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Developing an Israeli Grand Strategy toward
a Peaceful Two-State Solution
The national tension on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict is rooted in matters that draw on religious tradition –
philosophy, thought and religious law. Among large parts of
the Jewish and Muslim public, policy positions are intertwined
with duties imposed on the religious believer by the sanctity
of the land, and with how their sacred scriptures relate to the
stranger and the other. But despite the centrality of these
issues on both sides, they are largely absent from the efforts
at rapprochement and finding solutions that have become
known as the “peace process.”
First, the preference of most of the politicians and policymakers
is to complete the negotiation of a settlement with the
Palestinians before anything else. The political leaders must
first hammer out the details of the agreement, then determine
the institutions and borders, after which the legal aspects
and security arrangements will be signed and sealed. Only
once a state of non-belligerence has been reached, only
after the conflict has been resolved, will it be possible to
address the enmity between the peoples and gradually
try to dispel it. Consequently, so they believe, any current
public discussion of the tensions related to identity, culture
and religion would only undermine the political negotiations
and compromise the diplomatic efforts to thaw the relations
between the peoples. Let’s cross that bridge when we come
to it, they say, when the circumstances are ripe, because
how can we hold a fundamental theological debate at a time
when bloodshed is raging.
Second, many fear that the conflict would intensify were it
to move from its status as a political struggle to become
a religious clash. As long as the disagreement focuses
on practical interests, or even on historical accounts, a
compromise is feasible. This is not the case where competing
belief systems are involved: Conflicts of this kind cannot
be resolved and the metaphysical tension that underlies
them cannot be alleviated. “Theocratization” of the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict, it is believed, wouldmake it all embracing,
eternal and irresolvable.
1
For these reasons and others, the religious populations of
both nations played almost no role in shaping the sought-
after peace agreement, their leaders were not included in
the negotiations and their philosophy and outlook were not
taken into account at the negotiating table.
1 See Aviezer Ravitzky, “The Jewish people and the clash of
civilizations,” in Ravitzky and Stern (eds.), The Jewishness of
Israel, Israel Democracy Institute: Jerusalem 2007, pp. 725-726
[This and all the sources that follow are in Hebrew].
The repeated failures of the negotiations between the
political leaderships led many to realize that peace will
never be achieved unless additional individuals, groups
and worldviews are included in it. Hamas’s victory in the
Palestinian elections in Gaza in 2006, and in a different vein,
the burgeoning political power wielded by religious Zionism
in Israeli politics (both as an independent party as well as
within the ruling party), serve as an incentive to reconsider
the importance of religious motivations for solving the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict. Alongside the academic study of the
unique positions taken by the religious communities towards
a solution, and the complexities that derive from the religious
aspects of the conflict,
2
activities involving “interreligious
dialogue” began to gain momentum, because this type of
dialogue was viewed as a means to pursue peace. The
involvement of religious leaders, it was claimed, can prepare
the hearts and minds of the people to make a future peace
acceptable to the entirety of the two societies – if those
leaders are able to openly discuss the way in which their
holy scriptures enable them to live in peace with the other.
In this article, I will discuss the importance and utility of this
process, describe the conditions of its feasibility, address
its challenges and warn of its cost.
“The Palestinians are just an excuse to dismantle the
Jewish state” – The peace process and forging Israel’s
inner character
Recent decades have seen a significant increase in the
presence of the religious population in Israel’s political, military
and ideological centers of power and decision-making. This
has accordingly increased the influence of religious politicians
and actors on the official stances taken by the state with
regard to the future of Israel’s relations with the Palestinians,
affecting both the nature of the solution to the conflict, and
the activities on the ground, especially as it relates to the
settlement enterprise. Given this increasing salience, it is
surprising to discover that efforts to find a solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict rarely figure on the agendas of the
leaders and opinion makers of the religious public in Israel.
They invest a great deal of effort in dismissing and attacking
the solutions promoted by their political opponents, but the
2 See Yitzhak Reiter, “Religion as a barrier to compromise in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” in Yaakov Bar-Siman-Tov (ed.), Barriers
to Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Jerusalem Institute for
Israel Studies, Jerusalem, 2010, pp. 294-318; Dotan Halevi, “‘Who
will ascend to God’s mountain?’: The religious-political debate in
the Arab world around the ‘Ziy
ā
rah’ (pilgrimage) to Jerusalem,”
Jamaah, Vol. 22, 2016, pp. 23-54.
Roie Ravitzky
The National-Religious Public and the
Prospects of Peace with the Palestinians –
Between Scuttling and Leading
