There is no modern solution to a non-modern conflict.
What is called modern world, or modernity, is an understanding of the nature of reality that came to prominence in North Atlantic culture from the 17th century onward. Prominent in modern culture is the idea that all human behavior is, and should be, governed by natural law, human laws, and self-realization. Some of the laws governing human behavior are natural and can be discovered through the sciences of psychology and sociology. Others are made by humans themselves to be willfully imposed and voluntarily followed. Some are the rules humans choose for themselves as part of their personal identity.
God’s law, beyond natural law, is excluded from consideration because if it exists at all it follows no discernable pattern and can achieve no universal consensus. And consistency and universal consensus are the marks of any true description of reality.
There is also, in our time, a non-modern world that continues to be present in our societies. In this world human behavior is and should governed by interlocking systems of mutual obligation. These obligations are understood to be primal, built into the structure of reality, and are between humans and the non-human natural world, family members, clan members, tribe members, one’s fellow humans beyond the tribe, a variety of spirits or deities, and ultimately God. Law is essentially a description of these obligations, which are root of an identity that is unreservedly related to a community.
At many levels, even in supposedly modern societies, the rule of law and the system of mutual obligations come into conflict. In Highway Patrolman Bruce Springsteen sings about a man caught between law and family obligation, “nothing feels better than blood on blood.” One could offer a thousand such dramas where the essential conflict is between modern obedience to the rule of modern laws and obedience to the law of primal obligations.
If we understand this we can better understand the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, because both Israelis and Palestinians, and their ethnic and religious allies, are in conflict at two levels; one modern and one non-modern. And there is no modern solution to a non-modern conflict.
The modern Israeli view of this conflict is typically taken back 2000 years ago to the time in which Rome colonized Israel. After a series of civil wars Rome ultimately expelled the Jewish people from land that was rightfully theirs by virtue of having long inhabited, cared for, and governed it. Yet is remained for the Jews their homeland, and they maintained an intrinsic relationship to it through constant ritual remembrance and whenever possible a return to it. (A modern account typically leaves out claims about God giving the land to the descendants of Israel, because such claims are beyond modern modes of argument and reason.)
The modern argument for the current status quo of both Jewish possession of the land and Israel’s sovereignty over it continues with an account of the legal purchase of land by Zionist settlers, who then held internationally recognized titles under Ottoman law and much later purchased land from 20th century Arab/Palestinian landowners. Ultimately an international decision and settlement of borders recognized Israel as a state and set aside land for a future Arab state. Because the newly independent state of Israel was at war with its neighbors the exact borders in that agreement were never realized in practice.
Finally, and more contentiously, the argument goes that certain lands occupied in a war of self-defense can be legally annexed to Israel out of necessity for its own security, so long as the annexation is done under a set of clear, rational, laws passed by a democratic Israeli government. And further, that Israel has a legal right to secure the safety of its citizens and borders through police and military actions even if this sometimes means acting outside Israel’s borders and legal possessions.
The argument ends with the expressed desire that a treaty, binding in international law, could be signed between internationally recognized governing authorities to resolve final issues of borders, sovereignty, and land ownership. In the meantime another kind of agreement, the Oslo accords, regulates issues of jurisdiction, land ownership and management.
The modern Palestinian view of this conflict, pitched equally in terms of law, is rather different. First it questions the validity of Ottoman claims to ownership of the land subsequently purchased by Jews. After all, the argument goes, the Arab families that actually lived on the land claimed by Ottoman landlords had done so for centuries. Their right to the land was not acknowledged when the Ottomans conquered it, and their own legal systems for determining land rights had simply been ignored. In short they, not the Ottoman and certainly not the Jewish title holders, had the prior claim.
Continuing this argument maintains that the UN Resolution 181 partitioning the former British Mandate of Palestine was passed with no representation by the Arab residents and landowners and violated the UN Charter itself which granted peoples the right of self-determination. The subsequent Declaration of Independence by Israel was thus in violation with the fundamental principles of international law. Thus no state has an obligation to recognize Israel, and indeed most majority Muslim countries do not formally recognize Israel.
Going further, this modern argument states that Israel’s subsequent acquisition of land outside the boundaries specified in UN Resolution 181 has been through wars of conquest and subsequently is not recognized in international law, even as supposed title transfers from Arab/Palestinians to Israeli Jews have no basis in an agreed legal framework. The argument then goes that Israel has unilaterally violated the Oslo accords by its allowed expansion of Jewish settlements; noting that even in Israeli law many of these settlements are illegal.
Beyond this, both sides continue to pose modern arguments concerning ever finer points of Israeli law, international law, and past and current events and treaties.
And none of this actually tells us what is really going on. Because there is a distinctly non-modern side to both the Israeli and Palestinian societies that plays a huge role in the conflict. The non-modern side to the conflict arises from the ways in which both parties are involved in interlocking primal obligations and identities that find no recognition in international law, but which they cannot give up and retain their sense of integrity and identity.
For Israel these obligations are outlined through a series of covenants between God and Israel, culminating in the Torah. In these covenants the people of Israel are bound together in mutual family, clan, tribal, and ethno-national obligations. As importantly they have both ownership and an absolute obligation to be stewards of the land that God has promised them, and in particular of Jerusalem and the Temple as the sacred space in which God has chosen to be most immediately present for God’s people. Such ownership is non-transferable and cannot be abrogated.
While circumstances over the past millennia temporarily relieved Israel of these covenantal obligations, the obligations never ceased. And now these circumstances have changed. For many Israelis and Jews more broadly the situation that has emerged in the last two centuries has renewed their absolute obligation to the promised land in general and Jerusalem and the Temple Mount in particular. Such obligations are sacred, and cannot be negotiated away by modern laws and treaties. They are the essence of Jewish identity.
The result, at this moment among both Jews generally and within Israel is conflict between Jews who understand themselves in terms of sacred obligations and those who understand themselves in terms of modern national and international law. While only a minority of Israeli Jews are religious, a larger number accept the non-modern/traditional world view in a visceral sense even if they don’t enunciate it in religious terms.
There is a similar situation among Arabs/Palestinians. Their obligations to family members, clan members, and tribes are deeply inscribed in their ancient culture and affirmed by their religion: Islam. Similarly their culture and religion obliges them to be stewards of the lands of their ancestors; to care for their fields, trees, springs, and streams. Moreover, that religion gives them a sacred obligation to care for and protect the Al-Aqsa mosque which marks the very spot from which Muhammad journeyed to heaven and returned. And again, these are obligations established with and through God, and cannot be negotiated away. To be an Arab Muslim from the land between the Jordan and the sea is an identity bound to these obligations. In modern terms it is to be a Palestinian.
Thus no purely modern framing of this conflict, whether it places it in the context of International law, psychological trauma, or sibling rivalry can provide more than a partial and temporary solution. Nor can the conflict be seen solely as a religious rivalry, although this has existed between Muslims and Jews. Religion is just a pointer to sacred obligations that overlap within a social and geographical terrain.
I use the term “overlap” intentionally, because it appears to this outside observer that neither Jewish nor Muslim sacred obligations necessarily conflict. Yet in reality both sides understand their sacred obligations to be exclusive. This is why, as my friend Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger suggests, they can be resolved only through processes of reconciliation (rather than law) through which people understand that what was viewed as exclusive can be viewed otherwise without being disloyal to history, the tradition and to the overall system. Finding a path toward reconciling apparently exclusive obligations is the work of Roots https://www.friendsofroots.net.
In the meantime those of us who care about both Israelis and Palestinians would do well to be conscious of the need above all for a reconciliation that cannot be reached through diplomatic efforts and the exercise of power. And we can support those groups, of which there are many, working toward that reconciliation - often far from the spotlight of the media but ultimately to much better effect than either military force or political arm twisting.
