A Small Peace for the Middle East

Arthur Hertzberg

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2001

Article preview: first 500 of 2,725 words total.

Summary:  At the heart of the conflict in the Middle East stand two irreconcilable ideologies: Zionism and the Palestinian dream of a homeland. Adherents on either side cannot accept the demands of the other, so perfect peace remains a fantasy. But another solution exists: to abandon grand plans and muddle forward. Piecemeal solutions can succeed where ambitious strategies have failed. Indeed, they are now the only option.

THE CLASH OF ABSOLUTES

The dream of perfect peace is also the enemy of peace. The world can no longer avoid the somber insight of Isaiah Berlin, who wrote that any ideal taken to its very end brings not redemption, but pain and horror. Great conflicts, as Berlin realized, are insoluble because they involve absolutist principles and uncompromising visions. In wars of religion, no peace can be made between true faith and idolatry. In wars of ideology, no true revolutionary can compromise with false visions. And so wars continue, endlessly and insolubly. The only way to stop them is to abandon ideals -- whatever they may be -- and to make, in the here and now, pragmatic arrangements that stop the killing.

This precept holds for the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, which has been made worse, unutterably worse, by such a dream of perfect peace. In this case, the dream took the form of one of the most glorious and creative movements of the last century: modern Zionism. A hundred years ago, some of the most vital elements in the Jewish community all over the world attempted to join the modern world by rejecting the passivity of their ancient messianic religion. They embraced modern nationalism with great enthusiasm and entered the lists of modern politics in order to establish a "normal" nation in the ancient homeland of the Jews, a goal that would free their people from confined existence in ghettos. The Zionists thought that Jews would achieve a kind of redemption by ceasing to be different from and persecuted by the nations of the world. Somehow, they thought, the inevitable discomforts and conflicts with the Arabs would be resolved. The Jews would find peace and acceptance in the land where their ancestors had once fashioned their religion and culture. But it was not to be. Instead, from its very beginning to this very day, Zionism has confronted a century of war.

The Palestinians have no corresponding messianic vision, no contemporary secular dream of a resurgent Islamic society. They simply want to be left alone in the land they believe was taken from them in wars of conquest. The results of these conquests can never be accepted by the Palestinians. Neither the Christian crusaders nine centuries ago nor the Jews in this century ever acquired title to the land. No international decision made at Versailles or by the United Nations can change the minds of those who belong, religiously, culturally, and historically, to the world on which Islam set its fundamental stamp. Palestine is irrevocably a part of the realm of the believers, especially since Jerusalem is the home of the third holiest shrine in Islam: the mountain from which the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

The claim of the Jews on the land of Palestine is more complex but equally non-negotiable. The religious believe that God once promised the land to the children of Abraham. The nationalists believe that the Jewish people will be ...

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