Digital Library
How Not to Think About the Conflict
Topic:
Israel & Regional Politics, Israel Literacy
Principal Investigators:
Einat Wilf
Study Date:
2021
Source:
Sapir
Key Findings:
The Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflicts are rooted in a multitude of historical, religious, and geopolitical factors. There are often attempts to comprehend unfamiliar situations by relating them to familiar contexts. This essay lays out several commonly drawn, but vastly incorrect parallels between I-P and certain other conflicts in an attempt to understand Israel's history and conflict. The author cautions against ill-intentioned parallels that seek to intervene in the conflict and further external agendas, rather than genuinely comprehend it.
Analogies between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and struggles such as Northern/Republic of Ireland's conflict and apartheid in South Africa are taken as case studies. Notably, these analogies have no concrete fuel beyond raw emotions, specifically because the historical events of both cases: (1) are unrelated and not factually parallel to the Israeli-Palestinian situation; and (2) remain interpersonally unresolved on an emotional level. Thus, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in these cases is used as an outlet for intense emotions that Irish and South African individuals experienced in their own contexts.
The American frame on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is also discussed. Similarly to Northern/Republic of Ireland and South Africa, the conflict has been increasingly adopted by certain groups as a symbolic cause to provide an avenue for pursuing a sense of heroism and justice. This reflects a wider tendency in Americans to view the world through the lens of American history and values. The casting of Jews as "white" and Arabs as "people of color" quite simply doesn’t apply in this Middle Eastern context.
The "Placard Strategy" is discussed as a technique used to label one side as "evil" and the other as "good" in the conflict. This simplification obstructs meaningful discourse and solutions because it is fueled by emotional reactions. Rather than contributing to resolution of the conflict, it perpetuates polarization and legitimizes anti-intellectual approaches.
Moreover, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in contemporary times has seen a huge evolution with normalization efforts. The prevailing urge for a black-and-white narrative is challenged, and the importance of understanding the complexity of the conflict is encouraged. The author underscores that Israelis and Palestinians are real people navigating a deeply rooted struggle that deserves nuanced consideration.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict should not be oversimplified or reduced to a battle between good and evil. Acknowledging the conflict's multifaceted nature is essential to developing any kind of real understanding of it. This also means taking serious caution not to project unrelated emotional baggage onto it.
Methodology:
This essay responds to a pre-COVID discussion in Israel involving the author and a delegation of students on the topics of Israel, Zionism, and the conflict between Jews and Arabs (Israeli-Palestinian conflict). During the Q&A session, a student asked about the impact of "colorism" on the conflict (referring to discrimination based on skin color among individuals of the same race or ethnicity). The author immediately rejected the notion that analyzing the conflict in terms of skin tones (colorism) was as valid as analyzing it through the lenses of nation, religion, history, and geography. The author challenged the student to discern Jews from Arabs solely by their skin color (she was unable to).
Having perceived that this question likely emerged from a desire to find a relatable framework for understanding the complex conflict (in this case, the American framework of race), the author sought to unpack this pervasive phenomenon using many other real-world cases of its occurrence. The essay also pulls from broad external research.