The Flag and Cigarette (continued from prior post)

After my friend's cigarette attempted its ill-fated flight across the Jordan River, I knew I was going to have a lot to think about. Something about it--or perhaps a lot about it--was deeply bothersome on both banks.

It wasn't that I thought the cigarette could inflict any real damage on the Israeli flag, and certainly it wasn't news that the West Bank is under Israeli occupation.

The problem for my friend, I think, was that he was completely unprepared to see the Israeli flag--there. After a day of hype about seeing Palestine, it took everyone by surprise to see a gigantic Star of David stare back at us. Israel was, after all, several miles south. It was rather like seeing your grandparents on the night of your twenty-first birthday. You might like them very much--just not there.

Everyone--those who love to travel, those who fade into biblical reveries, those who know something about politics or economics--know that Israel has a lot to offer. Therefore I cannot support my friend in disrespecting the Israeli flag--be it in Israel, Palestine, or anywhere. To do so is a disrespect to the nation and its people throughout the world.

But what was frustrating was that place--the Baptism Site and the beautiful valley surrounding it--simply wasn't Israel. It was Palestinian territory, and without a mental map few would have known otherwise.

And as the tourists murmured and said to one another, "That's Israel!" the realization sunk in that virtually no one understood it was the West Bank, and that we were in fact standing miles beyond the "Green Line".

To them, and indeed to most, "Palestine" has a heavy ring to the ear. Palestine--the parallel history of the Holy Land--has become a mere political question, not a historical or cultural entity. It is a small land, but it has no paucity of locations of cultural importance. These places now seem locked between policy debates and barbed wire, between broken treaties and political parlance. And even when my friends and I tried to see for ourselves what lies beyond CNN, we saw a marble compound and an Israel flag--no Palestine.

My friend's argument was with that particular flag across the bank--not with the actual nation that stood several miles further west. But the anger of seeing it there may influence his perceptions of the country itself. Therein is the danger of continued occupation of the West Bank. If Israel stands strong as a cultural, academic, and economic center, it will win the hearts and support of the world. And yet if it continues to occupy Palestine--continues to fly its flag over places that are Palestine's cultural Meccas--then many will lose sight of the Jewish nation itself and concentrate only on its horrific policies in the Palestinian territories.

Of the Jordanians I know, very few have meant Israelis, and none have been to Israel or speak Hebrew. All they know is what they see, and when they go to their border--to their brother nation of Palestine--they see an Israeli flag. This is their only contact with Madinat Yisrael--as an occupying power. Israel's concern has ever been its own protection, but its best protection is its own image. As the images of Gaza are everywhere in the Jordanian media, it does them little good to remind the world who is occupying Palestine.

Israel can--and should--celebrate its incredible history and culture, and leave the Palestinians what is theirs.

I cannot condone that my friend threw a cigarette at the flag of Israel. Nor can I condone that the flag of Israel was flying there.