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In order to mobilize a sufficient number of Israelis to support
the policy changes required to support the emergence of
a viable Palestinian state, it will apparently be necessary to
broaden awareness of the actual demographic arithmetic in
the West Bank and other important facts. The school system
cannot be expected to address the problem, as ignorance
of these issues serves the interests of the party in control
the Ministry of Education, the pro-settlement Jewish Home,
as well as the annexationist wing within Likud. With official
channels essentially blocked, civil society is the public sphere
in which this informational battle can be waged.
Fortunately, the upcoming fiftieth anniversary promises
myriad "teachable moments" on the realities of the occupied
territories. Some on the Left have proposed using the jubilee
to advocate a referendum, in the vein of recent Brexit and
Scottish independence votes, on the future of the West
Bank (Braun, 2016). While the findings detailed above might
incline against holding a binding vote at this time, sparking
public debates over the issue could provide an ideal forum
for emphasizing the basic demographics – one can envision
a campaign entitled "Uvdot ba-Shetakh" in Hebrew, or in
English – "Just the Facts." The crucial question is how, given
current public opinion and political context, to frame "fifty
year" conversations in a manner that will not be immediately
screened out by the Spam filters of mainstream Israeli inboxes.
A recent scholarly analysis, based on years of listening to
how Israelis talk about the occupation, provides a useful
frame of reference.
Fifty Years, Four Discourses
To mobilize a two-state majority, closing information gaps
will no doubt be necessary – but far from sufficient. We
know from decades of social psychological research that
people often ignore or distrust information that appears
incompatible with core convictions or pillars of social identity –
especially in situations of polarizing political conflict (Kelman,
1999). Israeli social psychologist Daniel Bar-Tal has made
profound contributions to the literature, cataloguing the
"shared societal beliefs" that make up what he calls the
Israeli "ethos of conflict" – the perceptual prisms through
which Israelis interpret information regarding the conflict with
the Palestinians (Bar-Tal, Sociopsychological Foundations
of Intractable Conflicts, 2007).
In their 2014 book
Impacts of Lasting Occupation
, Bar-Tal and
Izhak Schnell identify four categories of discourse in Israeli
society regarding the 1967 territories (Bar-Tal & Schnell, 2014).
The first, "damaging occupation," sees prolonged occupation
as a priori unacceptable on the grounds of democratic
principles and human rights, and ethically corrosive to Israeli
society – as embodied by the longtime Peace Now slogan,
"the occupation corrupts." The territories, in this vision, are
fraught with negative associations – a source of conflict and
violence, a stain on Israel's international reputation and a
drain on scarce resources. The authors clearly identify with
this approach – they are promoting an initiative entitled "Save
Israel – Stop Occupation" in advance of the upcoming fiftieth
anniversary (Bar-Tal & Schnell, 2016).
At the other pole, a discourse of occupation-denial insists
that the territorial conquests of 1967 represented solely the
"liberation of a homeland, in a war that was forced upon us."
For a time, this discourse seemed to have largely receded
to the religious Right constituency for whom "Judea and
Samaria" represent the sacred heartland of Eretz Yisrael. It
has been revived, however, by a new generation of Likud
lawmakers espousing unequivocal territorial maximalism in
ethno-nationalist terms – such as Likud MK Dr. Anat Berko,
an Israeli Anne Coulter who mocks the term "West Bank" as a
Leftist invention, and Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely,
who upon taking office, instructed Israeli diplomats that "it's
important to say – the entire Land is ours. We didn't come
here to apologize for that" (Pileggi, 2015).
These discourses, anchored in holistic ethical/ideological
value systems, are the provinces of already mobilized
factions – sectors of Israeli society who know what they think.
Messages articulated in either of the above discourses are
necessarily exercises in "preaching to the converted"; they
can "rally the base," but carry little potential to "move the
needle," i.e. to shift the balance of public opinion on policy.
Rather than political context, these discourses focus on the
nature of the occupation itself. "Damaging occupation" sees
sustained military rule over the Palestinians as unacceptable
in any circumstances, and "occupation-denial" sees Jewish
sovereignty and settlement of the territory as justified – or
imperative – in all circumstances.
2
2 There is, to be sure, crucial peace-building work being done in
these discursive realms. The anti-occupation sphere remains vital
in both senses of the word - alive and important - as the ascendant
Right uses the "fog of war" to expand settlements, legalize outposts
and encroach ever further on Palestinian land, daily life and human
rights. Local Talk (Sikhah Mekomit), the recently established Hebrew
media source for this genre of activism, reports daily on the panoply
of specialized initiatives now mitigate against specific practical or
regional manifestations of the occupation – campaigning against
daily abuses at IDF checkpoints, lobbying for Palestinian freedom
of movement, emphasizing the human impacts of Israel's blockade
of Gaza, publicizing the realities of Palestinian East Jerusalem
in the shadow of the Separation Barrier, revealing the politics of
archeology in and around the Old City, supporting the struggles
of vulnerable Palestinian communities in the South Hebron Hills,
among myriad other examples, complementing the human rights
and whistleblowing organizations that the current government
loves to hate (Rothman, 2016). In parallel, influential rabbinic and
political figures in the settlement movement, who view Judea and
Samaria as Israel’s “liberated homeland,” have been for the last
decade involved in dialogue with Israel’s peace camp. Confronted
and largely shocked by the criminal behavior of extreme elements
on the Right, particularly during the last two years, this dialogue
has moved beyond the mutual effort to convince the other side of
one’s own opinion, toward an honest search to reach consensus
and take action. Whereas full agreement in support of a two state
solution appears to be an unrealistic goal, the dialogue itself permits
the peace camp to obtain a deeper understanding, how to avoid
internal confrontation, and obtain optimal support from a majority
of settlers, who will gain, by reaching a territorial understanding
with the Palestinian leadership.
