The Real Dispute Driving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
"As the U.S. moves its embassy to Jerusalem, and the tragedy at the Gaza border escalates, Israelis and Palestinians continue to contest each other's rights not just to that city, but to legitimacy itself...The most significant political divide in Israel today is no longer between right and left, but between right and center: right-wingers who believe that there is no partner for peace and so Israel should settle and annex the West Bank, and centrists who believe that there is no partner for peace but Israel still needs to try to extract itself from the occupation, even unilaterally if necessary. Neither camp believes in the possibility of reconciliation with the Palestinians any time soon. Israelis and Palestinians are caught in what could be called a "cycle of denial." The Palestinian national movement denies Israel's legitimacy, and Israel in turn denies the Palestinians' national sovereignty. The cycle of denial has defined this shared existence since the creation of Israel 70 years ago...The key to ending the occupation, then, is beginning a new conversation on peace between Palestinians and Israelis—not only about the technical details of an agreement, but about the intangible issues of legitimacy and rootedness of two indigenous peoples fated to share the same tortured land. The international community can help by expressing its vigorous opposition not only to Israeli settlement building, but also to the Palestinian campaign that portrays the Jewish return home to any part of the land as a colonialist affront." (Yossi Klein Halevi, Senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, 5/14/18)
