The Israeli/Palestinian Conflict: A New Beginning   

The Israeli/Palestinian Conflict: A New Beginning

by Rachel Berghash and Katherine Jillson

The many problems between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the wars that have ensued, and the failed negotiations that followed, are rooted in the events of the Zionist immigration that took place at the turn of the 20th century. Taking into account the many factors that continually exacerbate the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, this essay sheds new light on possible ways out of the impasse, using fresh ideas from luminary thinkers and passages in Jewish and Islamic scriptures as sources of creative advance towards a new beginning.
 
From the turn of the 20th century and for decades afterward the Jews bought land from Arabs in Palestine, disenfranchising the fellahin of their land. The Zionists paid for every plot of land. Nevertheless it was an act of robbery, metaphorically speaking. The Arab leaders, the large landowners among the notable-effendi, with the Ottomans and the British as enablers, were silently complicit in the land deals, treating the fellahin as if they did not deserve being accounted for. Though there were several groups involved, and though, according to the historian K.W. Stein, these social and economic changes would have been delayed but not halted even if the Jews had not acquired the land, the damage inflicted by the Jews became a cause celebre. Palestinians' early frustration and rage about their plight broke out in riots, massacres, and a revolt, in the 1920's and 30's; it intensified after the victories of Israel in the wars of 1948 and 1967, which resulted in the annexation of more land; and has erupted in increasing violence, including intifadas, suicide bombings, and launching of rockets into Israel from 1987 to the present day.

Interestingly, robbery, considered immoral when related to humankind, is, according to the philosopher A.N. Whitehead, inextricably tied with life. He reminds us that life is robbery, and that all living societies, from the lowest forms to human beings, proceed by robbery. For the Jews the purchase of land in Palestine was a healthy robbery (a paradoxical notion), in that it was life-giving and life-enhancing, providing a place to survive-a moral imperative-and a future, an opportunity to build a better life than the life they led in Europe. In the 19th and 20th centuries, as the philosopher T. Kapitan notes, virulent anti-Semitism was a fact of life for European Jews, manifested in persecutions and pogroms. The survival of the Jewish people as Jews required a place of refuge where Jews could manage affairs in their own way without being constantly under vicious attacks and living with the perpetual stigma of minority status; in short, a nation. Thus, the Zionists urged the Jews to leave their countries of birth and settle in Palestine. The problem would become more acute after the Holocaust in WWII. The poet Dan Pagis, a Holocaust survivor, writes about it: "Imaginary man, go. Here is your passport./ You are not allowed to remember./ ... Don't escape with the sparks/inside the smokestack ... You've got a decent coat now,/ a repaired body, a new name/ready in your throat./Go, You are not allowed to forget."

While the robbery was healthy for the Jews, it was unhealthy for the Palestinians. It lacked a moral responsibility, which requires concern about the general good, beyond self-interest. The Palestinians now were exposed to modern secularism and to new agricultural methods, which they felt as an affront. They experienced transformation of their customs - informal dealings were replaced by a formal bureaucracy, and a barter economy gave way to a market economy. They lost the prestige of the past, their way of life, a change too great for some of them to handle. They lost land their ancestors had inhabited for generations. Villages disappeared. The 1948 war brought the conflict to a head - many villages were destroyed, and many Palestinians went into exile. Would the Jews not have had created a homeland had they worked to prevent losses to the Arabs? Whitehead points out that the robber requires justification - is the robber making a positive creative use of what was stolen? Does the robbery increase his chances for survival?

When the Zionists came to Palestine in great numbers after World War I, they succeeded in purchasing land and moving into it without real opposition, due in part to the dire agrarian circumstances of the Palestinians. Other factors aided purchase of land by the Zionists. In the first place, the Ottoman Empire had unequivocally helped the Arab notable-effendi to purchase and possess land at the expense of Arab peasants, placing them in a position of total control over selling it. Secondly, the peasants were not experienced in confronting the bureaucratic and legislative machinery of the Ottomans or the British. They were simple and uneducated, lacking verbal and writing skills, whereas most Zionists were accustomed to using verbal and written negotiations with various hostile regimes in exile. The peasants were not able to stand up to the greed of the effendi classes and the need of the Zionists. The British, who ruled Palestine from 1918 to 1947 under the Mandate, acted as a mediator but did nothing to help the condition of the fellahin.
 
The Palestinian peasants and the Arab political leadership itself were fractured by ties of kinship, family, and by local rivalries, village identity, and personal connections, all due to clan self-interest. Thus, they were not able to form a united front to protect themselves from being exploited. To the degree that they were united, it was on the basis of what they were against, not what they were for - repeatedly expressing their rage over the Jewish presence in sporadic acts of violence. There were also contradictions in the mentality of the Palestinian leadership: on the one hand they made anti-Zionist statements, on the other hand they were involved in land sales.

The lack of unity among Palestinians continues. The philosopher and university president S. Nusseibeh describes the structure of Fatah in the 80's as having a "militant arm" and a "diplomatic" one, which apparently did not always work in agreement. And with the spread of Islamic education in the West Bank and Gaza, ideological competition between the PLO and Islamists resulted in verbal quarrels, which turned into fistfights. In 2007, the rivalry of Fatah and Hamas escalated into killing. In general, instead of "cleaning house," the Palestinians, to deflect responsibility for general infighting and violence among their factions, have allowed themselves to be seduced by the fallacy of post hoc reasoning: they claim that their infighting, including family squabbles and even murders of kin and neighbor, is entirely due to the Israeli occupation. Nusseibeh, although emphasizing that the main problem for the Palestinians is the Israeli occupation, notes, "The PA's weakness can be traced back to all the familiar homegrown problems of corruption, bad management, and so on."  For years the leadership of the PA pocketed money that had been intended for the general population.
 
Throughout history, the Jews have shown an extraordinary will to preserve life; this characteristic appears in Jewish scriptures where the preservation of life is a high and strong value and a priority in several commandments. As Rolland's character Jean Christophe says, "The Bible is the bone and sinew of nations with the will to live." The prophet Jeremiah is known for his prophecy of doom, but what is less discussed is his emphasis on life. He exhorted the Israelites to compromise and accept exile instead of death at the hands of the Babylonians foreseeing that the exile would have positive results in the future and that the Israelites and their heritage would survive. Most probably, were he living today Jeremiah would further the urge to live at the expense of possessing occupied land. Visionary and pragmatic, he responded to the circumstances of his time as they were unfolding. As he prophesized, the Israelites did return to their land. Nowadays the compromises necessary for survival would of course take different forms different from exile, such as withdrawal of settlements.

Thousands of years after Jeremiah, again life's urge was a catalyst for the Jews, this time propelling the Zionists towards the realization of their vision of building a homeland.  They did it in an astonishing novel fashion. Their path was parallel to the way of the universe, in which evolution takes place in intense creative experience. The Jews' talent for enterprise, issuing in creative advance, is evident in Israel today, where the economy, stirred by imagination, is booming, in large part due to an innovative technological industry that attracts large companies from all over the world.

Most Jews, cherishing the opportunity to build a homeland that would help Jews survive, were insensitive to the loss to the Palestinians; they saw the Palestinians as less than life size, diminishing the significance of their worth as individuals and as a community.  Thus, the dilemma of the Jews' indisputable need for a homeland on the one hand and the usurpation of Arab land, the tragic loss to the Palestinians, on the other hand, remains unresolved. But the onus for resolving the ongoing conflict, then as now, is not just on Israel. Palestinians need to acknowledge their passivity and the corruption of their leaders, the suffering they have caused the Israelis and their own people and continue to cause by condoning if not instigating actions of extreme violence.

There have always been Jews concerned about the plight of the Palestinians-from Brit-Shalom, a small Jewish group, which was founded in 1925, to B'tzelem, a current Israeli human rights group. But throughout the years, the voice of these groups has been, for the most part, drowned out by the fervent avowals of the more nationalistic Jews, whose interest has been to preserve the nation, without consideration for the other side. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr emphasizes that the conduct of a nation, which is based on its self-interest, always takes precedence over moral considerations. Acting like a typical nation, the Zionists were strengthened by their devotion to their mission of building a homeland for the Jews. Their perseverance was expressed through great sacrifice of self-interest:  profit, convenience, comfort and family life-in sum, any kind of personal advantage. Their commitment increasingly endowed them with power and freed them to exercise a strong national will, to the point where their aspirations, which culminated in patriotism, transmuted into "national egoism." As Niebuhr says, the unqualified character of a zealous devotion "is the very basis of the nation's power and of the freedom to use the power without moral restraint. Thus the unselfishness of individuals makes for the selfishness of nations." 

As individuals, some Israelis and some Palestinians believe in giving fair share to the other side. Put into a group, however, most of them act unjustly; selfish reasons predominate, and justice is compromised. Niebuhr continues to say that a nation cannot be critical of itself without endangering the very base on which it is founded-its unity. It cannot acknowledge its evil without destroying the fervent devotion of its members on which it relies for survival. The loyalty of Zionists was of such high intensity that a critical approach (generally typical of Jews) towards the usurpation of Arab land was relinquished.

But there is something more at stake than unity within each nation. The context for both nations has changed since Israel's beginnings, which seems to show that without self-criticism destruction is inevitable. Israel is no longer dealing with a submissive Palestinian population. The method of appropriating Palestinian land no longer serves the purpose of securing a Jewish homeland. The "new Zionists" who are building the settlements are robbing land neither for the survival of the Jews, nor for their security, but to realize their ideological claim to the land. In addition, this robbery causes undue misery to the Palestinians. As for the Palestinian extremists, their method of violence boomerangs-their quality of life deteriorates severely. Obsessed with taking over the land and with punishing Israel with violent acts, which aims at preventing Israelis from living normal lives, they lose track of what is in their basic self-interest - survival. Thus, self-criticism of present methods and acknowledgment of past missteps is essential, if resulting divisions are contained and consensus is achieved without violence. Niebuhr's point concerning the self-interest of nations needs to be qualified-to include circumstances in which a nation, to strengthen its self-interest, will tolerate temporary divisions, learn from its mistakes, and move forward.

The Zionists had been able to fulfill the function of reason-promoting the art of life and directing an attack on the environment, adapting it to their interests. The word attack is used by Whitehead in this context in a positive way, indicating an urge to live, to live well, to live better. The Zionist attack on the environment ranged from persuading the British government to do what they wanted, to establishing a nucleus for a homeland,  buying barren land from Arab landowners, and transforming it into fertile land.

One of the great assets of the Zionists was that they combined a vision, ideals, intention, with efficient methods of realizing the ideals. Theodore Herzl was the visionary, the first to speculate on the possibility of a homeland for the Jews. His vision had a creative power, which effected its realization only in an environment that would satisfy Jewish longing (Uganda would not do). Chaim Weizmann was the expeditor who used practical reason to seek, as Whitehead puts it, "an immediate method of action," a kind of reason "that is shared with the foxes."  Not only were the Zionists able to adapt to the authorities and to the harsh reality of Eretz-Yisrael, but they were able to change the thinking of the authorities in their favor and to transform the land for their benefit. In 1918, Weizmann was able, for instance, to influence the British to oppose loans for the fellahin. His skills of persuasion reflect thinking that goes back as far as the 2nd century BC, when a Chinese philosopher, who was distinguished by his pragmatic approach, pointed out that "the difficult thing about persuasion is to know the mind of the person one is trying to persuade and to be able to fit one's words to it."  Weizmann persistently pressed on to achieve his goal, which may be characterized in Whitehead's words as a victory of persuasion over force, a mark of civilization. It is likely that through the power of persuasion the Jews succeeded in gaining access to the formulation of Ordinances and Agreements developed by the British that was designed to halt their land purchase from the Arabs. This discovery resulted in finding other ways to purchase land.

By building a nucleus for the state the Zionists freed themselves from repeating the past, entering upon a new and fresh adventure, a "novel contrast" to the Jewish exilic life, whereas the Palestinians froze the past, clinging to their ways-perpetuating intra-communal strife, submitting uncritically to their leaders. The primary experience of the Arab peasants was surviving against nature. They never adapted to the Ottoman rule or the British Mandate, much less adapted the environment to themselves, that is, transforming the environment for their own purposes. They obstructed creativity, life, by their passivity.
 
In addition, the Palestinian peasantry lacked a vision for a better future, lacked foresight, and had no clear political goal. As a result they did not have a policy that could lead them to take charge of their future and build a national home. The First National Covenant met in Jerusalem as late as 1964. The lack of vision or purpose on the part of Palestinians is evident today. Mahdi Abdul Hadi, director of the Palestinian research institute Passia, was quoted as saying: "In Palestinians history there are no beginnings and no ends. There are unfolding chapters, like waves in the sea. The Aksa are swimming with the tide, but they don't know where it will take them."  Discussing the neglect the Old City of Jerusalem inhabited by Palestinians who suffered under Israel's rule after the 1967 war, Nusseibeh notes, "Palestinian leaders barely did a thing to defend their rights in the Old City or to promote its development. By boycotting municipal elections, they willfully relinquished the most potent democratic weapon available to them for pushing economic and social development."  He also notes that when he took the post of president of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, it "was a microcosm of the many ills besetting Palestinian society. It was poor, shoddily run, and seething with religious fanaticism."  A recent three-year plan, "Building a Palestinian State," gives voice to Palestinians who in addition to criticizing the Israeli occupation take responsibility for their insufficient attention to shortcomings in the areas of governance, law and order, and basic service delivery.

The Palestinians' loss, any loss, reflects the hard truth that at the core of life there is loss, and that loss is evil. That this is true is an offence to our sensibilities. After all, life is creative. Evil is destructive. Nevertheless, paradoxically, life proceeds through inevitable loss-selection and elimination of obstacles-to establish a new order of things. A Cathar sermon of the 13th century goes as far as to say, "If the world were not evil in itself every choice would not constitute a loss."  The Bible has examples of selection-fathers selecting one sibling at the expense of the other. It is ironic that to evade the evil of obstruction and to proceed with life we must commit the evil act of selecting. The Patriarchs Abraham and Isaac are persuaded by their wives to follow the divine plan of selection. Isaac is chosen over Ishmael, and Jacob is chosen over Esau. Isaac is selected, a patriarch of an emerging great nation. Amends to Hagar and Ishmael-the promise to make Ishmael into a nation-though substantial, seem like a recompense, minor when compared to the promise held for Isaac and his descendants. The selection of Isaac, and the exclusion of Ishmael, is an act necessary for the birth of Judaism. This act, in its very evil, is life.

Jacob, as promised by God, is selected to carry on the legacy of Abraham and secure the growth of the Jews into a nation. The legacy of blessings and prosperity will bear fruit only by excluding Esau, an obstruction to the goal. Jacob's life as an inheritor of his father's legacy proceeds by robbing Esau of his birthright (although Esau sold it to him). That the selection, deception, and exclusion, was followed by the birth of the Jewish nation, justifies the robbery.
 
Some prophets and most Jewish commentators on the Bible consider Esau an evil man. His anguish over his loss does not evoke their sympathy. A few examples in the Torah make up for the lack of wider sympathies (notwithstanding Isaac's sympathy) in the original Esau story, reflecting the fact that alternative feelings had simmered in the background and were given expression later on: Moses commands the Israelites, "Do not hate an Edomite [a descendent of Esau] for he is your brother."  Preceding this is the command in which the Israelites are required to take heed and not to violate the territory of Esau's children: "You are about to pass through the territory of your brothers the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir. They will be afraid of you, but be very careful. Do not provoke them to war, for I will not give you any of their land, not even enough to put your foot on. I have given Esau the hill country of Seir as his own."  A later example is in the Midrash: Rabbi Shmelke from Nikolsburg is one of the few who is sensitive to Esau's suffering. A Hasid master, he was moved by the tears of Esau, and he referred to the Midrash that says that the Messiah will not come before the tears of Esau have ceased to flow, and he added that the tears of Esau "are the tears which all human beings weep when they ask something for themselves."  The sensitivity to Esau and his descendents of some in the Torah and the Midrash redeems the evil committed against Esau, making the evil of his loss tragic rather than gross and unmitigated.

It is in the power of religious leaders of both nations to deal with the loss suffered by their people. It is in the realm of their duties to acknowledge that loss is evil, a reality to deal with-not promote-requiring a broadening of sympathy. These leaders need to encourage compromise, which, although it involves loss, avoids the destruction brought about by intransigent positions. The Qur'an proposes a methodology to transcend feelings of loss: "Through the passage of time, verily human beings are in a state of loss, except those who have faith, and do righteous deeds, and join together in the mutual enjoining of truth, and of patient perseverance."  The religious leaders need to recognize the metaphysical truth that loss is inherent in existence beyond the reach of temporal solutions, since ultimately, at the deepest level, as Whitehead notes, evil is about the fact that the past fades; yet everything is saved and purified in God.
 
Religious extremists among Israelis and Palestinians, to fortify their existing views, in which they have made enormous investments of time, money and passion, use various forms of fallacious reasoning. For example they appeal to the authority of tradition and the authority of God, which hinders pragmatic solutions to the conflict. Their appeal to the authority of God doesn't leave much room for a human decision among those who believe in it. As the philosopher of pragmatism C.S. Peirce puts it so vividly, the method of authority fixes belief by teaching and reiterating certain doctrines to the young, by terrifying into silence or even massacring those who reject the beliefs of the establishment. This phenomenon is prevalent among Muslims nowadays who attempt, often violently and through threats, to force the "infidels" among their own people and others, to believe in the doctrine they believe in. There is a passage in the Qur'an, however, that opposes this practice: "Let there be no compulsion in religion. Truth stands out clear from falsehood. Whoever rejects evil and believes in God has grasped the most trustworthy handhold that never breaks." 

On both sides the extremists' appeal to the authority of God assumes that God is solely on one side, one's own. The cause of their fanaticism is identifying the lust of their hearts, their personal inclinations, with the voice of God. The religious leaders of these extremists are absorbed by their love for their people and what they consider their land. To defend their views they use a priori reasoning based on their tradition and their divine authority. But this love for their people, this goodness, although seemingly moral-preserving their own survival-shades into egotism, narrow and unfeeling towards the other. It reduces God to a personal commodity, a servant of the ego, a God of narrow sympathies-no longer the God of all-benevolent towards one group or another, to the point of being very like evil. This egotism diminishes God to a finite being, a God of settling for less than what can be, thus ignoring the infinite freedom and the infinite possibilities that are in the nature of God.

God serving the interests of only one group, defending land for only one group, seeming to pit one group against another, is a warrior God, an uncompromising avenger; "the God with whom you have made terms may be the God of destruction, the God who leaves in his wake the loss of the greater reality."  Thus, religious leaders, instead of meddling in issues such as land and power, are called upon to inspire new feelings, tender feelings amongst peoples that belong to the goodness of God and his creation. The idea of the goodness of God and his creation appears in both Judaism and Islam. In Judaism: "The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works."  As to the goodness of God: "And God saw everything that he has made, and behold, it was very good."  This good original creation is dynamic; God proceeds to renew it daily: "and in His goodness renews daily, perpetually, the work of creation."  In Islam, Al-Barr, the source of all Goodness, is the 79th name of God in the Qur'an. The dynamic nature of the goodness of creation appears in the writing of the Sufi sage Ibn Arabi: "... creation is renewed at every instant, and its apparent ‘horizontal' continuity is pierced by ‘Vertical Cause' which integrates every moment of existence into its transcendent Origin."

Another contentious issue that stems from religious belief in the authority of God is the concept of the Holy Land and the Holy City. Designating a place as holy and having many people concur, is sufficient for considering a place as such. The poet Abba Kovner, while illuminating the significance of bestowing a value on the physical world, illustrates this point: "Mount Zion does it really exist or/is it like our love that glows from another light/rising night/after night?"  But the concept of a holy place has created an acute problem between extremist Jews and Moslems, distracting from the need to share the land in an equitable fashion. A holy place, a meaningful concept in itself, has become like the golden calf, meaningless, empty, used to compensate for the lack of something of worth. The Holy Land has become an object of idolatry, masking a feeling of acquisition, used to justify acts of violence. The extremists do not take into account that the attribution of holiness to where God dwells is not about possessing the land and fighting for it, but is about a holy life brought about by God's presence in the land. It is the holiness of God and the holiness of life that must not be violated. Thus, viewing the land as an end and worshipping it robs the ultimate object of worship, God, of inherent value.

A Sufi story beautifully illustrates the idea of a place designated as holy in the service of a holy life: a Sufi told of how the first time he made the pilgrimage he saw the Ka'ba but not the Lord of the Ka'ba; the second time he saw both the Ka'ba and the Lord of the Ka'ba. The third time he saw the Lord of the Ka'ba but not the Ka'ba. 

Peirce proposes the pragmatic method as an antidote to rigid thinking, the uncritical submission to authoritarian doctrine. His method incorporates the necessity to consider the practical bearing of our ideas, on the basis of results from past experience, and to entertain all the conceivable events that are probable or might occur if one's ideas are applied. For instance, all decisions that involve both the Palestinian and the Israeli sides, need to be bilateral, not unilateral as has been the case in the conflict. As early as 1939, Whitehead foresaw tragic consequences to making unilateral decisions: "In the adjustment of Jews and Arabs, one-sided bargains are to be dreaded. They spell disaster for the future."  These proceedings are necessary to avoid surprise (O, another intifada!). Since 1967, Israeli governments, on the left and on the right, have given only lip service to the policy of ceasing to build settlements and to expand existing ones. They have failed to conceive of the rage and helplessness and violent response that these "facts on the ground" evoke among Palestinians, and the anguish and the trauma it will cause the settlers, if the two-state solution were implemented and some settlements dismantled. The matter of the wall that Israel has erected is pragmatic in terms of Israel's present security:  it has stopped suicide bombing in Israel. But because the wall has bisected villages, separating Palestinian farmers from their vineyards, it has increased the suffering and hatred of Israel among Palestinians and the likelihood of violence in the future.
 
Another failure to conceive of results is Hamas's takeover of Gaza, which has been a blow to Fatah, Israel, and the U.S. The victory of Hamas in the 2006 general election was a surprise to the world; Hamas was not given proportionate power, and the world did not foresee that this would result in their rage and their violent takeover of Gaza. On the other hand forty years earlier, in 1967, Levi Eshkol, the prime minister of Israel, not withstanding his cautiousness and his fear of U.S. disapproval in regard to Israel's plan to start a war on the Arabs, was concerned, to his credit, about the conceivable results of that decision. He questioned the plan to the chagrin of his army generals and the majority of the Israeli population: "If we conquer, what then?"

When a nation aims for dominance, the result is the decline of that nation. Whitehead describes what happens when the dominance of a system, of a principle, of a way of thinking takes precedence: "The history of the Mediterranean lands and of Western Europe is the history of the blessing and the curse, of political organizations, of religious organizations, of schemes of thought, of social agencies for large purposes. The moment of dominance, prayed for, worked for, sacrificed for, by generations of the noblest spirits, marks a turning point where the blessing passes into the curse. Some new principle of refreshment is required."  The fear and distrust between Israel and Palestine is by now so encompassing, so habitual, that to dominate and terrorize the other seems like the only solution. But the one dominated constitutes an underlying ongoing threat to the dominating power, which is also weakened by a tendency to complacency. A plea that deflects the notion of dominance appears in the Qur'an: "Say: ‘O People of the Book, come to common terms as between us and you: that we worship none but God; that we erect not, from among ourselves, lords and patrons other than God.'"  Nusseibeh tells a tale about Caliph Omar who journeyed to the Holy City and was helped by a Jew to locate "the place of the Rock over which the temple once stood."  Having found it, he cleaned the rock with his own robe as a token of service, in that way shying away from declaring himself the master of it. Emphasis on creative resources in the respective religions and cultures, such as the ones quoted above, can be an antidote to violence and dominance, to seeing each other as an unredeemed enemy, thus engendering mutual trust.

Both Israelis and Palestinians have been dominated by the idea that if we don't retaliate, the other side will think we're weak and come back in greater force. In general, the practice of violent retaliation begets only violent retaliation. It does not work: it does not resolve a conflict in ways that promote life. The momentary satisfaction of retaliating obscures the fact that each side justifies its own acts of retaliation, refusing to apply the justification to the other side. Many religious leaders among the extremists in both nations are especially culpable of this self-righteous position; it is the other who is evil; it is the other who only understands force and is in need of redemption. They do not acknowledge that the evil in the enemy is also in one's self. These leaders, using political propaganda in the guise of divine authority and tradition, enflame their followers, who then act in ways that are violent, adding to loss of life.

Cooperation is the productive, pragmatic alternative to dominance. Evolution through cooperation is one of the ways of the universe. Judaism and Islam have a common ground in that religion is, as Whitehead puts it, the force of belief that changes the inward parts and transforms character. A more detailed form of this idea appears centuries earlier in Micah: "He has told you, O man, what is good, And what the Lord requires of you: only to do justice and to love goodness, and to walk modestly with your God."  Of the requirement regarding modesty, Abravanel, a Jewish philosopher and interpreter of the 15th century, said it is "the inwardness of true piety hidden from the world at large."  The Qur'an stresses moral character as the quintessential religious feature: "The Prophet was asked, ‘Which Muslim has the perfect faith?' He answered, ‘One who possesses the best moral character.'"  (The "business" of religion is not, as some religious leaders would have it, to focus on immediate appearance such as mere repetition of prayers, sexual mores, and modest attire, which indicate a decay of religion.) In the pursuit of commonality, it would be pragmatic for religious leaders of Judaism and Islam to convene and constitute a kind of spiritual collective mind.
 
A new idea to counter dominance and remedy injustice was conceived by Gandhi: nonviolent resistance. It worked. Gandhi did not even consider undesirable alternatives such as retaliation to violence. He and Martin Luther King, who followed his ideas, adopted the path of a not undesirable alternative, such as civil disobedience. The distinction between a desirable and a not undesirable alternative is an important one. If there were an increase in the number of inspired leaders and ordinary people in Palestine who used civil disobedience to protest the violence of Israel and the violence of their own people, they could affect the policy of the government. When Israel built the wall that bisected the soccer field in Al Quds University, Nusseibeh, its president, and his colleagues ran successfully a nonviolent protest that aimed at conquering the Israelis with ideas and persuasions. However, Nusseibeh's few successful attempts at nonviolent resistance did not take hold and spread. According to him, his attempts were rejected by some Palestinians (he was beaten by his students) and by the government of Israel, who put him in prison on some pretext.
 
It is incumbent upon religious leaders to interpret law and tradition with a freshness that is in contrast to the system dominated by old ideas that have become fodder for hatred and suspicion; ideas such as Israel's biblical right to the land, and Palestinians' right to the land because of having lived there for centuries. These old ideas risk life being embalmed alive. A remarkable example of the contrast between system and freshness used for creative advance is seen in the steps taken by Yochanan Ben Zakai, the Jewish sage who lived after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. During the siege of the city by the Romans he was not allowed to leave the city but was able to sneak out in a coffin carried by his students. He then negotiated with Vespasian, a Roman general, to spare the town of Yavneh together with its scholars. According to Talmudic tradition he predicted that the general would become Emperor. When this happened Vespasian met Yochanan ben Zakai's requests and granted him permission to re-establish the Sanhedrin and to found a new center of Jewish law and study in Yavneh.

Yochanan Ben Zakai led the Council of Yavneh, from which emerged rabbinic Judaism, the written text of the Law. Under his leadership and tutelage the council replaced animal sacrifice with prayer and the Temple with synagogue and house of study, and he recommended that worship in the Temple be replaced by benevolent deeds, all of which represented a creative advance: he gathered many relevant forms of worship and transformed the dominance of past Laws into the firm foundation of a new era in Judaism. On the one hand he preserved order amid the tragedy of loss-Jewish spiritual heritage, the Torah and its teachings; on the other hand he infused the order with novelty-synagogue, prayer, and good deeds. Instead of being influenced by authority and scriptures, he influenced it in ways that brought it to new life. He saw the present in terms of the future, as shaping the future and passing into the future. It is tempting to think of God intervening in this process, since, as we learn from Whitehead, God and the World, in their natures, are in constant flux, in the grip of the creative advance into novelty. Each is the instrument of novelty for the other.

Ben Zakai's sensitivity towards the Jews' tragedy stemmed from his deep concern about the survival, the future of his people. It is no surprise that he emphasized a good heart as the most important virtue, and advocated peace among nations in the spirit of his master Hillel. Ben Zakai's pragmatic approach and his tender feelings for new creations can be seen in his statement: "If you have a sapling in your hand and people say to you, ‘Behold there is the Messiah,' go on with your planting, and afterward go out and receive him."  Akin to this is Muhammad's saying that on doomsday one should plant a palm shoot.

One of the great dangers for the Israelis and Palestinians is to think they can have a stalemate, which by nature doesn't exist: the essence of the universe is that there is either advance-the trend upwards, or decay-the trend downwards. These are the only choices available to the Palestinians and Israelis, the only choices in life. Palestinians by resorting to murderous violence, and Israelis by occupying Palestinian land with the humiliating consequences of roadblocks and checkpoints, degrade life and increase the danger of mutual destruction. Thus, to prevent further spiraling downwards and a widening of the chasm that already exists between the two peoples, discourse between them, however extreme and hostile, must be expanded to include persons of higher levels in both sides. The Israeli government will not engage in direct talks with Hamas unless it recognizes Israel, failing to see that diplomatic communication does not imply surrender. As is evident, insisting on pre-conditions for talks has been fruitless. Communication needs to be accompanied by the provision of incentives to Hamas to move towards stopping the violence against Israel. In addition, a plan for deterrence of violence by Israel should be in place. Encouraging and promoting economic incentives in Palestine in general, such as proposals by the Palestine Investment Conference convened in May 2008, in Bethlehem, which encourage businessmen to invest in Palestine, could mitigate extremists' views. Pragmatic ideas that may be expressed even by those who as a rule think ideologically or on principle need to be highlighted and strengthened. No pragmatic idea, regardless of its origin, should go unnoticed.

Communication - using concerned speech, listening to the other and expecting to be listened to-may lead to understanding of the other, a necessary stage in discourse. As it is, each side is mistakenly certain they know the mind of the other, seeing the other as hostile and at fault rather than as having a different perspective of reality. For example, Israelis' beliefs, such as their right to the land based on the Bible and their history, refer to a reality that is meaningful only to the Jewish mind; Palestinians' belief regarding their exclusive right to the land is meaningful only to the Palestinian mind. This fallacious either/or thinking often treats complex things as if they could be divided into simple extremes. As the philosopher S. Alexander points out, the process of opening minds to different facets of reality results in a new mental reality, recognition that the other's concerns are valid. This process of adapting minds to a new perspective of reality cannot be done easily or hurriedly. For one thing each side is invested in their own limited knowledge of reality; and for another the conflict belongs to a long history of injustices to both sides, which cannot be unraveled quickly. Opening up to the broader view of reality requires relinquishing this insular thinking. Nusseibeh invites Israel to "speak the language" of the Palestinians. He notes, "sensible people can easily arrive at a compromise once they are aware of the other's basic concerns."  Such awareness can lead to sensitivity to the loss suffered by the other.
 
This sensitivity, the survival of the will to remedy the loss, turns the loss into a tragedy rather than an unmitigated evil. It allows the tragedy to disclose an ideal: "What might have been and was not: What can be. The tragedy was not in vain."  The tragedy will no longer be part of a vicious cycle, no longer part of the past, but rather, capable of giving birth to a new reality. So far in this conflict, however, sensitivity to the other's concerns and the need for speaking the other's language has been limited to unofficial segments of both nations.
 
Nusseibeh provides an example of a remedy for Israelis to undertake. He stresses the significance of Sulhah in the Arab tradition in which the one that causes damage to another must apologize. In a talk to an Israeli audience he said, "It doesn't matter whether you set out premeditatedly to cause the Palestinian refugee tragedy... the tragedy did occur even as an indirect consequence of your actions. In our tradition, you have to own up to this. You have to come and offer an apology. Only this way will Palestinians feel that their dignity has been recognized, and be able to forgive. But by denying all responsibility, besides being historically absurd to the point of craziness, you will guarantee eternal antagonism - a never-ending search for revenge."  The Sulhah could be the initial step of reparation by Israel.
 
For their part in the conflict Palestinians need to make reparation to Israel. However, they have a history of shirking responsibility. One instance is their refusal to recognize that the increasing and deepening of Israel's mistrust of them is based on experience: each time Israel gives up or returns land there is no decrease of violence on their part, and often an escalation. It is difficult to know who among the Palestinians-Nusseibeh, who expresses profound sensitivity to the Holocaust, and his colleagues seem to be an exception-is sensitive to the losses of Israelis and their own young people caused by suicide bombings. But many Palestinians after learning of any kind of destruction inflicted on Israel have been seen celebrating publicly, dancing and shooting in the air, ignoring the fact that fellow citizens have been wounded and killed. Thus, to remedy the damage on both sides, reparation is called for. The form of reparation cannot be dictated, but is the creative product of the one who has done the damage. Once reparation takes place it enables reconciliation, which makes for a stronger relationship "as a fractured bone well-healed is stronger than before the fracture." 

In addition to direct talks, communication between the two nations can be established through education and dissemination of source material. Nusseibeh discusses reading about two philosophers of Jewish Viennese background who suffered humiliation and terror due to anti-Semitism. His empathy towards them is evident, and it demonstrates his capacity to step into another's shoes. In another instance he relates an exchange with his mother, in which they both empathize with the devastating effect of persecution and humiliation on the Jews in Europe, and the need to make room for them in the land.
 
It is to be expected that the talks between Israelis and Palestinians will contain discord. Whitehead points out that a measure of discord is an evil that is an impetus for creative advance. Though it always carries frustration, it "may be preferable to a feeling of slow relapse into general anesthesia, or into tameness which is its prelude."  The notion of discord brings to mind the thoughts of the poet William Blake: "Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence," and "human thought and life need the stimulus of active and opposing forces to give them creative movement."  Obviously, the extreme discord between Israelis and Palestinians, which manifests itself in force and in violence, has been devastatingly destructive to the lives of both peoples. Yet the conflict in itself, by virtue of the opposition of feelings and thoughts, contains seeds of hope for a new life.

This hope lies in the realization that discord as well as agreement in discussions among many minds is needed for truth to emerge. According to the philosopher S. Alexander, it is only through the clashing of our judgments with those of others that we determine the truth or falsity of the propositions we consider and the worth of the ends we propose. Many minds put together are capable of extending their knowledge of reality by piecing together the different perspectives; in this way they arrive at "fuller and higher or more perfect truths."

It is paramount that all significant issues will be included in the Israeli Palestinians dialogue - the disposition of Jerusalem, borders, the return of Arab refugees, and water. The language in the discourse must be precise and the meanings transparent. Nusseibeh, writing about the significance of words being precise, says he had always been aware of the dangers of hiding behind words. Arafat, former chairman of the PA, was a master at making meaningless and, at best, vague statements. He was noted for saying different things to different audiences. What he said in public in English almost never coincided with what he said in private, in Arabic, to his own people.
 
The success of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians will require negotiators to allow their activity of thought, the progress of their investigation, to carry them, by a force outside themselves, to one and the same conclusion, not to where they wish but to an inevitable reality, what Peirce calls "fore-ordained" by reasoning from the data. The success will be further contingent upon the adaptation of the representatives' minds to this new conclusion. This adaptation, requiring the extraordinary step of transcending tribal, group, and national identity, will form a common vision of survival and even of flourishing.

Successful discourse will produce a "collective mind, ... a symbol for that cooperation and conflict of many minds which produces standards of approval or disapproval."  This mind is a kind of impartial spectator. Proposals that do not adhere to the standards agreed on will be rejected as errors-for example, actions that would produce hardships for the Palestinians, or actions that threaten the security of Israel. Proposals will be open to future amendments that guaranteed to maintain the security and rights of the two nations in the future.

This collective mind as an impartial spectator will include the realization that the two peoples have a mutual interest in a better shared future; whatever is politically good for one must be good for the other. "Israelis and Palestinians, are not enemies at all," said Nusseibeh to an Israeli audience, "if anything we are strategic allies."  He noted that the Israelis think that America is their ally, and the Palestinians think that the Arab and Muslim world is their ally (whereas non-Palestinian Arabs have nothing but contempt for the Palestinians, exploiting their plight to their own political advantage); but the truth is that Israelis and the Palestinians are allied. At its core this alliance, according to Nusseibeh, is a mysterious bond that connects the two peoples. This inherent bond is something that is felt but cannot be fully explained - a sense that both sides need to acknowledge; it is not a mere sentimental notion.

The Israeli and Palestinian nations, by virtue of this bond, by virtue of their living in proximity, their conflict, and their shared future, resonate to each other's experiences and affect the destiny of the other: when a desolation of spirit and a decline in values transpires in one nation, the other suffers as well; any resolution that benefits one nation and not the other will ultimately affect both adversely. It is possible, by an act of the will, according to Nusseibeh, to perform a miracle even in this bloody conflict; the miracle would be turning hatred and enmity into understanding. It can be wrought out of the "throbbing emotion of the past," hurled, like the flying dart of Lucretius, beyond the bounds of the grief-stricken present, to create a future of reparation, cooperation, and a new beginning.