Protagonists' “Perceptions”

The protagonists’ self-perceptions and their perceptions of each other add an additional dimension to the conflict’s complexity and divisive nature. To explain these perceptions is not easy, yet understanding them is essential to unraveling some of the conflict’s complexity.

Palestinians see the State of Israel as a usurper of their national identity and territory. They generally view the establishment of Israel as illegitimate and sustained by the rule of force. Moreover, they see their suffering at the hands of Israelis as the ongoing manifestation of injustice imposed by raw power. The Palestinian community perceives this situation as a product of the unbridled support given to Israel by the United States, owing to the political influence of American Jews, and more recently, by neo-conservatives—with the particularly strong support of the Christian Right. Palestinians also perceive a lack of adequate support from Arab states as a key factor in the power disparity. Arab and Muslim communities around the world share these perceptions.

Israelis tend to perceive the Palestinians as hostile to their existence and opposed to the legitimacy of their state. They also view Palestinians as representing a distinct and oppositional culture that encourages anti- Jewish ideas and actions. Members ofJewish communities outside of Israel and non-Jewish supporters of Israel often share these views. In addition, Israelis see themselves as an island in the midst of an Arab-Islamic sea of hostility. They tend to view their future as linked to the West, and thereby distinct from the region. In general, Israelis do not entertain the idea that their country forms part of the Arab world, or that their society might openly embrace Palestinian society. At best, Israelis envision themselves as co-existing side by side with a Palestinian state that is devoid of any means of endangering their security.

These combined perceptions have led to the proposition that this conflict is the fuel for a clash of civilizations, namely a clash between Judeo-Christian Western civilization and the Muslim civilization.

Throughout the conflict, peace efforts have seldom taken these complex social and cultural factors into consideration. Consequently, over the last half century, there have been limited attempts to bridge these differences. Rather than seeking to mitigate these differences, the divisiveness that characterizes the Middle East conflict has aggravated them, thus deepening the gulf of separation and reducing the opportunities for reconciliation. In the era of globalization, however, there are new means for bridging these social and political differences and new strategies for developing improved understanding between these divided protagonists.

The protagonists’ perceptions of each other, their self-perceptions, as well as those of their external constituencies, have played a major part in shaping and defining this conflict.

As with every conflict, the protagonists psychologically prepare themselves and their broader audiences by representing their opponents in particularly negative terms. This representational process ranges from mild exaggeration of the opponents’ threatening intentions to the complete fabrication of aggressive intent. Moreover, throughout that process, a variety of agents actively construct propaganda that serves to motivate fear and engender hatred in the psyches of their respective constituencies. At times, this process involves representing opponents as dangerous enemies with no legitimate political objective, and at times it demonizes or dehumanizes opponents, making it easier to inflict violence upon them, against the likes of which the better instincts of human nature would usually have rebelled.

Propaganda typically portrays one’s own conduct as reasonable and legitimate and the opponent’s actions as unreasonable and illegitimate. Words and symbols play an important role in this endeavor, and those with greater sophistication and access to the media can better achieve their goals. There are few international questions that present a greater global division regarding the competing legitimacy of two sides than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Around the world, political actors tend to side strongly with one side or the other. The Palestinian plight and the evils of Israeli occupation are now part of a commonly acknowledged narrative. But, so is also that which Israel and its supporters have been highly successful in divulging, a portrait of the Palestinians as “terrorists” and themselves as “victims.”

Because of the incredible divisiveness of the conflict, conspiracy theories are commonly utilized, a clear means of undermining the possibility of rational dialogue. Conspiracy theories respond to fear and uncertainty and present simple explanatory narratives to make sense of complex socio-political situations. One classic example that continues to influence the Middle East conflict is the late Nineteenth Century Czarist Secret Police-fabricated conspiracy against the Jewish people known as “The Protocol of the Elders of Zion.” Borrowed from an anti-Semitic German novel, the text presents a “plan” of an international Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world. It was a fabrication by Russian Czar Nicholas II’s police to blame Jews for problems in Russia. Even though it was authoritatively demonstrated to be pure propaganda in the 1920s and 1930s, it received wide acceptance during the Nazi regime and repeatedly resurfaces in white racist literature, as well as in Arab popular beliefs.

In recent times, the government of Ariel Sharon and Israel’s friends in the United States have capitalized upon the events of 9/11 to depict Palestinians, and for that matter Arabs and Muslims in general, as terrorists, supporters of terrorism, or sympathetic to terrorism.

The demonization of the enemy by both sides has been a consistent feature of this conflict. This process serves the interests of extremists on both sides. On the Arab side, the popular representation ofJews as a racist domineering force, often seen as conspiring with the United States, and the West more generally, has entrenched feelings of hatred against Israelis and Jews in general and against the West. On the Israeli-Jewish side, the representation of Arabs as fundamentally untrustworthy and Islam as a backward and violent religion generated similar effects as those deriving from Arab perceptions and portrayals.

The image of Israelis as victims, however, is a certain cultural historical legacy. It plays off powerful historical feelings of dispossession, oppression, and marginalization in the modern period, and is thus linked to the Holocaust. The victimization of Israelis through suicide bombings to a more general historical oppression within which Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims are represented as the latest in a long line of repressive political actors. This generates enormous support for Israel. It also engenders a strong aggressive/defensive attitude among Israelis.

To the degree that these perceptions gain ground among the prota­gonists and their external constituencies, they reinforce each other, increasing negative perceptions and enhancing the conflict’s intensity. In the American media, there is seldom a portrayal of Israeli abuses against Palestinians or their degradation and humiliation. This is due to the fact that the pro-Israel lobby has turned the debate over the conflict into a zero­sum game. Thus, Israel can do no wrong, and the Palestinians can do no right. Moreover, support for Israel must be absolute, as is condemnation of the Palestinians. Those who question Israel’s policies and practices are all too frequently branded as anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic.

On the Arab side, it is perceived, of course, as a reflection of the double standards applied by Israel and the United States because Palestinians are deemed less worthy of humane consideration than Israelis. More than anything else, the treatment of Palestinians—its rationalization and lack of compassion—is the most significant factor stimulating Palestinian suicide bombings. The self-evident nature of this observation leads many in the Arab world and beyond to believe that this is a conscious part of the present Israeli government’s plan to further radicalize and polarize Israelis and Palestinians in the hope of preventing any effective plans for peace. Under such conditions, Israel could make Palestinian lives so intolerable that they would leave en masse, as happened in 1948, and thus achieve “ethnic cleansing” by more subtle means. This then would give Israel more opportunity to expand settlements and take over more Palestinian territories, as has been the case since 1948. This is why the treatment of the Palestinians and the escalating violence is a threat to peace. The threat extends not only to the Palestinians, but to the whole region and the Muslim world. Avoiding the self-fulfilling prophecy of a clash of civilizations should be the primary concern.

The Palestinians’ policy from 1967 to date has been a two-prong approach, political action and armed resistance. But the very nature of this duality created uncertainty about the Palestinian leadership’s genuine desire for peace. Because armed resistance had to be internal and the Palestinians did not have the means to fight the Israelis in a conventional war, they resorted to guerilla tactics and terrorist practices. Some of these are permissible under international humanitarian law, namely, attacking military forces and military installations.

While Palestinian vulnerability to Israel’s forces was obvious, Israeli vulnerability to suicide bombing attacks against innocent civilians was not contemplated. Thus, Israel faced a new security phenomenon that it was not prepared for, and this impacted its political/military strategy.

D.