DISPATCHES

HOW TO BUILD A PALESTINIAN STATE There's still a way.

-  SAMER SINIJLAWI

The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is often assumed to be impossible to solve, a matter of two national movements with irreconcilable aspirations for one tiny piece of land. It has felt like this for nearly a century, and perhaps never more so than during the past year of anger and grief.

But as a Palestinian who was born in Jerusalem's Old City, who has lived through the occupation, who sat in an Israeli prison for five years, I see a way out. Even today, with the pain so fresh, I believe it's possible for Palestinians to get our state, and for the two people to coexist. But to arrive there, both sides will need to radically change their thinking and their leadership.

The future I imagine is in some ways rooted in a past I remember from my childhood in the early '80s. In the busy streets of the Old City, you knew which community you belonged to, but everyone shared the space. As a boy, before I had any understanding of who was above whom, I knew only that everyone was bustling at the end of the week, with Jews going to synagogue, Christians heading to church, and Muslims following the sound of the muezzin to prayer.

My family is Muslim, but I attended a Christian school. I never questioned how natural this layered reality was.

But then, in 1987, the First Intifada began. I was 14.

All at once, I felt pulled into the conflict, drawn to what I heard on the streets and saw on television, which was a more straightforward story than what I'd known in Jerusalem―the struggle of my people, armed with stones, standing up to tanks. I wanted to throw stones as well, to feel a part of it. And so I did. And like many of my teenage friends, I was eventually arrested, and sentenced by a military judge to five years' imprisonment.