Karl Stagno-Navarra
While the world may sit in a perpetual wait for peace in the Middle East, the widows of two prominent politicians from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have met up in Malta to catch up on their ties.
Ruth Dayan, widow of Israeli general Moshe Dayan, flew to Malta a few months ago to meet up with Suha Arafat, widow of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Suha Arafat – who has taken up residence in Malta since 2008 – is daughter of journalist Raymonda Tawil, whom Dayan called her “soulmate”. Raymonda Tawil’s activism – at one point she ran the Palestine Press Service in Jerusalem – led to sporadic exile in Paris, where Suha later attended the Sorbonne. In 1978, Ruth Dayan and Tawil planted a ‘peace forest’ in Neve Shalom.
At 93, Ruth Dayan found the strength to fly to Malta and meet up with Suha and her teen daughter Zahwa, and spend some time with them to rekindle the times she spent with Raymonda.
Suha, who is also sister to the Palestinian ambassador to Malta, receives a US$10,000 a month pension from the Palestinian Authority, to live in Malta.
A recent interview in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper revealed Ruth Dayan’s feelings of the current situation in the Middle East. “I am proud to be an Israeli on a limited basis. Every person has his own inner-Israeli… My Israel is the country, the landscape I see when I travel from North to South… But I miss the old Israel, where there were still ideals, when we settled the land,” she replied when asked if she was proud to be Israeli.
Ruth Dayan – who spent most of her life with Moshe Dayan, a hardened Israeli fighter, defence minister and later foreign affairs minister–didn’t mince words either, and stressed that today’s government’s in Tel Aviv “go from war to war,” adding that Israel remains responsible for no agreement on a peace deal on the territories.
“With all our power, we remain incapable of taking a step!” Dayan stressed.
Defiant of today’s political class in Israel, Ruth Dayan praised the memory of slain Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin as a man who could have delivered peace.
Dayan’s husband Moshe, who later became a Likud foreign minister, stirred controversy even after his death through journalist Rami Tal’s recounting of conversations he had with Dayan in 1976. The book – published in 1997 – revealed Dayan’s “regret” at the Israeli invasion of the Golan Heights, because Syria had not threatened the country at the time.
Any comments?
If you wish your comments to be published in our Letters pages please click button below. Please write a contact number and a postal address where you may be contacted.
Search:
MALTATODAY
BUSINESSTODAY
Download MaltaToday Sunday issue front page in pdf file format
