There are times in life when we are tempted to bring out some confession. It is not difficult to master these impulses, however little I think the mere presumption that it might interest others stops me. I usually never take the step due to lack of relief. I usually take refuge in a technical, professional analysis, focused on data, on history, on the concepts that give meaning to our political debate. Lately, in “amnesty”, which we have been doing a wide series of since the summer. However, this week, with the heart of Gaza in full emergency, I am forced to give vent to my memories, impressions and feelings. And when I think of Israel, a name always rings in my head: Shimon Peres. When I met him he was the President of the State. It was ten years ago in Tel-Aviv in a reduced delegation. And his political figure in person, about which I studied earlier in university alongside that of Bill Clinton, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat, struck me in a way.
His language was direct and fast. His eyes, optimistic, wide open, projected gratitude, compassion and action. He smiled as he listened, and poured into the use of his words a surprising creativity and capacity for synthesis. You felt like he was talking directly to you, like when he told us that during his time as a minister two people in his team, a boy and a girl, fell madly in love. Every day the boy wrote love letters to the girl. Then he asked us: “Who did the girl stay with?”. silence And he answered himself in three seconds: “With the postman”. He strongly believed in the local and hated middlemen. He said that in today’s world the separation between nations was greater than between generations. And he saw young people as the only ones capable of having the global impact necessary to achieve peace. More than any state, leader or generals combined. He remembered that in the Middle East there are more than 140 million smart phones. Many cannot escape their governments, but they can escape their ideologies. Peres knew that wars were completely useless. And that in today’s world they had lost all rational motivation and moral justification. Achieving peace was about pursuing it, rather than seeking it.
He also claimed that if he had earned the title of “expert”, it was only in what had already happened. Therefore, it is surprising to see several experts on Israel and Palestine who are so sure about who is good and bad in the midst of a complex range of grays. Certainties that I, at least, do not have. The unpredictability is absolute. Peres confessed that Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, once told him “that the Government is responsible for everything that exists, but you (we), for what does not exist”. Life had given him almost 3 billion seconds to make a positive impact on others. He certainly succeeded. A vision to recover prevailed: Israel will be secure if Palestine has hope. Before saying goodbye, he also taught us how to measure the size of a good president: “By the number of calls you have to make to talk to him. With me, you only needed one,” he said. He was then 90 years old.
When he died three years after the meeting, and just like today, I thought about some of those seconds of his life. Like Peres in 1992 facing his political enemy Rabin in an internal election to see who would be prime minister. As they both agree to appoint whoever loses as Minister of Foreign Affairs. How Peres narrowly loses. How they achieved the Oslo accords that they signed at the White House in 1993. And how on November 4, 1995, a surprised, excited and happy Rabin embraced Peres at a rally. I had never done it. Not even when they achieved their biggest hits. How they sang the Shir LaShalom, the song of peace, in front of more than 100,000 people that day. And how a few minutes later he felt as if someone had stuck a knife in his chest, how he stopped breathing, with his heart pierced. Three shots from an Israeli, a Jew, one of his own, put an end to Rabin’s life. When I remember it, I think why do I need to make so many calls, I want to put an end to the “postman” and only the hope of the young people prevents me from doing it as I see the civilian population fleeing en masse in southern Gaza.
