Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Julie on April 30, 2008 at 12:25pm

Hi Corey,

I'm surprised no one has responded to your posting yet. I think it comes down to a collective ego thing. Palestinians who get upset and undermine efforts made by their fellow Palestinians who seek making peace by reaching out to Israelis, are afraid. We can't ignore that this happens on both sides however. Israelis/Jews who have tried to reach out to Palestinians/Arabs have been called "self-haters" and their efforts have been undermined as well. Their both afraid of letting go of something that they've identified with so long- that's ego talk.

So, first of all, we have to admit that to begin with, there is a HUGE trust issue in general in the region. Second of all, it is human nature to be reluctant to change, especially when it means change of a label that you've given yourself for a long time. Third, because of this we can't expect feelings toward an enemy to change over night.... think about it on a smaller scale.... two kids who have been in fighting for years in school and are known to be mortal enemies aren't going to make up from one day to the next. And lastly, I agree with you that normalization would eventually make both sides accept a viable solution more quickly. But this is a sloooow process, that the people themselves need to realize. Thats why groups like mepeace are great and so very important!

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Permalink Reply by Corey Gil-Shuster on April 30, 2008 at 6:26pm

Hi Julie,
I agree completely. I think for Israelis it is mainly fear that keeps people away. Either immediate fear that Palestinians will kill us or a more abstract fear that giving too much or getting to know the enemy will lead to the end of Israel. For Palestinians there seems to be a pride issue. I wanted to hear from Palestinians to get their views.

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Permalink Reply by Mahmoud on April 30, 2008 at 6:02pm

Hi Corey,
i'm depressed, because i have posted many topics here related to your subject , and i found replies, but without execution or run the ideas on the ground, it is silly to post always here without having a decision to make somthing on the ground to be running and sharing between the parties, i think we can do and do our best for the purpose, but i want people with me to be brave to run, manage, share, and execute what can we do.
thanks
Mahmoud

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Permalink Reply by Corey Gil-Shuster on April 30, 2008 at 6:19pm

Hi Mahmoud,

Don’t be depressed :-)

You are right, we need to be more active and working together. I think it is difficult through the internet to really organize something. That is why meeting in person is important. Then it becomes a question of what kind of ideas both sides are comfortable with and what will be effective. But all that is better discussed face to face. Eyal is organizing a meeting. Since you are in Jerusalem, I assume it will be easy for you to come into Israel (right?).

My original question was more how are Palestinians now reacting to the idea of working with Israelis to find solutions. Do people criticize you or others because you are willing to work with Israelis?

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Permalink Reply by Mahmoud on May 1, 2008 at 2:15pm

hi corey
i don't live in jerusalme, holder of palestinian ID, i share my ideas with eyal,but eyal isn't willing to make somthing on the ground with me, i don't know why, but i'm willing to make a useful things for peace.
Mahmoud

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Permalink Reply by Roni Segoly on June 4, 2008 at 8:09pm

Mahmoud

Please explain what do you mean 'make something', give some ideas what you think we can do.

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Permalink Reply by Corey Gil-Shuster on April 30, 2008 at 6:20pm

another question: what kind of things do you think would help create peace/understanding between Israelis and Palestinians?

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Permalink Reply by Adam Paul on April 30, 2008 at 7:13pm

I applaud the very earnest questions asked in this discussion in particular and the noble and aims this website in general hopes to achieve.

The problem is that it's all so very delusional. Call me jaded, call me cynical, call me pessimistic...I think, sadly, that it's more accurate to view it as realism.

The fact is that the Arab-Israeli conflict is not simply about two groups of people who mistrust one another, whose source of discord and acrimony is baseless or borne primarily of ignorance. Jews and Muslims are not akin to the Sharks and the Jets who feared one another simply because they came from different backgrounds and were unfamiliar with those who were different. Yeah, there's inherently racist material out there that denigrates the dignity of the other side, but exposure to the inherent humanity of the other side, and ultimate recognition of the fact that we're all people just trying to survive is not going to lead to a dance of reconciliation.

The problem is far, far deeper than that. It stems from a fundamental, religious and nationally-based rejection on the part of Muslims and the wider Arab rule to Jewish claims to the Land of Israel. In the traditional Islamic view, modern-day Israel is Islamic land that Jews have no right to live in, except as dhimmis (second-rate citizens). The notion of not only Jewish equality, but Jewish dominion over any part of 'Arabia' (including modern-day Israel) is fundamentally, inherently, irreversibly anathema to believing Muslims.

THAT is the problem, and that is a problem that will NEVER EVER be resolved, absent a Christianity-in-the-post-Renaissance-Period reformation of Islam, or a massive rejection by a largely religious Islamic populace of Islam. Neither of those possibilities is likely to happen in our great grandchildren's lifetime. And so we can have all the dialogue we want with liberally oriented Muslims in the Arab world. We can talk about healing and sharing and caring until the cows (or camels) come home. But fundamentally, Islam is absolutely opposed to Jewish dominion over land it views as Islamic. As long as Islam doesn't change and Muslims retain as much fealty to Islam as they currently collectively have, there will and can never, ever be peace. Everything in the interim is just spinning wheels.

I do believe in the inherent humanity of all people, and there is certainly a sizable minority of Muslims who put humanitarian and/or familial concerns above religious ones, especially among Palestinians, who historically were less religious than fellow Islamic Arabs throughout the Middle East. But you can't make peace with the minority. You can talk and march and sing songs until you're blue in the face, but until the state of Israel moves to Alaska or Muslims rise up and reject or overhaul their religion, there will never, ever be peace.

Any other ideas on the subject are either delusional or stem from a fundamental lack of understanding both of the positions of Islam and its stranglehold on the collective mindset of the vast majority of the Muslim population of the Arab world.

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Permalink Reply by Corey Gil-Shuster on April 30, 2008 at 10:14pm

Hi Adam,

Conflicts are messy, complex systems with many competing factors, reasons, agendas, etc. In one way, we can use one aspect of a conflict as a simplistic microcosm of the entire conflict but you are correct, reducing any conflict to a simple equation is misleading. I don’t think people here are trying to do that. There is just so much one can write about so it is easier to write about it in separate digestible chunks.

Frankly, to use your example, I think what you wrote about Arab Muslims is also a little simplistic. As much as I can relate on an emotional level, I don’t think it is necessarily true (certainly not of many Muslim Arabs). Most importantly, this type of thinking is not helpful to finding solutions. If you define the problem based on your interpretation of the group, you will never find solutions. If you define the problem based on behaviour, you have a greater chance of finding solutions.

For example, I hear many on the Arab side saying the problem in the conflict is Zionism. To Arabs, Zionism is this evil system aimed at taking over the Middle East. If only Jews would see that Zionism is the cause of all the troubles and abandon it, all would be well. The problem with this argument is a) Arab understanding of Zionism is very different than what most Israelis/Jews think of Zionism so you are starting with different definitions, b) to many, Zionism is a core belief related to our identity as Jews and Israelis; individuals are rarely convinced to abandon a core belief because they are told to (let alone trying to convince an entire group), c) even if somehow, magically, all Jews suddenly agreed with the Arab argument and gave up the idea of Jewish self-determination, it only speaks to a small part of the problem -you have 100 years of hatred and bitterness and suddenly those emotions will disappear because one group convinced the other group? Not likely.

So saying that Islam’s non-acceptance of Jewish self-determination is THE issue is just as misleading because it is not necessarily a core belief of all Arabs and for those it is, most will not give up their beliefs (mostly when challenged on them). So saying that the only way to find solutions is for the other side to change is giving everyone few options to work with and you never want to be left with limited options.

In my opinion (as a not very left-wing Israeli citizen) what this and other groups are striving for is to limit the damage we do to each other and hopefully find some solutions which will bring the conflict down to a less violent state.

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Permalink Reply by Adam Paul on May 1, 2008 at 9:04am

Corey -

Thank you for the response. I read it a couple of times, and have to admit that I'm not 100% certain of the point you're trying to make. I will try to refute what I think you're saying...but if I've missed your point, please correct me.

If I understood correctly, you stated that attributing the source of a given problem to the 'other side's' intractable and erroneous attitude is simplistic and non-productive. That may be true in analyzing/trying to solve many different conflicts - rationalizing that the key to the solution lies in one's adversary's changing HIS mind, rather than pondering what might be faulty in one's own stance, is indeed self-aggrandizing and potentially even more divisive and inflammatory than remedying. The difference is that in the case of the Arab-Israeli conflict, complex though it may be, there really IS a fundamental refusal by only one side to accept the other's legitimacy. That hard-line point of view has its basis in a 1500 year-old religion that is respected and abided by if not a vast majority, then at least a very significant minority of the populace. And no amount of hand-holding or kumbaya-singing or me-peacing is going to change that.

Look, I genuinely and sincerely applaud the good-natured efforts of organizations like mepeace. Truly. But organizations like this, which seek to increase understanding and camraderie through dialogue, interactions, conversation, friendships etc. work (or, rather, at least have the chance to work) only in conflicts between people or peoples whose dislike for or mistrust in one another stem from ignorance, lack of interaction etc. Taking the West Side Story example again for a second, the mepeace model works when you're dealing with rival ethnic groups who inhabit nearby neighborhoods and whose rivalry with one another is based more on fear, misperceptions, and failure to interact more than anything else. The solution in such cases, while not easy, is certainly clear: you have people who don't know each other, bring them into a room and let them get to know one another. Give them opportunities to recognize that each group consists of human beings just like the other, with hopes and dreams and aspirations just like the other. When they're given an opportunity to come into contact with others and realize that they're people just like them, bigotry, hatred, ignorance, and acrimony have a chance, at least, to melt away.

That's sensible. That's identifying the root problem and implementing a solution that attacks the root problem. The problem with mepeace and similar organizations is that it misidentifies the root of the problem and attempts to implement a cure that's meant for a different disease.

Sure, some degree of the Arab-Israeli conflict stems from racism, bigotry, or ignorance - on both sides. And without a doubt, fostering and fomenting dialogue, interaction, and friendship on the grassroots level between people on either side will help eliminate that element of the problem.

But all that bigotry-oriented discord is a symptom of the problem, not the source. The real problem that no amount of hippie-dippie hand-holding and kumbaya singing can ever rectify is the fact that in the Islamic worldview, all of 'Arabia' from North Africa to the Gulf is Islamic land, and it is absolutely forbidden for any other religion to have dominion over it. Period. That is not my opinion. That is an absolute fact.

What is also an absolute fact is that a very significant percentage of the Islamic world is religious to some degree - or at the very least, pays much more of a respectful nod towards Islam than people in the mostly securalized West do. Thus, no matter how much an individual or group of devout Muslims may come to respect Jews, Judaism, Jewish history and the Jewish people as a result of projects like mepeace, so long as that religiously-inclined Muslim adheres to the tenets and philosophical underpinnings of Islam, he MUST (in his heart, if not in his hand) wish for/seek the destruction of the State of Israel. The existence of a Jewish state in the heart of Arabia is anathema to Islam. Again, this is not my opinion, it is a fact. So unless either Islam undergoes a radical reformation along the lines of what Christianity went through some three centuries ago, or unless there is a massive secular uprising amongst the hundreds of millions of Arab Muslims in the Middle East, throwing off the yoke of Islam, _nothing can change._ The religion, and its adherents, will always be, indeed must always be - no matter how much they come to love and respect Jews as people - fundamentally opposed to the existence of the State of Israel.

This is the problem, and it is obvious, and yet no one seems willing to mention it. Fomenting dialogue is the right solution for a different problem altogether that will have a minimal impact on the Arab-Israeli conflict. And while the goals are lofty, it bothers me that people like the leaders and participants on sites like this delude themselves and others into thinking that dialogue and reconciliation will solve the problem, when in fact, I have to believe that they are smart enough to recognize that the problem is far different and deeper than that, even if admitting its true source would offend PC sensibilities. It may be nice to think that if we could all just understand each other, we'd all get along...and I'd be willing to see such an approach implemented to heal race relations in the US. But it has little to no relevance in the Middle East, the basis of whose problem is philosophical and religious, not borne of ignorance and blind hatred.

PS The Zionism analogy that you raised doesn't hold water. While people are of course free to believe that the true source of any conflict is whatever they wish to believe, not even the most ardent, right-wing Zionist would ever claim that Zionism seeks to dominate the whole of the Middle East without allowing Muslims the right to self-determination, as Islam advocates vis-a-vis the Jews. In addition, the vast majority of adherents of Zionism today believe that Zionism and Palestinian nationalism can co-exist, a position not shared by even a small minority of adherents of Islam. The comparison doesn't hold water.

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Permalink Reply by Corey Gil-Shuster on May 2, 2008 at 1:21am

First, my apologies for my confusing writings- I only have a few minutes to string together my thoughts so ideas get jumbled. This response will probably be the same.

I hear what you are saying because my perceptions are similar. It is just that you are talking at different levels of conflict. In this conflict, there are multiple simultaneous levels playing out. Each one has an influence on the participants. For the sake of argument, let say that there is the ‘higher’ level conflict which for example is based on the tenants of Islam and then there is what I’ll call the ‘ground level’ conflict where the average people sit with their systems of beliefs. The ground level beliefs may even differ from the higher level. Because in any system there is what is officially sanctioned and there is what people believe and do which are often not the same.

And the ground level conflict does have some similarities with the West Side Story example you gave. Research indicates that when Israelis and Palestinians meet, each side slightly changes its impression of the other towards the positive. It will never be that you just put a group of Arabs and Jews in a room and they come out best friends with solutions to the conflict (I am actually writing my thesis on the idea that dialogue groups often create more conflict than they solve) however the absence of these groups means that the conflict at the ground level has the opportunity to grow even more.

In your description, the higher level conflict is what defines this conflict. Maybe. But what happens at the ground level is much more relevant to the average person and is like the sharks and jets example. People perceive the other’s words and actions based on their own experiences and history and react based on what they believe they know. I concentrate on this level because I can influence the ground level but I have no influence over the higher level.

From my limited interaction with Arabs (Palestinians and others, religious and secular) this aspect of Islam of not accepting Israel is a minor (although completely underlying) influence. Arabs seem much more concerned with the idea of rights and the concept of justice- righting the wrongs that they perceive Zionism to have committed. Whether I agree or not with their perception of the conflict (I do not), this is a very different than saying Muslims will never accept Israel. All I can say is find some Palestinians and ask them their opinions. It is not that you will be singing kumbaya with them, but at least you will know what you are dealing with.

And for the record, I have never, nor will I ever sit in a circle singing kumbaya.

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Permalink Reply by Adam Paul on May 7, 2008 at 8:53am

Corey -

You must be hanging out with some very enlightened and liberal Muslims. I have no doubt that they exist - at the end of the day, ahead of everything else, every sane person's primary concern is feeding himself and his family and ensuring they have shelter - but as I see it, the culture is so infused with the influence of hardened religious thought that no matter how much people get along on an individual level, it will not impact the underlying source of the conflict.

Nations can settle their disputes by each giving up a piece of what they believe to be rightfully theirs. But there is no compromising in religion. If it's wrong, it's wrong, and there are no two ways about it. In Islam, the presence of a Jewish state in the heart of what is considered Arabia is anathema. So friends can be made and economic aid can be given and kumbaya can be sung, but at the end of the day, the few 'ground level' people who can be taught that sharing is caring will not have an iota of influence on the Believers.

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