Israelis have this phrase, “אני לא פראייר” (ani lo fraiyer) - it roughly translates to “I ain’t no sucker!”. And it is more than a phrase, it is literally a way of life.

I was standing in Ben Gurion airport a few weeks ago, waiting semi-patiently to get my passport stamped to leave the country. I was directly behind that “please wait here” line when the man in front of me finished, and the clerk motioned for me to come up to the desk. Faster than a blink of an eye, a woman from two lines over veered in front of me and was up at the desk before I could yell סליחה (excuse me!). She threw her head over her shoulder, looked back at me, and said loudly, “I was here first”. “No, you weren’t”, I replied strongly and confidently. She ignored me, and while her husband and son chastised her afterwards for her rude behavior, she didn’t see anything wrong with it.

I, on the other hand, walked away from that interaction feeling used.

The whole incident probably cost me 30 seconds of my time, and before she had finished fiddling with her bag, I was through security ahead of her. But that still didn’t make me feel any less taken advantage of.

Unfortunately, I think I’ve been infected with the Israeli attitude of not wanting to be seen as a פראייר, a sucker. I actually think this woman in the passport control line is the exception. For the most part, Israelis aren’t out to get each other, just out to get as much for themselves as they can. So while you WILL be pushed out of “line” (ie. the clump that forms at an entrance to anywhere) if you don’t hold your ground, all it takes is a firm but polite assertion of your own rights, and people back down immediately. Its just that if you are a sucker enough to be taken advantage of, its pretty much a given that you will be. In which case, you will have no one to blame but yourself.

And I think that fear of being seen as a sucker has also permeated Israeli society - so much so that I’m convinced that it plays a part in every political and military decision made today. This is not to say that there isn’t a very real and live threat to Israel’s national security - because there is, and until we have peace with all of our neighbors, there always will be. That said, I think there is a (legitimate) fear that we will be taken advantage of on a grand scale. These proposed negotiations with Syria? Talking about opening borders with Gaza? Disengaging from Gaza in the summer of 2005? All are/were ripe with the possibilities of being taken advantage of and used. And with a history like that of the Jewish people (who were continually shuffled around from one kingdom to another, one promise to another) it comes as no surprise that the Israeli people would be overly cautious of being taken for a ride.

Negotiations, by definition, tend to be difficult. Unless you know your partner extremely well, it is hard to know what their true motives are. And many divorces will tell you that their former spouse turned into a different person from the one that they married, when they sat down at the negotiation table to sort out their assets. How much more so for people or countries that you distrust?

The Hebrew term for negotiations is literally translated as “give-and-take”. You can only “give and take” with a partner in whom you have some amount of trust. In order to give, you have to be sure that you aren’t being taken advantage of. And in order to take, you have to be sure you are only taking what is right, and aren’t trying to take advantage of your partner.

If Olmert gives back the Golan Heights, as he has been rumored to be ready to do, and gets nothing (or next to nothing) in return, his constituents will see him as the worlds biggest sucker. In order for something of this nature to be successful, the other side has to give too. We’ve already been through a one-sided “give” with the “take”. Israel evacuated Gaza of all its Jewish settlers. Every last Israeli was taken out and relocated. The promise was that this would lead to peace and security for us, and statehood for the Palestinians. Instead, it has led to a daily barrage of rocket attacks and a Hamas run government. Most people are pretty convinced that Israeli got the raw end of that deal, and aren’t looking forward to a repeat performance any time soon.

Although I will certainly take any kind of peace, in any way that I can get it - I don’t believe that you can create a lasting peace out of fear or trickery. You make peace by working together and trusting each other. You put your פראייר status, so to speak, in the hands of the other party, and know that they will not take you for all you’ve got. Until we can do that, I don’t think either side will be ready and able to make a meaningful peace.