Israel and Palestine--A History Offering a Ray of Hope

 I’ve read four books now on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, each with their own strengths. However, the freshest, and in many ways the most insightful for me, has been Daniel Bar-Tal’s, Sinking into the Honey Trap: The Case of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Bar-Tal is a Professor Emeritus in the School of Education at Tel Aviv University. His research interest lies in political and social psychology. He approaches the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by tracking its social-psychological foundations. He does so in the context of other intractable conflicts (Northern Ireland, Algeria, Guatemala, etc.).

Professor Bar-Tal believes that resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—that peace—will eventually occur, even as it may well take decades, which it already has. Professor Bar-Tal’s belief is based on two realities and one conviction. The two realities lie in the demographics: the number of Palestinians is about the same number of Israelis, and the Palestinians are not simply going to move away. The other reality as Professor Bar-Tal sees it is that conflicts of this horrible dimension and long-standing character have been resolved in the past. Northern Ireland is a classic example. South Africa probably another.

As Bar-Tal views history over the long term (centuries), he sees, as I do, a movement-- albeit with fits and starts-- to a greater respect for individual human dignity and freedom. He believes this will eventually happen in Israel.

Basic to Bar-Tal’s thesis is that the current state of the conflict has been created by competing narratives which, through most of history of this conflict, have asserted that the other side has no right to even exist. Each side declares its legitimacy and it is legitimacy that cannot be shared.

This narrative and mindset, has been expressed in different ways. At a few points it as has been altered by a short commitment to peace. But not today.

Bar-Tal rightly points to mutual trust as the key determining foundation for progress. As we have always seen in every venue, trust must flow from people coming to know one another and learning they can work together to a better end. This is what makes the "Combatants for Peace" movement so very important to my mind.

Another key part of Bar-Tal’s thesis is that the resolution of this conflict will need to be led by the stronger party, i.e., Israel. At the same time, he recognizes the imperative, so long un-obtained, that Palestine establish a unified leadership credible to the Palestinians, the Israelis and the world at large. He believes the Arab nations and Israel and probably Europe need to help make that happen.

However, the most important premise in Bar-Tal’s thesis on what it will take to resolve this conflict is that it will have to come from the recognition that the failure to do this carries a greater cost to both parties, including the Israelis, than continuing with the situation as it exists today.

A clear challenge on this point is that today the majority of Israelis not only feel the current situation is right, but they’re comfortable with it. The PLO, while objecting to the current situation, also to some degree finds that the conflict gives them its right to exist. Bar-Tal’s conviction on the importance of both parties discovering it is in their interest to change necessarily means, I fear, that there is likely to be more carnage before the mindset is created to establish a new narrative.


I find enormous encouragement in the history of the last 75+ years that there have been instances that show such a shift can occur. I won’t go through nor am I even aware of all the examples. Preeminent among them for me was the impact of Anwar Sadat’s coming to Israel to make peace. Sadat saw through the conflict supporting narratives and recognized the psychological barriers which prevented a peace process between his country and Israel.

In a luminous and brave speech to the Israeli Parliament in November 1977, Sadat reflected on the factors that prevent societies involved in conflict to reach an agreement: “There remained..a wall (which) constitutes a psychological barrier between us. A barrier of suspicion. A barrier of rejection. A barrier of hallucinations around any action, deed or decision. Today, through my visit to you, I ask you: Why don’t we stretch our hands with faith and sincerity so that, together, we might destroy this barrier? Why shouldn’t ours and yours meet with faith and sincerity, so that together we might remove all suspicion of fear, betrayal and ill intentions? Why don’t we stand together with the bravery of men and the boldness of heroes who dedicate themselves to a sublime objective?”

Tragically, as we all know, several years later, Sadat was assassinated by a far-right citizen of his own nation.

It’s often claimed that the Palestinians have never acknowledged the right of Israel to exist. That is not true. It’s been that way often, but not always. At about the time of the Oslo Accords, Yasser Arafat in November 1988 proclaimed the establishment of a Palestinian state (PLO) and also recognized the state of Israel within its 1967 borders, paving the way for division of the area into two states.

Of course, that never occurred. Blame exists on both sides.

The change in mindset called for by Sadat was more than skin deep. It took place importantly in the education area. Until the 1980s, the Israeli educational system had taught an uncompromising story of Israeli victimhood and Palestinian perfidy. That changed in 1984. New instruction material published by the Ministry of Education proclaimed the “existential need” for the educational system to deal with relations between Jews and Arabs and Israel. It established that the history of the Arab nations, their culture, their art, their language and their religion would “be taught in schools and the subject of relations between Israelis and Arabs would be integrated into the educational system from Kindergarten until the end of high school.”

In 1994, the Director General of the Ministry of Education wrote that: “We should present the achievement of peace between us and our neighbors, the Palestinians and the Arab nations, as an agreed-upon goal and to explain its essential importance, its contribution to the security, the strength and the prosperity of Israel.”

Yitzhak Rabin, then Prime Minister, said this in May 1994 during the signing of the Cairo Agreement regarding the Gaza Strip and Jericho: “We are convinced that our two people can live on the same patch of territory, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, as the Prophets foretold, and bring to this country, a land of rocks and of tombstones—the taste of milk and honey that it deserves. On this day, I turn to you, the Palestinian people and say: Our Palestinian neighbors, a century of bloodshed has forged in us a core of mutual enmity…today we are both extending a hand in peace. Today, we are inaugurating a new age.”

That was about to change as the 21st century was born. There were a number of factors, perhaps most importantly the lethal Second Intifada. The narrative shifted again and it has not changed fundamentally to today. There is encouragingly a growing, stronger minority group in Israel and Palestine that sees the resolution of the conflict as the only ultimate safety ground for Israel as well as what is right for and owed to the Palestinians. While still a minority, the world must build on this. It is the only peaceful and righteous path to the future.

I am struck by how the conflict of competing narratives is reinforced by the media and by the lack of factual understanding by the public. An example. Research conducted in 2008 indicates that about 22% of Israelis thought the Arabs had been a minority in the country before the beginning of accelerated Jewish immigration. Thirty-seven percent thought they were a majority and only 23% said they were a large majority. In reality, 95% of the population were Arabs.

About 70% of Israelis did not know that the division of the country, according to the United Nations resolution in 1947, gave the Jews, who were a minority, a larger, expanse of territory than that given to the Arabs. (About 1.2 million Arabs received 43% of the country, while about 600,000 Jews received 56% of the territory.)

Looking forward, Professor Bar-Tal underscores that achieving an ultimately peaceful solution will require two fundamentally different narratives than exist today. An eventual lasting peace agreement will involve painful compromises and will need to be based on the conviction that it is better than the alternative and, from an Israeli standpoint, would not harm the security--indeed it would improve the security of the Israeli people. Needless to say, it must grant equal justice and rights to the Palestinian people.

Professor Bar-Tal summarizes his examination of other examples of conflict resolution. He repeats his thesis that they were resolved peacefully "when at least a significant part of society change the narratives they held during the conflict. This happened when a large portion of society realized that the price of the conflict was extremely detrimental to society: in human lives, in its development, in its attempt to achieve prosperity.”

“When this understanding spreads and becomes legitimate, the insight that one can speak with the opponent arises, the same opponent who has been perceived as violent, with whom one does not negotiate. In other words, in order to enable the end of the conflict, it is important to change the way one looks at the opponent in the conflict.”

Professor Bar-Tal concludes with this: “Every major societal change must begin with the construction of new narratives. Societies that wish to set their direction toward democracy, humanizing the ‘other,’ peace, morality and justice must socialize their citizens with these values from a very early age. It is our responsibility and duty to show this road to the nations.”

 

The Source of Anger for Others--Often, Anger for Ourselves

 

I have come to believe that a good part, maybe even the biggest past of the anger and disrespect people show for other people flows from anger and dissatisfaction they feel with THEMSELVES. They are failing in their own self perception to do all they should, to accomplish all they should, to fulfill all they should, to be as good as they should--again in their self perception, often (usually?) mistaken. 

We are own worst enemies when we are not humble enough to recognize our limitations, the fact that we cannot and need not do it all, that we are far from perfect. I plead guilty to this. I feel guilty if I am not "busy". Nonsense. That is a signal of pride, isn't it. 

Said another way, we do not LOVE ourselves enough and hence do not LOVE other people enough.  Does that sound odd to you? Self serving? It could. I am not talking about exclusive love, but inclusive love. In loving ourselves, we love others. I find religion helpful here. The belief that there is a supreme power that supports if not loves (in a human sense) all of us.

Learning from History That Remains Relevant Today

 I finished reading C. Vann Woodward’s The Strange Career of Jim Crow.  It’s a historic book, truly.  It brought home to me, as never before, that absolute segregation did not start, at least to the degree imposed by Jim Crow, until the late 1890s and early 1900s.  Yes, there was racism and a lack of acceptance of social equality.  But even after the Compromise of 1877, Blacks continued to vote, to hold office, and to be together with Whites in many forms of transportation.  In fact, Dejure segregation in many ways was stronger in the North than in the South in the period leading up to the turn of the century. 

 

As Woodward writes, “The South’s adoption of extreme racism was due not so much to a conversion as it was to a relaxation of the opposition.  All the elements of fear, jealousy, prescription, hatred, and fanaticism had long been present, as they are present in various degrees of intensity in any society.  What enabled them to rise to dominance was not so much cleverness or ingenuity as it was a general weakening and discrediting of the numerous forces that had hitherto kept them in check.  The restraining forces included not only Northern liberal opinion in the press and the course of the government, but also internal checks imposed by the prestige and influence of the Southern Conservatives, as well as by the idealism and zeal of the Southern Radicals.”

 

So what changed?  Woodward does not provide a totally convincing answer.  One element which I had never considered was the impact of the acquisitions we made in the late 19^th century in the Pacific and the Caribbean.  They suddenly brought under the jurisdiction of the United States some eight million people of the colored races, “a varied assortment of inferior races which, of course, could not be allowed to vote” as many in the country saw them.  As Woodward writes, “As America shouldered the White Man’s Burden, she took up at the same time many Southern attitudes on the subject of race.”

 

Here was meat for the White supremacy movement.  At the very time that Imperialism was sweeping the country, the doctrine of racism reached a crest of acceptability and popularity among respectable scholarly and intellectual circles.  It became part of the national sentiment.

 

Woodward’s history reveals once again the push and pull of history, how progress almost inevitably results in pushback and fatigue on the part of those who had pushed for change.  We saw that following the three Amendments and enabling civil rights laws of the late 1860s and early 1870s.  We saw it again post the civil rights and voting act bills of 1964 and 1965.  It was accelerated by President Nixon’s “Southern strategy.”  We see it again post the election of President Obama and post the Black Lives movement.

 

A personal reaction to this book is summed up by this question:  “Where was I?”  That’s what I wrote in the margin as I read about the violence that took place in Watts in 1965 and the violence, flaming cities and looting, which took place between 1965 and 1968.  Of course, I know where I was, recently employed at P&G and just married.  How ignorant I was of the seminal change around us. 

 

In so many ways, history repeats itself.  The Brown vs. Board of Education decision rested on the conviction that “separate is not equal.”  Yet, the separation remains, in some ways more in schools than it was at the time of that decision. 

 

It’s striking how the grievances of the “alienated” Whites have continued to be one source of racism.  As Woodward writes, “Unlike upper class Whites, who often sympathized with Black aspirations, the alienated class of Whites resented such advances as Blacks made, opposed government and philanthropic measures on their behalf and denounced the tactics and especially the violence of the Black movement.  They were the neglected, the forgotten.   They bitterly rejected President Johnson’s war on poverty as another handout to Blacks.”  Their champion back in the 1960s was Governor George C. Wallace.  President Trump became the champion in the modern era.  Nixon had his own response, saying:  “It is time for those who make massive demands on society to make minimal demands on themselves.”  It was time for the hysteria to cool, time to appease the South.

 

We are seeing such sentiment today in the reaction to overreaction by the Left.  Words matter.  Calls to “defund the police” come to haunt.  So does the loosely thrown-about term “Critical Race Theory” which, drawn to its originating roots back in 1996, has treacherous linkage with Marxists, all of this making it hard to argue for a truthful and not honor-bashing narrative of our nation’s history.

 

History is filled with ironies.  One told clearly in this great book is how members of the Black leadership themselves became Separatists, lobbying against the very notion of integration.  It reminds me of the blog I wrote recently celebrating the ability to recognize and capitalize on the strength of individual interests without losing sight of a common, united good. 

 

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