99
question of a satisfactory solution, whether by modifying an
existing one or offering an alternative, has been pursued by
no more than a handful. The vast majority of the religious
public’s leaders consider a peace agreement with Palestinians
a threat, and believe that it is their duty to thwart such an
agreement and prevent it from coming to fruition.
The most common explanation for this lies in the price that
Israel can be expected to pay for a peace agreement with the
Palestinians: The various proposals involve Israel relinquishing
sovereignty over part of the Land of Israel, thereby reversing
the achievements of the settlement enterprise, a central
element in the Zionist-redemptive vision of the students of
Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook. But from conversations held with
prominent rabbis, I have learned that the decisive element,
the one that causes them to resist any proposed agreement
– and as public leaders to neglect the issue of settling the
conflict – is specifically related to Israel’s inner character.
Among Israeli Jews – and among Muslims in all the countries
of the region – an ongoing debate is raging about the
influence of religion on politics. In the Israeli case, we tend
to classify the legal aspects of this issue under the heading
of “religion and state,” but it encompasses further tensions
between the Jewish and civil character of the state, between
conservatives and liberals and between the particular and
the universal. All these are important arguments that reflect
legitimate differences, and an in-depth internal debate within
each society will be required to determine how religious or
secular the institutions of each country in the region will
be. Yet, politicians and public leaders have often tried to
combine two areas of dispute, with the efforts to attain peace
between Israel and its neighbors also being relegated to
the tension between secularism and tradition. Peace has
been presented and justified as a secular project, or even
a project aimed at secularization.
3
in the context of which
the establishment of an independent Palestinian state would
also involve a change in the character of Israel itself and
the constitution of a democratic-neutral public space to
replace the Jewish one. It is this formulation that has led
most religious people in Israel (not unlike what happened
in the Palestinian Islamic movements too) to vehemently
oppose any attempt at rapprochement, fearing that it would
lead to a “loss” of their religious identity, and to their defeat
in the other, internal battle being waged. Thus, when the
campaign to secularize society goes hand in hand with
the peace efforts, attitudes toward peace parallel positions
regarding the desirable religious character of the states
and their political institutions. It is not only the anticipated
price of peace that deters rabbis and community leaders
from supporting it, but also, and even more intensely so,
what appears to be its hidden agenda – to void the state’s
Jewishness of all content, and to thereby gain a victory in
the battle between the competing elites in Israeli society,
which have adopted the Palestinian issue as a watershed.
3 See, for example, “The national religious public and the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict,” Report of the International Crisis Group No
147, November 2013, p. 35.
We hear the perspective described here repeated again
and again by national-religious rabbis and public-opinion
leaders. “The Palestinians,” says a leading yeshiva head in
Samaria,
4
“are just an excuse to dismantle the Jewish state.
The left dreams of turning Israel into yet another European
country, a country with no purpose and no unique character.
And harming the settlements is the means to get to that
point. After all, the commandment to settle the Land of Israel
isn’t appropriate for ‘a state of all its citizens.’” The rabbi of
a settlement in the Binyamin region described the mission
of the settlement enterprise as follows: “We keep Israel
from becoming ordinary, from decline, from the danger of
becoming the nation like all nations. This is the real reason
the left feels such hostility for us – we are a constant annoying
reminder of the Jewish mission, of the fact that Israel is not
just another country".
5
The remarks of the various rabbis reveal their suspicions
regarding the purity of the intentions of the architects of peace.
When they analyze what drives their political rivals on the
left, they find that the issue of Israel’s military control over the
Palestinians appears to be only a secondary consideration,
or perhaps merely an excuse. This built-in suspicion against
the consequences of the agreement has deterred religious
people on both sides from becoming involved in finding a
solution, causing them to withdraw, isolate themselves and
radicalize their positions. Very few have found it possible to
rise above their fear to deal directly with the halakhic and
theological challenges that finding a political solution to the
conflict poses – to find a shared path where the worshippers
of both Hashem and Allah can coexist without feeling that
they are rebelling against Him.
An unmediated dialogue held between religious leaders on
the details and justifications of a possible peace agreement
may help to overcome this hurdle. Were the professional
negotiators to disappear from the negotiating table –
temporarily – it might enable rabbis from various streams
to address the most burning questions on their own terms
and in their own language. In the current situation, they
are forced to constantly calibrate their positions against
those of their internal rivals. A new discussion setting with
religious underpinnings might enable them to step out of
their defensive positions and thus more freely explore the
relevant issues.
“Does the Palestinian Authority even have
the power?” – The sustainability of an Israeli-
Palestinian peace agreement in an era of
Islamic awakening
Whenever the possibility of signing of a peace agreement
is raised, there are those who wonder who the potential
signatories actually represent and who has been left out
4 Interview, Jerusalem, December 2015 [This and the interviews that
follow were conducted in Hebrew].
5 Interview, Binyamin Regional Council, April 2016.
