The Role that Personal Identity Plays in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Four Interviews Asking About the Prospect of Peace among a People who are Inherently Divided

Introduction

About a month ago, I came across a Ted Talk that inspired me to do research into the significance of personal identity with regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ted Talks are a series of presentations given by people who have unique ideas to share with the world; a handful of these presentations are shared as videos on the Ted Talk website. The speaker of the video I watched, a semi-anonymous French street artist named JR, conducted an art project in eight cities in Israel and Palestine. JR intended to expose and hopefully transform the perspectives of individuals from these cities through publicly displayed photography. JR’s project inspires his audience to question how individuals identify themselves with respect to their views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Is peace possible in this region considering that the conflict greatly shapes the personal identities of the people who there? With the intent to explore these questions, I researched the topic and interviewed four distinct individuals who each resided in or travelled to the Israeli-Palestinian region. At the beginning of each interview, I played a section of JR’s talk that explains his project in Israel and Palestine. I then asked each interviewee to discuss his/her initial responses to JR’s project. I followed up with questions concerning the role that identity plays in the continuation or resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Prior to reading the interviews that I conducted, please watch a section of the JR’s talk from 3:06- 9:06 to understand the foundation of my research: http://www.ted.com/talks/jr_s_ted_prize_wish_use_art_to_turn_the_world_inside_out.html

I’d like to offer some background of the topic of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel was established as a state within the territory that was once considered Palestine in 1947. Israel is home to the Holy Land for Christians, Jewish people, and Muslims. The conflict that exists between Israel and Palestine is rooted in a disagreement over whether or not Israel should have the territory that they now have, and the recognition of each entity as a proper state. Each side has attacked the other in various ways, and the people of Palestine and Israel see themselves as inherently divided religiously, culturally, linguistically, and politically. Many restrictions exist regarding Palestinian rights to step food on Israeli soil, to get a passport, to serve in the military, and so on. On the other hand, Israelis are not allowed to enter Areas A or B in Palestine where the Palestinian government is headquartered. These restrictions and the sentiments of people who are deeply connected to the conflict correspond with a lack of trust between these two people groups. The Israeli- Palestinian conflict created a deep divide between people who associate themselves with either side of the issue.

My intent throughout the interviews was to become more familiar with the conflict between Israel and Palestine as it is understood by individuals who live in that region. The media shapes how I, a foreigner to the conflict, view Israeli-Palestinian events. I was hoping to overcome the barrier of the media through communication with people who have, to some degree, witnessed the conflict first-hand. The names of the people who I interviewed will not be revealed. However, I will provide some background information about these individuals. Each interview was conducted separately and without reference to the content of the other interviews, with the exception of MS and PB, who were interviewed at the same time. In order to organize the main argument of this post, I have grouped the interviewee’s responses to the same questions. Later in the post, I apply international relations theories to the topics of discussion.

Backgrounds of the Interviewees

SM- She grew up for a short time in Mexico, and mostly in Spain. She was discriminated against for her Jewish heritage while attending school in Spain. She traveled to Israel for 6 months, and is currently a student here in the US. She analyzed surveys of public opinions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for a recent research project, and incorporates some of the information from these surveys in her discussion of the conflict.

DM- He is ethnically a Palestinian Christian who grew up in Jerusalem, Israel. He identifies with both sides of the conflict and struggles with this split perspective.

MS- He is a Norwegian international student in the Washington Semester Program for Middle Eastern Studies. He just returned from a three week trip to Jordan and Turkey that he attended with his class. During this trip, his class met with politicians, refugees, and representatives from various embassies to discuss the situations in the Middle East.

PB- He was born and raised in Lebanon. He was in Lebanon during part of the time that the country was occupied by Israel and during the war in 2006. He was not able to return to his home country for five years due to the war, and his fields that he farms were destroyed by cluster bombs during the war. He is a transfer student in the same program as MS who also attended the trip to Jordan and Turkey.

Interview

What is your response to and opinion of the JR’s art project, “Face 2 Face”?

PB:

         “I really thought it was an interesting idea, because the only difference between Palestinians and Israelis, from a human perspective, is the language, and even [their languages] are similar.”

DM:

         “I think it’s thought provoking to put two faces from other sides, but not necessarily seeing a huge difference [between them]. For some of [the faces featured in JR’s Face 2 Face project], I think I could probably distinguish them [as Israeli or Palestinian]. For others, I was going back and forth with myself. But when you live there you don’t just see faces, you also listen to the language they’re speaking, you watch their body language, their facial expressions, who they’re hanging out with, where they’re spending their time. Literally from the way they design their hair… you can normally tell the difference [between an Israeli and a Palestinian]. A Palestinian will usually take on cultural traits from the Palestinian side, and an Israeli will usually take on cultural traits from his background.”

SM:

         “It’s very true that many times you don’t really see the differences [between Israelis and Palestinians] when you’re on the ground level and you’re there. I think it’s important [to go to the West Bank when travelling to Israel] to understand the differences [between Israelis and Palestinians], and to understand a little more about the complexity of the issue. The conflict is so specific and so different from other conflicts. I think [JR’s Face 2 Face] is such an interesting project to do; to get two people who have the same job and probably have a very similar life. We have this idea of this division that, in reality, exists in some parts, especially in the areas that are surrounded by the wall, which is a shame, but in many parts there is no division and they are living together. Sometimes, they don’t really hate each other when they have to go to the same bakery or the same cleaners. Ultimately, [Israelis and Palestinians] are not so different.”

JR stated that his knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the international media was much different from what he learned from travelling to the region. What do you think about the impact that the media has on shaping how people view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

MS:

         “The media plays a huge role [in how people view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict]. If you portrayed Arabs in general as just those people coming out of Friday prayer with a gun in their hands, saying ‘Death to Israel’, and if you get that picture several times, then you start to believe that [that portrayal] is the truth, even though you don’t know them.”

SM:

          Often times in the media, the pictures of dying, injured people and bombs are the ones that get attention on the front pages. The idea of identifying one side as the enemy and one as the victim is spread by the media’s use of persuasive images. “It’s a powerful image and it happens and it’s true, but if you have that constantly every day and that’s the only news you have from that region, then that’s what you associate it is like in the region. It’s so obvious to see how media changes our perception because once I came to the United States and when I read [what the Spanish and French and American newspapers say], [I could tell that the each newspaper was] sending a very specific message. Maybe if we had more news coverage of some of the great things [that people are doing] in the region, it could change so much about how we view the conflict.”

In your opinion, how does the conflict impact an individual’s sense of identity?

DM:

        “If you come from one side [of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict], you’ve grown up with a certain structure and you’ve gone through certain experiences and you’ve been fed a certain doctrine. For a Palestinian, waking up and having to walk down the street with the wall next to him, and soldiers watching him from a tower affects him; it’s his daily life, it’s become a part of his daily routine and his sense of identity. At the same time, an Israeli who is afraid to get on a bus because of a bus bomb going off and his [fear] of that also shapes his identity.”

SM:

         “I think that part of my identity was forced in me because I was seen as the ‘different’ one as [the only Jewish student of my school in Spain]. People would angrily speak to me about the conflict in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and relate me to the issue by calling Israel ‘my country,’ when [at that point] I hadn’t even been to Israel. That strong idea of who we are makes it easier to differentiate each other. In each side they have derogative ways of calling each other. I think that the role that religion plays is sometimes helpful and sometimes harmful to the conflict. Just thinking that [Israel] was stolen land and that it was taken away from other people takes away from [Jewish people’s] identity too. Palestinians became Israelis, and many who received Israeli citizenship would hate to be called Arab-Israelis because they feel that it takes away from their Palestinian identity and they want to feel different [from Israelis]. Palestinians don’t have a citizenship, they don’t have a passport, and they don’t want to become Israeli, so what state do they belong to? They are static refugees; this is an entirely new form of the word refugee. Religion is one of the main parts of identity [in the Israeli-Palestinian region], but it’s this fighting for territory with religious motivation that comes with this built concept of who we are and how we behave as a people, and this central part of identity relating to land that defines the conflict.”

MS:

         Speaking from his experience meeting with refugees during his trip to the Middle East, “Some Palestinians have never been to Palestine. This is hard to imagine. [The refugees I met] were poor and heavily dependent on others, and [this shapes their sense of identity]. In an ideal world, no one should be a refugee, but being a refugee for, like, sixty years, creates an identity that is really horrible.”

How would Israeli and Palestinian people’s senses of identity be impacted by the escalation or diminishing of the conflict in this region?

DM:

          “I cannot predict how a people group might define themselves. From a personal perspective, I am both Israeli and Palestinian. I have an Israeli passport, but my grandparents are Palestinian. Culturally, I am very much Israeli and Palestinian, and [this] definitely shapes [my] identity. You are both, but how can you be both when they are so different and they are enemies, how can you bring those two identities together? On one hand, I do not want my Palestinian friends in the Palestinian areas to be harmed, and I don’t want them to go through the suffering that they have to go through on a daily basis. But, on the other hand, I don’t want my Israeli friends to go through the suffering that they have to go through either. It’s tough when your best friends are serving in an army which is ultimately harming your other friends and your family. I will support my Israeli friends who are in the army, in terms of helping them personally, but in terms of helping the cause that they are involved in, I find it hard to involve myself personally. I have a personal connection to both [sides of the conflict]. There are other [people who can identify with both sides], but they find themselves in situations where they have to identify themselves with one people group. Here’s the thing, I am both of them, so I want to be associated with both, but how can I associate with both without coming into an identity crossroads. I want to be both, but it’s almost like I need to split myself in two and walk different ways.”

SM:

          “I hate to say this, but I do see a full-scale war as a bigger possibility than a peace time, and I see peace as a temporary condition, since it has been [inconsistent] in that region since 1947. I think people really think about a full-scale war and it wouldn’t affect peoples’ identities so fundamentally. Even people who live in cities that have a big population of both Jewish and Palestinian people, I think that [people who are friends now] would still be friends [in the state of war]. And I think that people who see themselves as different will still see themselves as [inherently] different in the case of war or peace.”

Is resolution possible among people in this region, and how so?

MS:

         MS emphasized the importance of communication among people from both sides of the conflict. He works at New Story Leadership, an organization that brings 10 students from Israel and Palestine to the US to do a summer internship and program together in Washington, DC. It’s not often that you hear the voices of 20 years old people who are experiencing the conflict first-hand in the discussion of Israeli-Palestinian affairs, and this program helps alleviate young voices of people who are working alongside and with people from the other side of the conflict. “If you get to know the people, and the culture, and the history, then it will be more difficult for you to call that person your enemy.”

PB:

          Agreeing with MS about the importance of communication among the opposing sides, “The way that [JR’s project] looks at bringing about a solution is flawed, if that was his intent, because there is no communication involved. My sister went to a conference with her school’s Model UN team in New York, and before [her group] left, she was told by a government official, ‘your people are technically at war with Israel, so you are not allowed to communicate with them [at the conference].’ They’re fifteen year olds. I think the internet has been a great forum [for increasing communication], and it can also produce radicalism. I was reading an article in a Lebanese website about an Israeli entrepreneur who made a bicycle out of cardboard. [The bicycle] lasts for a couple of years, it’s weather resistant, it costs twenty dollars [to make], and it’s going to change transportation in developing countries. This is just showing something positive from the other side that humanizes [the opposition].”

DM:

           He replied immediately, “Definitely. Personally, I think peace on paper is better than no peace on paper. Though, if you want to bring people to actually live together in ‘harmony,’ if you want to call it, I think bringing people face to face, building friendships, relationships, just getting to know each other [is the way to reach a peaceful solution]. One of the key routes to resolving this conflict is not [through the] government, but through grassroots [efforts] that make people change the psychological barriers that they have, and hopefully that will affect the government. The government is the ultimate instrument of the people. I think grassroots working with the local, native people and creating platforms for Palestinians and Israelis to meet each other is really important. [Then] if a Palestinian or an Israeli says ‘Death to all of the Jews or the Arabs,’ [he/she] will think, ‘Well, that includes one of my friends,’ and [he/she] will change. If people genuinely want to listen to the other person [from the opposite side of the conflict] they will listen. You’ll hear people say, ‘If I were a Palestinian, I would act this way, but I’m a Jew so I’m not that way.’ Growing up in an Israeli high school, you can many times understand [an individual’s] opinion by listening to [his/her] parents. 20 years ago there weren’t any checkpoints or wall, but today, there are more organizations that bring Arabs and Jews together, so it’s hard to say when there were more opportunities [for Israelis and Palestinians to interact].”

           On the other hand, DM notes that, “There’s almost a culture not to go to these organizations [that bring Israelis and Palestinians together]. I go and I meet a Palestinian guy, we become friends for a week, we go back home, and then what? What do we do? I think it’s a beginning, but I think definitely interacting with each other, maybe rallying groups together to make a change and start a new trend [that supports the interaction between Israelis and Palestinians]. It’s really hard and complicated, because there’s the issue of equality. A Palestinian who goes to the Israeli land will feel inferior, and the dialogue looks a certain way and becomes imbalanced. So where can we create platforms for Palestinians and Israelis to feel both equal and comfortable enough to engage in conversation and not feel inferior to the other? Because when you feel inferior to another person, you either become extremely aggressive, or you just shut up- you don’t express yourself. I think there are people who need to start teaching the different cultures and different histories that both nations have; many Palestinians don’t know what the Jewish have gone through, there are Israelis who don’t know what happened to the Palestinians. And in our political sphere, there are things that need to happen to. [This does not only have to occur from the ground up], it can come from international pressure too. But ultimately, who needs to live together? It’s the people who live [in the region of the conflict]. And the governments and organizations need to make platforms for [discussions between Israelis and Palestinians on equal footing] to happen.”

SM:

            “From my studies of surveys [on the subject matter], the large majority of Israelis and Palestinians would like to not have an army and to not have a violent conflict, but the problem is that they still don’t trust each other. Even Palestinians that live in Israel and have an Israeli passport cannot serve in the Israeli military.” When walking around Tel Aviv, she would sometimes see young gangs fight each other based on the prejudice between the Israelis and Palestinians. SM described the causes of these fights as “unfounded hate that is maybe also founded on how we perceive the conflict, because we have to be on either one side or the other.” SM notes that only recently people have started to identify themselves as supporting both states. Many public officials who claim that they support a two-state solution are actually biased towards supporting one of the sides.

              SM stated that when Americans were asked, ‘Do you consider long time peace to be viable in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?’ in 1967, the results were over 70% yes. The same survey taken in the US in 2012 had a 68% response of no. She says, “I think [peace between Israel and Palestine] is possible but not any time soon. I just think that the only way this will happen is if there is an authority in Gaza that actually cares for its people, considering that every single day there are trucks of food and medical care and all kinds of help that comes from Israel to Gaza, and Hamas just treats its people horribly. We have seen the Arab Spring happen; change is coming. Maybe it will come a time that the leaders in this region genuinely seek a peaceful solution, because I think that the people want peace.”

Can a foreign, third-party mediator truly help with developing peace between Israel and Palestine, considering that they do not relate to the conflict as personally as do the natives of the region?

DM:

         “From my experience, foreigner organizations and third parties will [get involved with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict], and they will almost always be biased, favoring one side over the other. They are coming with their culture, their language, their ‘solution’ for the conflict and trying to impose it on the people. If a foreigner… really wants to help the conflict, he has to go and ask the native people or organizations, ‘What can I do in order to serve your people or your country best?’ Instead of coming and telling the native people, ‘you need to this and this, because I know [what’s best for you] better than you [do].’”

SM:

          “I do believe that a third party can play a very important role, we have seen this since 1947.” SM uses the example of the success of The Camp David Accords, which was fostered by President Carter to establish peace among Egyptian Muslims and Israeli Jews. With the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the real third party at the end of the day needs to be diplomacy. In reference to the involvement by the UN, and the recent recognition of Palestinian statehood, SM says, “The UN recognizes the state of Palestine, but if Israel does not recognize Palestine, what’s the difference? Canadian ambassador stated that he voted against an independent Palestinian state because he believes that if the region does not solve the problem themselves, then what difference does international recognition make?”

IR analysis

           Now that we have heard some individuals’ opinions of the conflict, let’s try to analyze the Israeli-Palestinian issue from international relations’ theorists’ perspectives. From a constructivist perspective, the conflict between Israel and Palestine is essentially a conflict between two distinct identities. Israelis will continue to fight the Palestinians and vice versa as long as each state and their people view the conflict personally. People who support Israel’s statehood believe that Israelis had a right to that land as a part of their religious identity. Palestinians can offer the same argument to justify why they deserve to have the land now referred to as Israel, since, of course, that territory did belong to them at one point. The people who live in this region are pressured to associate with one side of the issue or the other, and they consider this association to be a prominent aspect of their identities. Thus, the motivation for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is rooted in the opposition of one cultural people group against the other.  From a realists’ perspective, the Palestinians and Israelis are in conflict due to a power struggle. By claiming part of Palestine, Israel threatened Palestinian power. The violent attacks that followed proved that the Israeli-Palestinian territorial dispute presents a security threat to each state. Therefore, a realist would argue that this conflict won’t be resolved until one state comes out as the “winner,” by eliminating the threats associated with that state by taking it over. A liberalist perspective would support the creation of institutions that join Israelis and Palestinians together. Liberalists would bring these two cultural groups to a platform where they can communicate effectively and learn from each other. This communication and partnership will teach these two entities to become less aggressive towards each other, much like what many of the interviewees stated. For the most part, the people that I interviewed saw the conflict from the constructivist and liberalist lenses.

Conclusion

            The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is complicated by its history, the religious factors of the disagreement, and the fact that peoples’ views of the conflict are such prominent aspects of their identities. A constructivist would understand why this conflict is especially complex and difficult to resolve. Constructivists view issues with attention to the cultural and identity-based motivations of a people group. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has continued for such a long span of time that a constructivist would understand that the opposition of these two bodies of people would be difficult to repair. Many of the people I interviewed for this post agreed on the importance of communication and education for the Israelis and Palestinians to overcome their differences. Liberalists would agree that the establishment of forums for Israelis and Palestinians to work together and learn from each other would be helpful for resolving the issue. Institutions bring states under a common umbrella, where they no longer act competitively against each other, but together as a team. Listening to the voices of the people who have studied or who have been individually affected by the Israeli-Palestinian issue is important. By listening to these individuals, we can gain an understanding of how personal the conflict is to the people of that region. As a foreigner, I feel that it would be wrong if I judged the Israeli-Palestinian situation and proposed a solution for it. Doing so would cause me to impose my biased beliefs on the lives of people who view the conflict as an integral part of themselves. A third-party mediator can be extremely helpful with resolving the conflict, especially since Israel and Palestine are so aggressive with their policies and attacks against each other. This mediator must be unbiased to the issue, and peace must be established on the ground level as well as in the government. Peace comes from equal communication, education, and relationship building; these are must be goals emphasized in current and future initiatives to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.