I have now conducted more than 90 30-minute consultations with more or less an equal number of Israelis and Palestinians representing the entire spectrum of opinions and identities on both sides. I have been asking people under what conditions they would be able to say that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is over. I have also asked them to estimate under what conditions the other side of the conflict would be willing to say the same. One of the most problematic issues that almost always comes up is the question of genuine recognition of the existence of the other side, its legitimate rights to define itself as a people and the rights that, as a people, it has to claim the land between the River and the Sea.
Is it feasible to expect that Israelis and Palestinians will ever genuinely recognize each other’s legitimacy emanating from their deep emotional, historic and religious connection to the land between the River and the Sea? Can they make the leap of recognition without denying their own rights and claims to the land?
Palestinian nonrecognition of the right of the Jewish people to its homeland in the Land of Israel has become one of the main obstacles in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship in Israeli eyes since the beginning of the peace process. In 2009, in his famous Bar-Ilan speech, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summarized: “the root of the conflict was, and remains, the refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own, in their historic homeland…. The Palestinian leadership must arise and say: Enough of this conflict. We recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in this land, and we are prepared to live beside you in true peace…. Therefore, a fundamental prerequisite for ending the conflict is a public, binding and unequivocal Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.”
The Palestinians claim that Yasser Arafat met Israel’s preconditions for negotiations in his letter to Yitzhak Rabin from September 1993 in which he wrote: “The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security… the PLO affirms that those articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel’s right to exist, and the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the commitments of this letter, are now inoperative and no longer valid.” With that statement the Declaration of Principles for peace was signed and the peace process began.
Yet many Israelis felt that the Arafat letter fell short of the need to recognize Israel’s legitimacy, and Palestinians claimed, rightly, that while Palestinians recognized Israel, Israel only recognized the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The Palestinians claim that Israel never formally recognized the right of the Palestinian people to a state of its own, and in fact never formally recognized the existence of the Palestinian people.
Whether these claims of both sides are true or not is irrelevant. The sense of the people on both sides is that their legitimacy is questioned by the other side.
Most of the Israelis I spoke with, particularly religious Israelis and settlers, placed the issue of legitimacy at the front of their conditions for understanding that the conflict would in fact be over. Most of the Palestinians also placed legitimacy high on their agenda and added their need for acknowledgment of their suffering at the hands of Israel and apologies for the wrongdoings of Israel.
A lot of the Israelis also thought that forgiveness from both sides had to be included in a reconciliation process. Most people on both sides recognized that forgiveness was part of a long and needed process of reconciliation, but that it would probably be practical only after a political agreement would be reached. Most of the Israelis I spoke with said that they would be willing to recognize the legitimacy of Palestinians, but not all were willing to recognize all of their political rights. As an example, the Nation-State Law clearly asserts that only the Jewish people have collective political rights in the Land of Israel.
Despite the difficulties of some on both sides to accept the legitimacy of claims by the other side, all of the interviewees thought that we should all learn both languages – Hebrew and Arabic – and almost everyone thought that it was important to teach in our schools the narratives of both sides. Ironically, learning the narrative of both sides is a form of recognition of legitimacy, albeit not explicit.
IN PAST conversations I had with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, we found language that could be agreeable to Palestinians regarding the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel and Israel’s legitimacy, but those words would be used only after the Palestinians and Israelis had agreed on other core issues such as borders, Jerusalem and refugees.
It seems quite clear that the issue of recognition must be dealt with in a reciprocal way. Under the current conditions of no negotiations for years and a worsening reality on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza, it is difficult to imagine that mutual recognition of political rights and attachment to the land is even possible. Each side sees recognition either as a zero-sum game or as a denial of its own legitimate rights and claims to the land.
One way to proceed in the future may have to remain as a statement of recognizing facts on the ground, rather than a moral, historical or religious legitimacy: millions of Jews and millions of Palestinians – both of whom define themselves as such – live between the River and the Sea and believe, to the extent of being willing to die for this belief, that they exist as a people, and that the land belongs to them.
