The Peace I Thought I Had Seen in Israel Has Become the One I Don't Want

11/12/2015 - 09h55

Reaching Tel Aviv from Europe is like going back to Brazil. The city looks like one of our Northeastern capitals, and its people, the same lofty, laid-back behaviour a Rio native or a "carioca" has.

Since my first trip to Israel, the contrast between the capital and the European cities, expressed in the modern architecture and its sexy people, won me over.

I went back a few times, with a bigger time gap between the second-last and this trip than I did in the past.

The first was in the 1980's. In this last trip, I felt a difference after leaving France: no detailed searches or putting people that were heading there in special rooms. And, at the airport, there was nothing like the nervous welcome of the first few visits.

It was hard to recognize that this peace reflected the greatest power gained by the State; its certainty that the protection dome built by their defence is strong. Is it the peace that I don't want?

This question did not come to my mind on the night of my arrival. The next day, however, it didn't leave me. I woke up as soon as I could so as not to be late for a meeting with a group of Israelis critical of the official policy, [movement] Breaking the Silence.

From this conversation emerged a plan to visit parts of the West Bank where the weight of occupation could be felt. We all went. In the spacious van, it was us, Uruguayan journalist Quique Kierszenbaum and the guide Yehuda Shaul.

Some BDS supporters, an international movement that supports the boycott of Israel, came to [Gilberto] Gil and me, in an attempt to dissuade us from going to Tel Aviv.

From what I heard from Yehuda and Nasser's mouth - a Palestinian from Susiya, introduced to us by Yehuda himself - all BDS complaints have ground. Radicals say that Breaking the Silence, although critical of Israeli government, remains Zionist.

Yehuda says that even though BDS protests against what he hates himself, the movement supports the eradication of the State of Israel.

Since I got letters from Roger Waters and Desmond Tutu - and the visits of two young Brazilians linked to the BDS - I began to look for more and more things to read on the subject.

Upon returning to Brazil, I received emails with Breaking the Silence updates. In one of the messages there was a video from Nasser attached. The Palestinian man, with whom we had spoken, was being beaten with sticks by young Israeli residents of a settlement.

It is brutal. Israel soldiers watch impassively. Now that a third intifada is outlined, I notice that the peace that I thought I had seen in Tel Aviv - and I was beginning to think that it was the peace that I don't want - it was, as I knew all the time, fragile, superficial and illusory.

Occupied Brazilian favelas popped into my head. I didn't want to reduce the matter and use a single pattern to evaluate Brazilian issues in light of the Palestinian situation, but images of individual failures of Rio's Pacifying Police Units (UPPs) came to mind.

We, the visitors, were not strangers to the inhumanities we witnessed. It was impossible not to make a parallel with situations in Brazil.

I physically like Israel. Tel Aviv is a place of mine, a place that I miss, almost like I miss Bahia. But I think I'm never going back there.

CAETANO VELOSO, 73, is a musician, composer and author.

Translated by JULIANA CALDERARI

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