Annual Visit to Palestine and Israel. 1992-2019. Suffering and its Resolution. An account from 2010.

A Retreat. A Workshop. Decades of Suffering

I came to Israel in 1992 to give the first of annual retreats, workshops, meetings, public talks, until 2019. My first visit led to subsequent annual visits to the West Bank of Palestine to offer workshops, indoors and outdoors, in secular language with Arabic/ English translation.

This is an adapted and detailed text from an article I wrote in 2010 referring to a retreat in Israel and a workshop in Palestine. You will read this article, primarily in the present tense of 2010.

This article is a reminder of decades of the continuity of the same means to resolve the conflict. The means include colonisation, gradual and systematic ethnic cleansing, destruction of life/habitat, major war crimes, along with support from the USA, UK, Germany and other countries, as well as outbursts from violent Palestinian organisations, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, seeking revenge.

August 2025. Israel's Institute for Policy and Strategy: "76% of the Israeli Jewish public partially or fully agree that there are no innocents in Gaza." This includes a majority who voted for “opposition” parties.

A poll conducted by Viterbi Family Centre for Public Opinion and Policy Research at the Israel Democracy Institute at the end of July 2025 found 78% of Jewish Israelis said they were “not so troubled” or “not troubled” at all by reports of Palestinian suffering.

I presume the two opinion polls covered all Israeli citizens - 79% Jewish citizens and the 21"% (2.1 millon) Palestinian citizens, labelled Arab citizens in Israeli society. Why would the pollsters deliberately exclude the Arab vote in a democratic country? It is extremely unlikely Israeli Palestinians support any kind of war on Gaza, including genocide and famine inflicted on their own people.

If the opinion polls reflect the percentages of ethnicity, then the Israeli’s Institute for Policy poll shows only 3% of Jewish Israelis oppose the suffering of Gaza and 1% according to the Viterbi Family Centre Poll. Demonstrations in Israeli focus on release of hostages with very small numbers opposed to total war on Gaza.

Regardless of percentages, the vast majority of Israelis have a lot of soul-searching to do. The world is not in a forgiving mood for the daily slaughter.

Online AI Review. Unrequested. Christopher Titmuss has stripped his essay of polemic excess, anchored in witnessing, compassion, moral clarity, and meditative reflection. His writing tends to hold both suffering and responsibility in the same space, weaving together testimony, ethical analysis, and calls for awakening.

Checkpoint near Nablus.

Morning checkpoint for Palestinian workers to enter Israel

Retreats in Israel in 2010

Israeli retreatants rarely make any reference to the suffering of the Palestinians. Few Israelis, except for a few long-standing friends, asked me about Palestinians, their culture and living circumstances. I made it a point of telling stories of my visits to Palestine while in the Dharma hall. Some found fault with me when I mentioned the daily hardships for Palestinians. “We are suffering too” was among the regular responses of the retreatants.

I recall a reference to the Palestinians. She sat cross-legged on the cushion before the hall of 80 fellow Israeli retreatants and spoke words that stunned the silence:

“Every morning, I wake with the thought: “I want to kill every Palestinian. This feels like the only solution. I know it is terrible to say, but every day I think this.”

A 40-year-old office worker from Tel Aviv, probably worn down by years of fear, violence and government views, gave voice to thoughts that perhaps live unspoken in the minds of others in the country.

I asked her gently: “The final solution?”

“Yes. I know how terrible it sounds.”

I invite participants of the retreat to proceed to the front of the hall for a 1-1 to share their experiences or concerns on any topic that affects their lives. I then engage in a dialogue with questions arising in my mind. An exchange might take place in a period of 10 minutes to 40 minutes. Each inquiry endeavours to find out whether the participant can find fresh perspectives and insights to resolve a harmful attitude affecting their own life and others, too. The exchange with the woman lasted for 20 minutes. The inquiry process with her had its challenges.

The woman who came up to the front for the inquiry came across heavy in heart with suppressed anger and despair, her shadow side cast onto a people already vulnerable and dispossessed. She spoke with honesty that at least allowed her anguish to surface into the open. We engaged in the dialogue in the retreat hall of the Ein Dor kibbutz, 60 minutes drive north of Tel Aviv.

Some Israelis cried listening to the voice of the angry woman and left the hall, mirroring the helplessness of some Israelis. There is frustration in Israel; many Israelis try to ignore current events. yet worry chronically whether the next terrorist attack will be in the vicinity of themselves or their loved ones. No street, no café, no nightclub feels safe from the ever-present threat of revenge attacks by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

I believe Israel has lost its vision, lost its way and its politicians have turned their back on civilised values, along with accomplices in the form of influential Western governments. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Deep down, Israel citizens know this. Instead of leaders with vision, they have settled for suspected war criminals, who could be subjected to arrest if they travel abroad. The Jewish people deserve better; they deserve a government, who expresses a conciliatory and compassionate attitude to the desperate plight of the Palestinians. It serves the interests of Israel, too.

It is tragic that it is the Jews, after finally achieving nationhood, now determinedly resist allowing another people the same right.

As one participant said after my dialogue with the office worker. “Israel is falling apart. We think things can’t get worse but they do.”

Fear and despair have infected the community like a virus, poisoning families and social life. Politicians, rather than providing a vision rooted in humanity, have turned their backs on the very values they claim to protect. Instead of a government that seeks shared dignity and justice, the people endure leaders who perpetuate cycles of fear, denial and retaliation. Many Israelis try to live as if daily life is normal. It is not normal for a whole country to live daily under the mental occupation of fear and blame around the same issue.

Meanwhile, military policy spills over into gross abuses: the shooting of civilians, including children, targeted assassinations rather than trials, torture in interrogation centres, demolitions of family homes, and collective punishment. Too often the army acts with arrogance and brutal certainty, while apologies, when they come, are perfunctory. Soldiers, many barely out of their teens, become instruments of state violence, asked to carry out acts that shatter their own integrity.

The government and media machine insist upon describing Palestinians as terrorists. Such language numbs the public conscience and allows cruelty to replicate itself without limit. But the deeper truth, which so many Israelis struggle to face, is that this ongoing occupation and dehumanisation of Palestinians corrupts their own spirit, as much as it inflicts suffering on their neighbours.

Workshops in Palestine in 2010

After the retreat, Mohammed, a Palestinian taxi driver, married to an Israeli Arab, picked me up from the outskirts of Tel Aviv for the 75-minute drive to Nablus, plus time going through several heavily guarded Israeli checkpoints that ended on arrival of the edge of the largest Palestinian city of Nablus.

I went to Palestine to give workshops on Suffering and its Resolution. I met with Palestinian social workers in Nablus, who go from one door to the next. Mostly aged in their twenties and 30s, they were in constant danger from the IDF, who suspected them of organising an intifada (uprising). The social workers visited families broken-hearted by missile attacks, bereavement, injury, traumatised children and adults and the grinding humiliation of hostility at checkpoints. The social workers and others face arrest, interrogation and being taken to an Israeli political prison. Their families may not know if they are alive or dead.

One mother lost her 11-year-old son to the bullet of a soldier. A father has been missing for weeks. A little girl screams at the sound of planes in the night sky. A sniper in the hills above Nablus kills a father, In our workshops, such stories poured out from the social workers – raw suffering that calls for respectful communication, compassion and steps for resolution.

I employed a range of practices and tools to reduce the intensity of the stress in the lives of the participants and the families they visit. I invited the social workers to engage in role play – one a social worker listening to and speaking to a family member in need of support. I would then respond to what I heard.

On other visits, I gave workshops on Suffering and its Resolution to women in the Women’s Centre in Nablus – mothers, daughters and wives from teens to the elderly. We sat in a large circle for hours. I had three basic questions to ask each participant at the start of a 1-1 in the largish meeting space in the centre.

“What is your first name?

“What are your major roles?

“What is your suffering?”

I witnessed many tears due to killings, assassinations, wounding and disappearance of family members. I listened to traumatised and deeply depressed participants or living with a despairing family member dealing with personal tragedy and their anxiety about the present and future.

The workshop ended in the early evening. That evening, I met with respected veterans of Nablus campaigning for a non-violent resolution to create a Palestinian state. Several went to bed in their clothes rather than pjyamas in case the IDF came for them in the night.

During my visits I met with small groups in people’s homes. We spoke about various issues, including the checkpoints. Families face searing heat in car queues as they are not allowed to step out of the car. Men queue in long cages to get to work in Israel, often as labourers. They sometimes face hours of waiting; soldiers take bribes or make threats of beatings, arrest or rape. The dehumanisation is relentless.

I witnessed at one checkpoint a soldier turning his rifle around to strike a Palestinian in a long queue under the sun on the head with the butt of his rifle. The soldier stopped when he saw me (a Westerner) shouting and running over.

One soldier in Tel Aviv told me he would refuse to return to the occupied territories. He would rather go to prison than take part in what he witnessed. A point of light.

I recall telephoning a friend, an Israeli activist. I could hear shouting. “What’s going on?” I asked. She said she and Palestinian women were standing in front of homes facing tractors and tanks intent on demolishing the houses.

She replied, “Journalists are shouting at us to move closer to the tractors and tanks so they can take pictures. It’s madness.” She said she stays because no UN peacekeeping force has come to protect the Palestinians.

Weeks later, I spoke with her again on the phone. She said soldiers at a checkpoint badly beat her up, dislocating her shoulder because she refused to sign a statement to stay out of the occupied territories. Her partner, a Palestinian, worried for her safety and for her life in her brave protests.

It is patience, dignity, and resilience that sustain Palestinians amidst an endless ordeal. Within both communities, one can still see flashes of human goodness and deep values in taking non-violent action.

Despite the tanks, bulldozers, checkpoints and fear, small acts of integrity and kindness shine all the brighter. We need to remember them as points of light in the darkness to safeguard us from feelings of helplessness.

Human spirit is not entirely extinguished, even when crushed under enormous weight.

A Moral Crisis

What is happening to Israel today (written in 2010) is not primarily a military crisis, nor a political one. It is a moral crisis.

The Buddha declared a message as relevant now as 2500 years ago.

“WAKE UP!”

Wake up to the futility of fear and blame

Wake up to the suffering

Wake up to the danger of losing one’s humanity in the name of survival.

In one of the most weird ironies of human history, a community of millions endured persecution, exile and experienced mass suffering for a long time. The people finally received their right to a homeland. The current generation of the majority of the same people now persecute millions, seek their exile and deny them the right to a homeland and statehood.

“We do not speak of peace anymore,” one elder, awarded an international prize for peace, told me in Nablus. “We speak of patience.” She spent eight years in an Israeli prison, and her husband spent 16 years in another prison.

Until then, retreats, dialogues, respectful listening, and acts of conscience remain flickering lights in the darkness. Every such light matters.

The way forward is not through revenge or denial. It is through a moral awakening. And the time is now.

The Jewish people deserve leaders with wisdom and vision, who will turn compassion into policy. The Palestinian people deserve to live free of occupation and enduring such violence and terror in their daily lives. Israelis and Palestinians have to find ways to inhabit their common land with dignity.

Only a self-absorbed nation would perceive more than five million Palestinians as terrorists. Such widespread views permit the military machine to stamp its boots harder into the areas of occupation. Is it any wonder that the retreatant in the meditation hall told us she woke up each morning with the darkest of thoughts? She has her government, the IDF and the media to thank for her nightmares every night, as well lack of capacity to reflect.

The ancient phrase ‘chosen people of God,’ has been buried under blame and fear. Instead of the wisdom and compassion of the prophets, Israel finds itself led deeper into a wilderness by successive prime ministers obsessed with power and control.

I believe Israel faces its gravest crisis since the nation’s birth. International sympathy has drained away. IDF adopts policies of shoot-to-kill. It scarcely matters whether the IDF perceives the target as a threat or a child. Soldiers enter homes in the middle of the night and assassinate a person in front of their family. In the workshops, I listened to painful accounts from the survivors of such killings. A terrible destructive force has become embedded in the minds of the IDF.

Despite the violence upon Palestinians in the West Bank, I met resilience. I walked the streets in Nablus and in other areas. Had a coffee with locals. Life went on. People talked together, smiled and hugged as a temporary relief from their travails.

After my stay ended, Mohammed drove me back to Tel Aviv. At the last checkpoint, both of us were ordered out of the car and taken to two rooms for separate questioning and a thorough search of the vehicle. An army officer returned my passport and we continued our journey. We both laughed as we drove off, probably out of relief. He has a family to support and so do I, as well as better things to do than meditate in a cell.

A Point of Light

Israeli friends gave me an envelope to pay Mohammed for his journey from Nablus to Tel Aviv to pick me up and about three days later to bring me back to Tel Aviv. He took a risk that Israeli soldiers might arrest him for such a journey with a foreign passenger. I handed over the envelope and said, “Goodbye,” then walked into my friend’s home, leaving Mohammed to drive back to Nablus through the checkpoints.

Twenty minutes later, I hear Mohammed hooting on his car horn outside my friend’s home.

“Your Israeli friends gave me too much money for your taxi rides to and from Nablus,” he smiles, and then hands me back half of the money in the envelope.

Human goodness is still to be found in both communities. Two points of light.

In the final years of trips to the West Bank, I supported Engaged Dharma and Aviv travelling with a coachload of Israelis from all walks of life to spend a day visiting Palestinian villages, giving talks and faciitating meetings in the West Bank so they can hear for themselves the reality of life under brutal occupation.

Final Word (August 2025)

The Jewish people of Israel stand at a vital crossroads in their long history. A few have quit Israel. Some tell me they desperately want to leave Israel and live overseas.

Echoes of history?

MAY ALL BEINGS KNOW RECONCILIATION

MAY ALL BEINGS LIVE WITHOUT CHECKPOINTS AT BORDERS

MAY ALL BEINGS LIVE WITH LOVE AND LIBERATION.

www.anengagedlife.org

www.christophertitmuss.net