the view from Tel Aviv

Yonatan came to Brussels today. The usual round of meetings, but we managed to find some time to see each other (what, was it two years since last time?). Georgie, my daughter, must have been 10 months or so at the time. We still have a couple of pictures of the two of them posing in the kitchen; Yonatan has that wide smile of his. The funny thing is that Georgie found the photos just last week while browsing iPhoto in the computer and asked me about "him". And then, a few days later we got a phone call from Yonatan, still in Tel Aviv, saying that he would be in Brussels this Wednesday.

My, was he surprised with how much Georgie had grown since then, and how much she is able to talk! Georgie couldn't stop kissing his leg, which was cute to watch. Yonatan must have made a big impression. In fact, anybody with a connection to her "baby days" makes a big impression on Georgie, I have noticed.

We asked him about what it was like to be in Tel Aviv when the madness in Gaza was going on. He told us about the fear of the rockets fired by Hamas, even though they never hit Tel Aviv. "Everybody knows someone in the south, and although the chances of the rockets hitting someone are minimal, you worry for the people you know". His partner went down south for a few days and Yonatan was worried for him. He also told us how people in Israel seem to have hardened their views on armed conflict with the Palestinians and how there seems to be an impenetrable consensus on the need to be tough, and that "they deserve it".

War is chilling. It made me think how hard it is to reconcile humanity with the ugliness of war, when you are in the middle of it, when you can't really distance yourself from it, when it isn't some faraway conflict that you read about in the news. How hard it must be to keep your sense of nuance and balance when you are part of it. Yonatan sounded disillusioned.

I admire him for keeping on trying to find that nuance, for questioning the "truths" from all sides, for being able to talk about it without shrugging it off. I don't feel very optimistic myself about peace in the region. Stubborn as we humans are, it will take a few more generations of suffering for people to realise that they have more in common than what sets them apart. Look at us in Europe and all the wars it took us to come to this simple conclusion; and all the effort it still takes to make sure we don't go back to our old ways.

When Yonatan left, he asked us when we are planning to visit. We told him that Israel was definitely in our travel plans; maybe when Georgie is a bit older. I wonder if he believed us, but we meant it. One day we will be coming around to see Tel Aviv, the bauhaus city, "the bubble". What happens there is so much more real because we know Yonatan; geography is really made of people and emotions, no matter what.