Why There Is No Solution to the Palestinian Arab-Jewish Conflict

The Arab-Jewish conflict resembles a multi-story building. The foundation, deep in the ground, is Muslim perception of Jews as believers of a common religion and not as members of the same nation. The construction of the first floor began with the Zionist migration to the Land of Israel in the late nineteenth century. From the local Arabs’ viewpoint, a religion does not need territory or a nation state. Hence, the Jewish immigration was a colonial project aiming to dispossess the natives. This argument, together with a few other historical narratives, were the core of Arab opposition to Zionism. It was first affirmed by the First Palestinian Congress at Jerusalem in January 1919, and ever since has been the foundation of the Palestinian Arabs’ refusal to accept Israel as a Jewish State and to end the conflict.

The second floor was built during the war of 1948. Its first wing was the Palestinian refugee problem. A second one was Jerusalem, divided between Israel and Jordan. A third wing was the armistice lines. Originally, they were bound to be temporary, until permanent borders would be decided in the peace negotiations that were expected to follow. With no peace treaties, they became sacred in the eyes of most of the world. A fourth wing was the involvement of the Arab States. Truly, it had begun earlier, in the late 1930s, but after the defeat of the Palestinian Arabs, and their invasion of Palestine in May 1948, they became the main protagonists who demanded the return of the country to its previous status as an Arab country, against a Zionist, and later an Israeli, demand that the Land of Israel be Jewish as Britain was British and France was French.

The Six-Day War added to the building a third floor that was nicknamed with the overall name “the conquest”. One wing of the new floor was united and annexed Jerusalem. The second wave of refugees/emigrants that turned mainly to Jordan and partly continued to the Gulf Emirates constituted another one. A third wing was the return of the demographic issue. It laid dormant after the war of 1948, but since 1967 it has become a central issue in the Israeli discourse on the future of the territories.

During the years, several other layers have been heaped on this floor such as the issue of a Palestinian entity, and whether it should be an autonomy or a fully independent state. In recent years, the settlements, the settlers, and the construction in Jerusalem and the territories have been the current bone of contention. If it had only been worked out the “political process” could be resumed and the conflict would be resolved. Actually, it is just a ripple, irrelevant to the other problems in the lower floors.

Beyond “Hello” and “Goodbye”, the word Shalom has in Hebrew two incompatible meanings. One indicates a treaty or an agreement between governments of two states that mutually recognize their sovereignty and borders, have formal diplomatic relations and a certain level of informal connections, and are committed to avoiding war with each other. The second meaning signifies Shalom Al Israel, the peace of the apocalypse, when a wolf will live peacefully with a sheep and a leopard will lie back with a young goat. In modern language: a peace in which Jews and Arabs will befriend each other over Hummus in Damascus or in Tel-Aviv.

A peace in the first sense between Israel and some Arab States is possible under certain circumstances. The war of 1973 created the necessary conditions for a peace between Egypt and Israel. Hussein’s decision to detach Jordan from the West Bank and its Palestinian inhabitants paved the road for an Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty. However, these are agreements between governments. Peace in the second meaning does not exist among the Arabs, all the more so it cannot be accomplished between them and Israel.

The Palestinians are a different case, and cannot have peace with Israel even in the first meaning. Their conflict is not one between states but a...