[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
Since Israel started its brutal onslaught in Gaza, I have been receiving dozens of emails everyday about the nature of the conflict and the parties involved. Most of these fall into two distinct narratives that are 180 degrees opposite.
My Muslim friends are telling me that Israel is “the real terrorist,” that its goal is to annihilate or enslave the Palestinian people, and it is responsible for not just the current bloodshed but also the 60-year-old tragedy in the Holy Land. My American or Israeli friends, on the other hand, are telling me the exact opposite. The problem is Arabs, they say, who never accepted Israel’s right to exist. Hamas, for them, is responsible for the carnage in Gaza. Israel, they argue, is only defending itself against this fanatic group.
These totally opposite points of view are not just in my email inbox, to be sure, but also in the media. In a piece titled “Why Israel Can’t Make Peace With Hamas,” Jeffrey Goldberg was boldly expressing one of them in the New York Times last Tuesday. “Hamas cannot be cajoled into moderation,” he was arguing, adding that the Islamist group believed in the destruction of Israel as an article of faith.
It Is Their Religion, Stupid
Interestingly enough, I have been reading the mirror image of that argument — that Israel cannot be cajoled into moderation — in the Islamic side of the Turkish media as well. Several columnists in conservative Istanbul papers have noted that Israel will unavoidably continue to occupy Palestinian lands, because the Jews believe that this is their “God-given” land. And like Jeffrey Goldberg, who quoted Hamas militants who had sworn to destroy Israel, these pessimistic Turks quoted militant Israelis who had sworn to keep “Judea and Samaria” in their hands and topple those stand in their way.
These totally opposite but actually very similar arguments cover not just matters of politics, but also violence. In the past few weeks, I have received several emails showing horrific photos of Palestinian mothers crying for their children killed by Israeli bombs and then quoting an Old Testament verse: “Their infants shall be dashed in pieces before their eyes” (Ishaah, 13:16).
This method of explaining the aggression of your enemy with a passage in its scripture is something I also see in Islamophobic (and very often strongly pro-Israel) Web sites: They present images of Islamist militants who kill people and then relate it to some Koranic verse about waging jihad. The message, in both cases, is the same: “It is their religion, stupid. They are killing us because their God says so.”
The conclusion is the same, too: “The other side is not like us. They don’t have the same human values we have. Thus, to believe that we can make peace with them is a dangerous illusion. The only way is to fight.”
To be sure, both sides find plenty of facts about the other side that support their verdicts. Hamas is on the record for calling Jews, out of a twisted interpretation of the Koran, “apes and pigs.” On the other side, Israel’s former prime minister, Mehahem Begin, is reported to have called the Palestinians “two-legged animals,” and Rafael Eytan, former military chief of staff, is quoted to refer to them as “cockroaches.”
Moreover, each side interprets the events within their own prism. “Look what happened when we pulled back from Gaza,” the pro-Israeli side says, “they continued to send rockets to us.” “Look what happened to Arafat,” the pro-Hamas people remind, “he made peace with the Jews, but they besieged his headquarters.”
When I receive such emails, I sometimes write back and try to explain that neither the Palestinian nor the Israeli side is that black and white, and that peace is possible when both sides refrain from their deadly mistakes and decide to make concessions. The common response I get is that I am too naive and that I have been fooled by the other side’s propaganda.
Now, these contradictory narratives and the state of cognitive dissonance they almost put me in may sound like my personal problem. But unfortunately it is the problem of our very world. When we have conflicting parties which both think that the other side is evil, their war becomes perpetual, and it dooms all of us. â¨â¨So, something needs to be done. And it can be summarized with a single word: dialogue. â¨â¨
Talking To The Other Side
But please be careful: When I say dialogue, I don’t mean a process of finding “moderates” on both sides and bringing them together in nice venues so that they can all smile to the cameras. That is dialogue for the appearance of dialogue. What we really needed is to bring the less moderate people to the table. They are the ones who are dedicated to fight and thus they are the ones who need to be convinced for peace.
And that’s why Hamas must be reached out. One of the greatest mistakes that the United States did in the recent years — ah, there are so many of them — was to refuse to talk to this party when it came to power in January 2006 via free and fair elections. Instead of dialogue, the United States and Israel, preferred bullying. They harassed not only Hamas, but even Turkey, when the Turkish government tried to talk to them in order to advise them moderation. “If the Hamas leadership was not isolated, it could have been transformed,” suggests political scientist Bülent Aras, an expert on the region. “These people are trapped in their small world.”
In fact, most of us are trapped in our small worlds. And if we open up, we will realize that the enemies which we see as evil incarnate are actually humans like us.
Perfectly said Mustafa. This is the best piece I have read on this conflict. It can also be interpreted to speak for all conflicts in the world. This deserves to be printed in all newspapers worldwide. I shall share this with as many people as I can. Well done. The pen certainly is mightier than the sword.
Mustafa,
1) Dialogue is not going to lead anywhere. Not about anyone being evil, but simply about the way humans interact: given the current imbalance of powers, there’s little Israel can’t get by itself if it really values it, and there’s nothing Hamas can exchange for more value than it can give (the rockets are a small nuisance that don’t prevent pretty much anyone in Israel from having a totally normal life, without about as much probability of being struck by a lighting).
Consider basic negotiation theory: best alternative to negotiated agreement (BATNA), reservation line, zone of possible agreement (ZOPA), etc.
Palestinians in particular, and Arabs in general, are way too weak to have anything to offer. BATNA for Israel is status quo, which is just fine. Given existing incentives and reservation lines on the Israeli side, any negotiated agreement for Arabs includes giving up the right of return on pre-67 issues, and possibly a state of semi-rightlessness for post-67 issues, which has even less value than the BATNA=status quo. In both cases, the incentives are skewed against any possible negotiated outcome, there’s no ZOPA.
It would take a reconfiguration of the current setting so that negotiated outcomes have more value than the BATNA for either party. For that, it would either mean:
- Arabs are stronger (economically, diplomatically, militarily, mediatically, etc.) and therefore Israelis see net value gains in negotiated outcomes with significant concessions because BATNA is not the status quo anymore for them
- or Arabs lose any hope of seing the situation ever being better (i.e. any future option, including psychologically and in narratives, becomes worthless) so that the little value gains of being happy to just be alive (and not much more) translates into a net value gain.
Again, nothing to do with either Arabs or Israelis being good or evil, rather a simple matter of structure of present value and incentives on both sides.
2) Re 2 narratives: one is actually not heard in the US (Arab or Muslim shortcoming on making their own case), or at least, the message is definitely not getting across. How many in the US know:
- the overwhelming majority of Palestinians have been expelled from their homeland by immigrants in 1947-1948, the ethnic cleansing having started months before any Arab state tried to intervene since it was the only way to create a demographically Jewish state, and whereas a Jewish immigrant with no ties (aside from the religious ones) to Palestine is immediately given citizenship today, a Palestinian born there or their kids canât set foot there,
- Palestinians who have been conquered in 1967, are under de facto Israeli control (including the few urban districts that have been handed to the PA at some point) and are pretty much rightless,
- that aside from an insignificant few marginals (al Qaeda type nihilists), the dominant Arab discourse is not about killing Jews or throwing them to the sea or 72 virgins or any inanity of the type, not even among regular Islamists, but about resolving the two points above.
Said with all friendship and respect Mustafa, thereâs no room for dissonance or symmetry here. Lack of bias is not always in the middle. Anyone with their senses having assimilated those points, unless they have personal stakes in the game (like, e.g. Israeli Jews), would easily understand that this is not something they would ever accept. But then again, among the many shortcomings of Arabs is that they have been unable to convey those points to external actors.
Another great article, Mr. Akyol.
One of the things that i feel mystifies the whole conlfict is religion, actually. Sure enough, there are religious scholars and clerics from all three abrahamic religions which try to give their religious justifications on why their brutality is to be condoned. But it confuses people from the true nature of the conflict, which is not really about religious ideologies, but something more secular: it’s about the ASSERTION OF NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE LAND OF MODERN-DAY ISRAEL. Zionists saw the land as best suited for their aspirations to establish a Jewish state, for the noble goal of saving the Jewish people from persecution. The Arabs in the region are fighting to save the natives of the land from an expanionist power, and later to assert the nationality of the Palestinians, around the same time that the Arabs were asserting their national identity as Egyptians, Lebanese, etc.
It was only afterwards that the context of “Judea and Samaria” or jihad arrived and would further define the conflict. The religious context further mystifies it. But if more and more people knew that the peace movement to free Palestine was made up not only of Muslims but also of many Jews, like J Street for example, and even a number of Christians, particularly the Palestinian Christians (e.g. the late and renowned Edward Said), then the conflict can be looked at more objectively and may come to a more just and clarified solution.
Cahine,
Absolutely agree with you. If Israel wanted a real dialogue and a long-term peace, it would have accepted the “Arab initiative”.
“Arab initiative” – major Arab states including Saudi Arabia offered to recognize Israel, establish diplomatic and economic relations in return for granting Palestinians a state within 1967 borders (East Jerusalem, West Bank without thousand of settlements and the Gaza Strip).
However, such a reasonable deal, which required no more concessions than the rest of the International community demands from Israel, was rejected by Israel.
Israel left Southern Lebanon in early 2000s bacause of ARMED resistance by Hizbollah.
Israel left Gaza in 2005 (although imposed unbearable blockade on the enclave) because of ARMED resistance by Hamas.
Experience of PLO (Arafat and Abbas) shows that dialogue does not lead to concessions from Israel: illegal settlements are still being built in the West Bank governed by Fatah.
Mustafa,
I say the above despite being a person who constantly engages in dialogues with Christians, just refer to the link I provide.
Just think, could Salahaddin Ayubi engage in a dialogue with the crusaders? Why Salahaddin had to wage a war against them?
When you went to school, I am sure there were bullies, whom you could stop not by mild words but by displaying your physical force as well.
A weaker party can’t have a real dialogue with a stronger party.
With prayers to our Palestinian brothers and sisters,
Behruz.
Note: I support the right of those people who call themselves “Jews” to live on the land called “israel” today. Although most of those people are not Jews, but originate from a variety of Eastern European and Turkic ethnicities (Khazars) http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=2&cid=1202742130771&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
This was a wonderful article. Especially the last two lines. They perfectly represent the paradox of the human condition.
Behruz Himo,
as usual, you behave like a sophist, selectively choosing historical data and fact that best fit to your ideas.
The “Arab Initiative” is unworkable for a very single reason: it considers the return of the refugees. Ps: this was an Arab home made problem, not only attested by historical fact, please read the Chronicles of those days in Arab newspaper, but as well by what has been written in “al-Ayyam”, a Palestinian newspaper of 16.5.06 or “Hayat al-Jadida” of 19.5.01, the official ANP newspapaer.
What country would accept its own self-destruction?
If you attach a reasonable proposal (the same proposal ex-refugees, as the Arab Initiative, that has been made by Israel at Camp David II) with an absurd one, what will come out?
Of course you will not accept it. But..you can say that the bad Jews were not willing to accept it.
It suffices to watch Arab channels to see this omnipotent mantra going on and on…
But please, next time, take care of details.
Echnaton