

These past weeks have shown that the Palestinians can silence their Hamas and Islamic Jihad extremists when it is in their political interest. Will they continue to do so following the disengagement, or will they return to their old games and their so-called armed struggle?

Will they be prepared to compromise, or will they continue to talk of a Palestine stretching from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, with Jerusalem as its capital?
If the former, then the sacrifice paid by the Jewish settlers of Gush Katif will have been worthwhile. However, if the Palestinians, as in the past, "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity," then most Israelis are likely to draw the conclusion that the price was not worth paying and that we must simply, like most nations in our world, carve out our own niche.

The writer is director of the Rabbinic Court of the Israel Council of Progressive Rabbis.