[This post is the last in a series by Sam that has been running at normblog on Mondays. The first post of the series is here, and at the end of each post there is a forward link to the next in the series.]
10. Conclusion - A Classic Tragedy
In the previous two posts, I tried to present some good reasons both for Arab sovereignty over all of Palestine and for a Jewish state in part of that land - for both the Palestinian nationalist and Zionist positions. I hope it will now be clear that there is no obviously right side in the Israel/Palestine conflict, that there is something to be said for the claims on both sides. With that in mind, let's try to imagine ourselves into the founding period of Zionism, and to think through, from both sides, how we might have seen the conflict towards its beginning.
Imagine you were a Jew in Palestine, or thinking of moving there, in 1919 or so. You might be impressed with the dangers Jews face everywhere else, and think that, if all sorts of other ethnic and religious groups are getting a state to call their own, Jews should have such a state too. You might also instinctively see Palestine as 'Jewish land', for religious or historical reasons. Perhaps you are aware that there are Arabs who are unhappy and angry about the idea that a place in which they predominate should change its collective identity, but even if you are sympathetic to their concerns, you may feel it is something they should accept. 'After all,' you say to yourself, looking at the entirety of what was then called Palestine (which included Jordan) or perhaps even at Greater Syria, 'there is plenty of land in this region, and they can have a state for themselves in most of it even if part becomes ours.'
Besides, you have heard about the Balfour Declaration. If you had any doubts about the justice of your cause, you now feel those doubts are settled. You think: 'If the British, who currently rule this land, have given us a right to live here, then we certainly have such a right.'
We have seen problems with a number of these arguments, but there is surely enough reason in them that it is understandable how a decent and thoughtful person might hold them, and feel that she had right on her side - that justice favoured the Jewish claim.
Now imagine you were an Arab in the land, sympathetic to the nascent Palestinian nationalist movement. You look at the land and see it, instinctively, as Arab: it's your home, and your ancestors have lived here for generations. You see no reason why you should move, or become a minority in your own land, and it seems only fair to you that, when other groups are claiming lands all over the world, your people should have a state in this one. Perhaps you have heard about the sufferings of the Jews, and their hope to make a home for themselves, but even if you are sympathetic to those sufferings and think it is reasonable for Jews to seek a national home, you feel that they should accept the fact that Palestine is not the right place for that home. 'After all,' you think, looking around at the rest of the world, 'there are plenty of other places for a Jewish home. Why does it have to be here?'
Besides, you have heard about President Wilson's principle of self-determination. If you had any doubts about the justice of your cause, you feel that that principle settles the matter in favour of the Palestinians: 'If our whole world order is now based on the principle that every land should be ruled as the majority of its people want it to be ruled, then certainly Palestine should be ruled by Arabs.'
And again, we have seen problems with a number of these arguments, but there is surely enough reason in them to make it understandable how a decent and thoughtful person might hold them, and feel that she had right on her side - that justice favoured the Arab claim.
Of course, if you were a typical Jew or Arab at the time, you might also hold some other unreasonable views that supported your politics. You might, if a Jew, feel that Arabs were a relatively 'primitive', 'uncivilized' people who could use the technological and economic know-how that European Jews would bring to the region, and you might, if an Arab, think of Jews as an immoral race, cursed by God, who should never rule over Christians or Muslims. But even if we get these prejudices out of the way, the conflict remains virtually unsettleable. If there was ever a war with justice on both sides, this is it. What peace-loving and concerned outsiders should wish, I think, is that the two sides could have worked together from the beginning to figure out a non-violent way for both to get what they needed. Instead, each appealed increasingly to other parties - the British, the international Jewish or international Arab community, later on the US and the Soviet Union - to help squelch the other.
I think it would be helpful now if both sides could see the conflict as in the end a tragedy, in a strict sense of that word. On one influential and insightful theory of tragedy - Hegel's - it arises when one just claim confronts another (Hegel's example is Antigone, which represents a clash between civic and familial duties where there is no real 'villain'). That's what we have here. And if each side can see it that way - stop seeing the other as morally blind and see it instead as pursuing a real, if perhaps not wholly adequate, vision of justice - I think it will be far easier for them to reach a compromise. If Zionists and Palestinians can mourn the history of violence between them together, and mutually recognize at least the core of right on each other's side, then they can - without continuing resentment - build a future in which both groups have stable and peaceful public realms in which to express their collective identity. It's helpful to their reconciliation, that is, if they can see precisely the unclarity of the issues involved, the difficulty in locating the real demands of justice here.
An analogy: Suppose you have a bitter fight with a friend or relative. As long as you think that the other person has clearly done you wrong, you will find it very difficult to make up wholeheartedly. Sure, you may make peace perfunctorily for the sake of the rest of your friends or family, or because you're tired of fighting, or you're afraid of the other person, or you want something from him. But you will retain a sense of grievance, and that means the peace-making is unlikely to go very deep - you will be no friendlier than you absolutely have to be - and that hostilities may break out again at any time.
And if you think you have been in the wrong, you will find it difficult to make up with your friend or relative unless you also make amends for what you regret doing. Otherwise your apology will look hollow, the other person will retain a sense of grievance, and your own guilt feelings may lead you to act defensively, or indeed to compound your past wrongdoing with new injustices.
What happens, by contrast, if both you and the other person come to think that what led you to fight was a set of issues over which there was some justice on both sides, it is hard to say who is 'really' or 'more' in the right, and understandable how decent and thoughtful people might line up on either side? It's in these cases, I suggest, that people should and often do agree to 'bury the hatchet', or 'forgive and forget' - in which they can accept the idea that perhaps their own biases or interests have led them to exaggerate the justice of their own cause and underrate the justice of their opponents, and come to think it would be better not to press the claims of justice on either side, but simply work towards a solution that will satisfy both.
That's what I consider the right approach to the Israel/Palestine conflict. There is enough to be said for the legitimacy of both sides' claims to the land, and for the legitimacy, therefore, of their respective uses of violence to defend their claims, that it seems to me partisans of both sides can at this point understand how a decent and thoughtful person might support either side, and can jointly work towards a condition in which both might get their most important claims satisfied, rather than continuing to harp on the past. The Israeli peace movement has used the slogan, 'Two peoples, two states - one future'. I think, and hope, that's a slogan both sides might now be ready to embrace. (Sam Fleischacker)
[This post concludes the series. The first post is here, and at the end of each post there is a forward link to the next one. Those wanting copies of the whole series may write to Sam at this email address: sfleisch (AT) uic (DOT) edu]