Read an Excerpt

Shared Land/Conflicting Identity

Trajectories of Israeli and Palestinian Symbol Use

Michigan State University Press

The Symbolic Roots of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The handshake between Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister of Israel, and Yasir Arafat, chair of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), on the White House lawn on 13 September 1993 symbolized to some the dawning of a new age in the Middle East. With that handshake, suddenly it seemed that the Palestinian and Israeli people, who had hated and fought each other for generations, might be able to achieve peace.

Many of those who have focused on the handshake and other events in the Middle East peace process have explained the movement toward peace based on historical factors such as the demise of the Soviet Union and the Allied victory in the Gulf War or on the negotiation skills of various actors in the drama. While the historical events and the negotiation process were crucial, another force, the evolving symbolic practices of Israelis and Palestinians, also played a key role. Without symbolic change, there would have been no handshake. And as the tragic cycle of terrorist attack and Israeli response that began in the fall of 2000 indicated, without further symbolic change, that movement on the White House lawn and the Oslo process that developed out of it will be remembered as a missed opportunity in the search for peace.

Symbolic Change and the Handshake

The Washington ceremony was an important moment in history to Israelis and Palestinians and a great surprise to many Western observers. Indeed, the Oslo Accords, the handshake, and the speeches overturned the Zionist chiasmus coined by Israel Zangwill, an early Zionist and a leading member of the Order of Ancient Maccabeans, that the Zionists were settling in "[t]he land without people-for people without land." Rabin and Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres delivered speeches at Washington that annulled Golda Meir's declaration, made in a 1970 speech in London, that "there is no such thing as Palestinians."

At the same time, the symbols of Oslo upended a deeply held Palestinian conviction that Zionists did not exist. In 1937, a member of the Arab Higher Committee, Izzat Eff. Darwazeh, argued before the Peel Commission that "the Arabs do not admit the existence of the Jews as Zionists at all." Because "Jews as Zionists" do not exist, "we utterly refuse to meet at the same table with any persons who call themselves Zionist Jews." This conviction was codified in the 1964 Palestinian Charter, which called for the destruction of Israel, stipulating in Article 8 that there was "a fundamental contradiction between Zionism on the one side and the Palestinian Arab people on the other. On this basis, the Palestinian masses ... comprise one national front" to liberate Palestine "through armed struggle."

In striking contrast to the past denial of the existence of the other, each of the principals at the signing ceremony focused on the need for mutual recognition and peace in their speeches. President William Clinton began by referring to the signing as "an extraordinary act in one of history's defining dramas," an act that could lead to a "peace of the brave," that would allow Israelis and Palestinians "the quiet miracle of a normal life." Peres then labeled the agreement "a revolution" that transformed "a dream" into "a commitment." Echoing Clinton's praise for "normal" life, he called for all parties to "turn from bullets to ballots, from guns to shovels," and promised the Palestinians that Israel would work with them to make "Gaza prosper and Jericho blossom again."

Mahmoud Abbas of the PLO then referred to the peace process as "a journey that is surrounded by numerous dangers and difficulties" but that with "mutual determination" can end in "a secure peace characterized by cooperation." He, too, spoke of ordinary life, labeling "economic development" as "the principal challenge facing the Palestinian people."

Following Abbas, Rabin first spoke of how "as a soldier in Israel's war" it was not "so easy" for him to be there. He labeled his feelings as "great hope mixed with apprehension" and then spoke eloquently of the need for peace. "We have come to try and put an end to the hostilities so that our children, our children's children will no longer experience the painful cost of war." To Palestinians, he first said that "we are destined to live together on the same soil in the same land" and then called for an end to war: "We, the soldiers who have returned from battles stained with blood; we who have seen our relatives and friends killed before our eyes; we who have attended their funerals and cannot look in the eyes of their parents; we who have come from a land where parents bury their children; we who have fought against you, the Palestinians—we say to you today, in a loud and a clear voice: enough of blood and tears. Enough." Like the others, he then spoke of ordinary life: "We, like you, are people—people who want to build a home. To plant a tree. To love—live side by side with you. In dignity. In empathy. As human beings. As free men. We are today giving peace a chance—and saying to you and saying again to you: enough. Let us pray that a day will come when we all will say farewell to the arms. We wish to open a new chapter in the sad book of our lives together—a chapter of mutual recognition, of good neighborliness, of mutual respect, of understanding." Rabin closed his remarks with a prayer for "a message of redemption for all peoples."

Yasir Arafat then expressed his hope that the agreement "will usher in an age of peace, coexistence and equal rights." He called for both Israelis and Palestinians to show "courage and determination" in "building coexistence and peace between us." He asked for Israelis and Palestinians to work "to achieve coexistence and openness between our two peoples and future generations." Like the others, he also spoke of the effect of peace on ordinary life by expressing hope that Israelis and Palestinians might "embark upon the process of economic, social and cultural growth and development." Arafat ended by stressing that "the battle for peace is the most difficult battle of our lives. It deserves our utmost efforts because the land of peace, the land of peace yearns for a just and comprehensive peace."

President Clinton concluded the ceremony by reflecting on "this victory for peace." He called for all the participants to "go from this place to celebrate the dawn of a new era." He said that "the sound we heard today, once again as in ancient Jericho, was of trumpets toppling walls, the walls of anger and suspicion between Israeli and Palestinian, between Arab and Jew. This time, praise God, the trumpets herald not the destruction of that city but its new beginning." In that new beginning, Israeli and Arab, could "[g] o in peace."

The commitment to peace that was apparent in the speeches of all the parties to the Israeli-PLO agreement, along with the powerful symbolism of the handshake between Rabin and Arafat, seemed to represent a revolution in the relations between Israel and the Palestinians. The New York Times reported that Israelis watching on television "might as well have been struck by lightning. They could only sigh deeply in disbelief." No "amount of mental preparation was enough to ward off the shock of seeing their national leader gripping the hand of the loathed P.L.O. chief." Similar responses were common in the Arab world, where a typical reaction expressed shock, "'It can't be happening."'

It is understandable that many Israelis and Palestinians viewed the accords as historic. Knesset member Ran Kohen of the Meretz Party declared after the Knesset ratified the Oslo Accords that "today we are making history, because for the first time in 110 years citizens in the state of Israel will not be living by their swords alone." Not all viewed the Oslo Accords as a positive moment in history, however. Benny Begin, the son of former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, represented the opinion of the Israeli Right when he stated that Oslo was a direct threat to Eretz Yisrael. "Eretz Yisrael" literally means the Land of Israel. It is a term referencing the mythic connection between Jews and the geography of Israel. Noting the significant opposition by many on the right who called Rabin a "traitor," Israeli education minister Shulamit Aloni stated in prescient terms that she was "anxious and apprehensive about the ongoing rabble-rousing, such as billboards calling to excommunicate and put a curse on anybody supporting this peace."

In his address to Palestinians after the accords, Arafat highlighted the symbolic importance of Oslo. Declaring that with Oslo the Palestinians had "moved from the state of obliteration-it was said [that Palestine] was a land without a people for a people without a land-to a recognition of the PLO which epitomizes the Palestinian national identity of our people and maintains it on the political map," Arafat claimed credit for establishing the existential reality of a Palestinian people. Echoing Kohen's assessment of Oslo, Bassam Abu-Sharif, an adviser to Arafat, stated that the Oslo Accords were a "historic moment in the history of the Palestinian people." However, as with the Israelis, not all Palestinians supported the agreement. The Oslo Accords were labeled "traitorous" by the leaders of ten Palestinian movements, who rejected the "Arafat-Zionist agreement," calling Arafat's actions treasonous.

While Israelis and Palestinians agreed on the importance of the agreement but not on its value, observers in the West were astonished by it. The Associated Press compared the signing to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, labeling it "another dizzying event that had seemed impossible." CNN reporter Bill Delaney said, "Many are still incredulous that this is happening at all." A New York Times editorial referred to "[w]hat seemed unthinkable only weeks ago." Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas L. Friedman later called the agreement "a triumph of hope over history" and added, "I never believed they would actually do these things." The Kansas City Star asked, "Can this really be happening?" and quoted Secretary of State Warren Christopher, "'We're all blinking our eyes at how much is new."'

Yet while the world reacted with shock and disbelief to the Israeli-Palestinian accords, the central question does not relate to why they did it. It was obvious why they acted. Pragmatically, there were many forces pushing toward peace. By making peace, Palestinians and Israelis could protect their own people, potentially improve their economic well-being, and gain support from the rest of the world. Making peace seemed a good deal for both sides. One commentator labeled "The Crux of the Deal" as mutual "self interest." The real mystery was not why they did it but what took them so long. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times observed that "once Mr. Arafat and Mr. Rabin spoke and shook hands, suddenly it all flowed together, leaving the wonder of why it took so long and what it was all about in the first places"

The short answer to Dowd's question and the thesis of this book is that it took so long because the conflict was not just about the pragmatics of dividing up land and water; just as fundamentally, it was about the symbol systems through which Palestinians and Israelis have defined and continue to understand the world and each other.

If the conflict were merely about land and water, then a final agreement would have been reached in the period immediately following the Washington signing. Israel would have withdrawn from some settlements, and Palestinians would have accepted Israeli sovereignty over other settlements and areas crucial to Israeli security. And both sides would have bemoaned the loss of territory but accepted it as necessary to achieve the on-balance "good deal." If the conflict had been merely about land and water, then President Clinton would have been successful in brokering a deal at Camp David in July 2000 or in the negotiations that followed. By all accounts, the December 2000 Clinton plan proposed specific compromises on all of the major outstanding issues, compromises that would have resolved the practical issues facing the two parties. More fundamentally, a good pragmatic deal could have been reached at any point following or even before the birth of Israel. The pragmatic issues of land and water were difficult ones, but it was the symbolic issues that still more fundamentally stood in the way of ultimate peace.

Symbolic Conflict and the Oslo Agreement

To Israelis, the land is Eretz Israel, to Palestinians, the land is Filastine. The identity of both peoples is rooted in land and the sacred stories about it in the Bible and in the Qur'an. Israelis saw themselves as the rightful owners of land that had been deeded to them by God and was needed to protect the remnant of the Jewish people remaining on this earth from the threat of a future holocaust. Palestinians saw themselves as a people exiled from "their" land by Jewish-European colonizers. Neither perspective recognized the legitimacy of the other nor allowed for compromise. In this context, it required both "perceptual" and policy shifts to achieve the Oslo agreement.

Myths are among the most powerful stories told in any society. Both Israelis and Palestinians have defined their identity with myth systems, which can be seen as the mirror images of each other. Each myth defined identity based on contact with the land and denied the legitimate rights of any other group. These mythic symbolic systems played a major role in preventing Israelis and Palestinians from making a "good deal" in 1948, 1949, 1967, 1973, and thereafter.

Myth also played a role in preventing an agreement at Camp David in the summer of 2000 or in the negotiations that followed. Jane Perlez made the importance of myth quite clear in the title of her article "Arafat's Task: Negotiating Sacred Ground." Perhaps President Clinton put it best when he said that in order to reach an agreement, "the parties themselves, both of them, must be prepared to resolve profound questions of history, identity and national faith." The power of myth to shape the conflict also was evident in the fighting that broke out when Ariel Sharon made an ill-advised trip to an area near the holiest Islamic site in Jerusalem, Temple Mount/al-Aqsa mosque, on 28 September 2000. The result of the visit to a place that is "charged with highly inflammable religious and ideological octane" was an outpouring of Palestinian hostility and violence. In pragmatic terms, Sharon's visit meant nothing since the Palestinians continued to have day-to-day control of the site, but in mythic terms the visit was "proof" to the Palestinians that Israel "was determined to assert power over the holy sanctuary the Palestinians' most important religious and national symbol and to claim sovereignty over it." The failure of the Camp David Summit and the events that followed it provide still more tragic evidence that absent the symbolic conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, a compromise could have been worked out decades ago.

The pragmatic turn in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that was taken at Oslo served as the beginning point of symbolic reconciliation. Without symbolic evolution, no agreement would have been possible; without further symbolic change, the Oslo process cannot succeed. Further "mental and ideological reconciliation [is] ... an important requirement to assure the stability and resilience of peace." President Clinton was on target in his opening remarks at the signing when he noted, "Therefore, let us resolve that this new mutual recognition will be a continuing process in which the parties transform the very way they see and understand each other." Clinton's comments in the first year of his presidency, in September 1993, were proved accurate almost exactly seven years later when violence erupted following the failure of the Camp David Summit to produce a deal that was both pragmatically and also symbolically acceptable to both sides. Without transformation of Israeli and Palestinian symbol systems, no amount of negotiation will result in ultimate peace.

The Oslo negotiations, the peace process more broadly, and all aspects of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians have been shaped by the symbol systems used by Israelis and Palestinians to interpret the world. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict would have been solved long ago had it been about mere physical issues. It was (and is) about such issues, but as they are understood via the language systems through which each side views the world. Thomas L. Friedman emphasized this point when he noted in relation to the Middle East that reality "is always filtered through certain cultural and historical lenses before being painted on our minds." Without an understanding of these lenses, it will never be possible to explain "why it took so long and what it was all about in the first place."

---

Excerpted from Shared Land/Conflicting Identity by Robert C. Rowland, David A. Frank. Copyright © 2002 Robert C. Rowland and David A. Frank. Excerpted by permission of Michigan State University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---