Wednesday, July 23, 2025



The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Why We Need Asymmetrical Peace

Rarely has any international affair been covered as bleakly as the recent Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, despite its presence in the international consciousness for decades, still awakens personal passions across three monotheistic faiths and several continents. The possibility that it could be resolved brings a slew of possibilities that, until now, were firmly confined to political fantasyland.

When I talk about resolutions, I speak of course of ethnic, religious, and political reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians, and between Hamas and Fattah within Palestine. I speak of a state for the Palestinian people, the return of thousands of refugees into the new Palestinian state, and a level of security and international respect undreamed of for Israel just decades ago. Most importantly, I speak of the end to perpetual war between Israel and its neighbors.

This list ought to quicken the pulse of anyone who purports to care about this situation. However, over the last few weeks, we watched as national leaders on both sides invented reasons why there cannot be peace. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is hesitant to extend the moratorium on settlement building for even a few months to allow negotiations to continue. Palestinian Authority leader Abu Mazen hedges on whether he would recognize Israel as a Jewish state, as if by dancing around the question he can erase the six million or so Jews that are living a dream by calling the land of Israel their home. Avigdor Lieberman, the comically narrow-minded and rightist Israeli foreign minister, has said that peace may not be possible for a generation. Any man willing to condemn his fellow men, not to mention his own countrymen, to another generation of this horrific and perpetual war is the worst of all possible men. Opposing the peace process is not only morally outrageous, but also one of the worst and most dangerous public policies ever prescribed.

The Palestinian leadership has managed to implicitly oppose the peace process for 15 years. Palestinians refused to compromise on any issue at all through the late 1990s and early 2000s. They have continued to demand the entirety of East Jerusalem, completely disregarding the Old City’s centrality to Jewish life and culture. They have demanded a right of return to Israel proper, which is little more than a nefarious demographic ploy to destroy the Jewish character of Israel.

These demands are in no way crucial to the establishment of a Palestinian state. When Israel was formed, Jews did not demand the right to return to Poland. Indeed, for the past decade and a half, the most ardent blockers of a Palestinian state have not been the Israelis, but the Palestinians themselves. Men like Yassar Arafat and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah would rather capitalize on their own people’s misery and continue a populist narrative than give up some ideological goals and strike a peace deal that would give their people what they desire more fervently then anything else—a home.

Israel’s sins, while not nearly the equivalent of recent Palestinian leaders, are also terrible, because they risk the health and safety of the one and only Jewish homeland. Men like Avigdor Lieberman and the settlers and nationalists who vote for them would have you ignore demographics. Israel is currently about 75 percent Jewish and 20 percent Arab, with the Arab growth rate slightly higher than the Jewish one. If Israel were to perpetually hold on to the West Bank, or annex it as some radical leaders suggest, that proportion would very quickly reach 50-50.

Not only would this endanger the very idea of a Jewish State, but it would also bring about an even more terrifying scenario. The possibility that, in order to keep a Jewish majority in the State of Israel, the government would refuse to grant citizenship to residents of the West Bank. If this were to occur, Israel could be corrupted to its core, the fundamental character of the nation irrevocably destroyed.

Israel’s strength comes from its people and institutions, the schools, roads, factories and companies that are a shining example to all in the region. To risk all of this for a few dozen miles more of “strategic depth” seems crazy.

The reason that Israel could even remotely be heading towards such a dire scenario is an idea that, I believe, has hypnotized vast swaths of the Israeli political establishment: the idea of geographic symmetry. As I sit here and write this piece, I stare at a map of the Middle East. The first thing that I notice is that, when you look at Israel, with the West Bank carved awkwardly into its eastern side, it looks wrong. It looks ugly. That is not the picture carved into our minds, the picture of Solomon’s Israel from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.

The human mind loves symmetry. The idea of symmetry, of natural expansion, fueled “manifest destiny” in this country and led us to claim a whole continent as our own. Similarly, in Israel, there is the idea of “Greater Israel” or “Biblical Israel” that mesmerizes and seduces our sense of cosmic order. Israel cannot let that happen. To allow this idea to seduce the nation is a sin of the first order. To fulfill this idea would open the door for the destruction of any hope for a Palestinian state, and prolong the Israeli-Palestinian conflict indefinitely. Israel must give up this thought, or risk the destruction of its own soul.

Why do I put the burden of sacrifice on a free and democratic republic, as opposed to an organization that has sanctioned suicide bombings and attacks on civilians as an acceptable form of warfare? Why do I raise the specter of Israeli corruption more than I raise the issue of Palestinian depravity?

For two thousand years, we were persecuted, exiled, and beaten down. Driven from place to place, we experienced discrimination, bigotry, and blood libels. We were forced to endure living in ghettos, and were only allowed to do work that was considered “unclean” by the church. We experienced exile, pogroms, and forced conversions. We experienced the “shoah,” an attempt to wipe the very thought of a Jew from the face of the earth.

A people that have experienced this measure of suffering, who know what oppression means in every sense of the word, have an obligation never to inflict it upon another people. We know better. Jewish ethics and morality, honed and refined for millennia, should be our guide, not a desire for geographic symmetry. The men and women who endured hardship to build the first villages and farms did not seek the destruction of another people’s existence. They were living one of the greatest commandments of Judaism: the idea of “Tikkun Olam,” repairing the world.

Zionism grew out of this idea. As a movement striving for the salvation of the Jewish people, never, ever, was Zionism invoked in order to oppress others. Zionism was not built on a foundation of human suffering. As long as there is a single person who sleeps on the floor of a filthy refugee camp in Jordan, or lacks a nation to call home, Zionism cannot be complete.

We know this. We feel it. The existence of this fact saps our strength because we think, we know, that this is not what was meant to be. The leaders of Israel, the men and women trusted with the sacred responsibility of its governance, need to fight one more battle, a battle that, in the end, is against themselves. They need to stand up and honor the prayer that they recited this past week on the culmination of the ten days of awe:

“Let them beat their swords into fishhooks and their spears into plowshares, and nation shall not lift up sword against nation, and neither shall they know war anymore.”

Don’t be hypnotized by symmetry. Peace is more beautiful than any symmetry ever will be.

Comments

One response to “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Why We Need Asymmetrical Peace”

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    Anonymous

    This article make some interesting points, but the underlying argument is flawed, and it fails to take into consideration the that any peace agreement will be colossal gamble for the Israelis, that could lead to dire consequences. Encouraging more criticism and pressure on Israel will not bring about the resolution of this conflict and it also deflects attention from many other oppressed peoples in the world that do not have the benefit of the world’s attention.

    The author seems to think that this entire conflict was brought about by the Israelis acting upon the helpless Palestinians. While it is certainly true that the Palestinians have suffered tremendously over the last 60 years, saying that Israel is solely to blame for the plight of the Palestinians in neighboring countries is far from the truth and does not contribute to resolving this conflict. Israel is not responsible for the systematic discrimination and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians that has occurred in Jordan, Lebannon, Kuwait, and the UAE. Furthermore, there have been countless political forces that have contributed to shaping this issue, (pan-Arabism, the Cold War, European colonialism, etc).
    The paternalistic approach of trying to pressure Israel into making concessions will not bring about change. The international community has the obligation to marginalize the extremists in this conflict. Saying that the onus lies with the Israelis only strengthens the radical that have no interest in peace.

    The majority of Israelis and Israeli politicians are committed tot he prospect of achieving peace with the Palestinians, but they do not have the luxury of ignoring reality.

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