How To Commemorate Resolution 242 and The Balfour Declaration

10/20/21, 7:59 PM How to Commemorate Resolution 242 and the Balfour Declaration
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INTERNATIONAL POLICY DIGEST
Wikimedia
LONGFORM / NOVEMBER 27, 2017
Michael Cohen
How to Commemorate Resolution 242 and

h B lf D l i
https://intpolicydigest.org/how-to-commemorate-resolution-242-and-the-balfour-declaration/ 1/18
the Balfour Declaration

   
This November, the 2nd and the 22nd to be exact, marked the 100th and 50th
anniversaries of two seminal documents of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Balfour
Declaration was issued on November 2, 1917 by the British Foreign Secretary
Arthur James Balfour “on behalf of His Majesty’s Government” to Lord
Rothschild, the representative of the Zionist Federation, the British umbrella
organization of the Zionist movement. Fifty years later, on November 22, 1967,
six months after the Six-Day War, the United Nations Security Council delivered
Resolution 242.
Neither is very long, the former 128 words and the latter 291 words, yet their
impact on the conflict has been far-reaching. The Balfour Declaration set the
diplomatic ball rolling that would lead to the partition of Palestine through UN
Resolution 181 of November 29, 1947, seventy-years ago also this month, and the
subsequent creation of the modern State of Israel in May 1948. Resolution 242 is
the basis for the Egyptian-Israeli (1979) and the Jordanian-Israeli (1994) Peace
treaties as well as the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli talks since Oslo (1993).
The two documents, because of their size and importance, provide a way to view
the Arab-Israeli conflict through the Dual Narrative approach. As in Akira
Kurosawa’s Rashomon and Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet the Dual
Narrative presents multiple narratives and understandings of the same events. It
is essential that the Israelis and Palestinians better understand the two
narratives. Narratives provide an important frame of reference to our lives; they
are one of our anchors which help us make sense of our lives and give them
purpose and meaning. It is understandable when we are confronted with a
different narrative that we may put up resistance. Therein lies the power of the
Dual Narrative, it challenges how we contextualize our lives.
As an example the Dual Narrative is an indispensable component of the Arava

Institute for Environmental Studies located on Kibbutz Ketura. For over twenty
years the Institute has utilized the Dual Narrative in its mission to prepare future
environmental leaders from Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and around the world to
cooperatively solve the regional and global challenges of our time. Miriam
Grunfeld, a recent alumna of the Institute wrote, “To approach the conflict
through the framework of ecology requires building relationships, and
complicates notions of fixed boundaries and borders. It necessitates operating
on all scales, from the single person to the larger community.” Those “fixed
boundaries” also include the fixed narratives held by each side, and the Dual
Narrative can be a way used to open each side to the different perspective of the
other. As Hillel said (Mishna Avot 2:4), “Do not judge another until you are in
his place.” The Dual Narrative forces us to stand in the place of the other and see
and understand the world from their perceived experiences.
The Israeli Narrative
The justification and understanding of the Balfour Declaration from the Israeli
perspective begins with the Bible. The Bible understood here not as a Divinely
given document, but rather as the earliest and oldest account of the connection
between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel.
Most of the early leaders of the Zionist movement were secular and approached
the Bible from a secular perspective. Those Biblical accounts clearly put forward
the idea of the centrality of the Land of Israel to Jewish identity. The word
Jewish conveys an identity beyond religion. As Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan explains
Judaism is an “evolving religious civilization.” That is to say, the religion is at the
core of the identity, but it is more than a religion it is a civilization, a nation, a
people of politics, law, art, literature, language, etc. For more than one thousand
years from the reign of King Saul (1,000 BCE) through the defeat of the Bar-
Kokhba Revolt by the Romans in 135 CE the Jewish people lived in the Land of
Israel both as an independent nation governed by a monarchy or occupied by
different empires. Throughout that period, the Temple built in Jerusalem by
King Solomon (10th Century BCE) until its destruction in 70 CE by the Romans,
served as the central place of worship for the Jewish people.
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How to Commemorate Resolution 242 and the Balfour Declaration
After the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and the defeat of the Bar Kokhba
Revolt in 135 CE when the Romans destroyed many Jewish towns, executed
large numbers of Jews, forbade Jews from living in or near Jerusalem, enslaved
and expelled Jews, the Jewish people in many ways should have disappeared.
The theologian and Zionist thinker Martin Buber wrote (1942) in his essay,
“Hebrew Humanism,” how the Jewish people were able to survive, “I am setting
up Hebrew humanism in opposition to that Jewish nationalism which regards
Israel as a nation unto other nations and recognizes no task for Israel save that
of preserving and asserting itself…By opposing Hebrew humanism to a
nationalism which is nothing but empty self-assertion, I wish to indicate that, at
this juncture, the Zionist movement must decide either for national egoism or
national humanism….Israel is not a nation like other nations, no matter how
much its representatives have wished it during certain eras. Israel is a people like
no other, for it is the only people in the world which, from its earliest beginnings,
has been both a nation and a religious community…Israel was and is a people
and a religious community, and it is this unity which enabled it to survive in an
exile no other nation had to suffer, an exile which lasted much longer than the
period of its independence.”
That combination of being a nation and a religion, as Buber describes it, became
the key to Jewish survival during 2,000 years of exile and the reestablishment of
the Jewish state in 1948. With the destruction of the Temple, the rabbis, the
priests of the Temple, became the religious and community leaders. As they
created Rabbinic Judaism, an adaptation to the new reality the Jews faced, they
took the idea of Jewish national identity and its connection to the Land of Israel
and incorporated it into the daily, weekly, monthly, yearly religious experiences
of the Jewish people. Synagogues around the world face Jerusalem. Changes are
made in the liturgy throughout the year are not based on where the worshiper
may be, but rather on the seasons and environment of the Land of Israel. It
makes no sense to talk about the planting trees in the heart of winter in Montreal
or Moscow, during the celebration of Tu B’Shvat, but it does if you want to
maintain a connection to the Land of Israel no matter where you are.
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In the late 1980s the Dalai Lama, realizing that the Tibetan exile would go on for
a long time, approached rabbis and Jewish educators to learn how Jews had
survived their exile for so many millennia. They first met in New Jersey and then
carried on the conversation in Dharamsala. The Dalai Lama was told that
maintaining a connection to the land was essential for Tibetian identity to
survive a long exile. A fascinating account of these meetings can be found in
Rodger Kamenetz’s The Jew in the Lotus.
In essence the rabbis took the idea of a national identity tied to a specific land
and turned the Jewish religion into its carrier. What led to the germination of
that seed by the Zionist movement at the end of the 19th century? For that we
need to turn to the end of the 18th century and the American and French
revolutions and the ideas of liberté, égalité, and fraternité that became the
political guide for much of the West. Out of those movements the modern idea of
the nation-state began to emerge and with that the question of what rights did
Jews as a minority have within different nations. That question was answered in
Western Europe, less so in Eastern Europe, with the extending of political and
economic rights to Jews as the confines of the ghetto began to crumble. Jews,
who for centuries lived amid Arabs, Turks, and Iranians, fared better for the
most part than their Jewish siblings in Europe. Though the idea of Jews being
forced to wear markings on their clothing to set them apart from the majority
group originated in Islam in the early 8th century, and following the
establishment of Israel in 1948 anti-Jewish violence flared up in the Arab
countries and Iran from which over 800,000 Jews were expelled or left those
countries in the following decades, the majority moved to Israel.
In Western Europe as the 19th century rolled along Jews were no longer
confined to ghettos and certain and professions, but there was a price, a quid pro
quo: Jews, you can join us but don’t be too Jewish. Jews understood the bargain,
and many began to change their clothes, what they ate, how they worshiped, and
how they designed their synagogues (many looked and sounded more like
churches). That inherent tension could only last so long. The end of the 19th
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century saw a new wave of anti-Jewish activities return to Europe, with violent
and deadly pogroms in Eastern Europe and anti-Jewish ideas in Western Europe
most famously seen in the Dreyfus Affair.
In 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew from Alsace, the French border area with
Germany, was charged, on trumped up evidence, with spying for Germany. His
trial became a cause célèbre across Europe. Emile Zola would publish an open
letter to the president of France entitled “J’accuse” in which he accused the
French authorities of knowingly arresting Dreyfus on fabricated evidence; what
Zola called a “treason against humanity.” Following the Dreyfus trial was an
Austrian journalist, Theodor Herzl, who happened to live on the same street as
Sigmund Freud in Vienna. Watching the events unfold Herzl came to the
conclusion that since Europeans had been creating nation-states throughout the
19th century, combined with the resurgence of anti-Jewish activities in Europe,
it was time to take the idea of the Jewish nation that had been preserved for
2,000 years within the religion and germinate that seed. In late 1895 while living
in Paris at the Hotel de Castille Herzl wrote The Jewish State. It was published in
Vienna in February, 1896 and with that the Zionist movement was born. The
First Zionist Congress was held in Basel, Switzerland in August, 1897. For the
Zionist movement their activities heralded a long overdue homecoming.
The Zionist movement divided itself into two branches; Practical Zionism and
Political Zionism. The former worked on land purchases and helping Jews
emigrate back to the land, while the latter focused on international support for
the Zionist movement. The Balfour Declaration was a result of those efforts.
With World War I raging the British and Germans looked for leverage to help
with their respective war efforts. Both reached out to Zionist leaders with the
false belief that Jews had great influence in the United States; the Germans
hoped the Jews of America could keep the Americans out of the war, while the
British hoped they would get the Americans in the war. That influence simply
wasn’t there. The British also thought the Zionists could help keep Russia in the
War since so many Bolsheviks were Jewish. It was of course a complete
misreading of the party. The Communists were not at all interested in a new
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country being created, their goal was to see the “workers of the world unite.” The
British fearful of what the Germans might offer the Zionists issued the Balfour
declaration on November 2, 1917. Five weeks later on December 11, 1917 General
Allenby entered Jerusalem having defeated the Ottomans. In the aftermath of
World War I the British Mandate was created in 1922. The Mandate included the
Balfour Declaration and added, “Whereas recognition has thereby been given to
the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds
for reconstituting their national home in that country.”
The Palestinian Narrative
If the Israeli narrative can be summed up in one word, homecoming, then the
Palestinian narrative can be summed up as invasion, an imperial colonial
invasion. Those vastly different experiences greatly cloud so much of how each
side perceives itself and understands the other. While this century plus long
conflict is complicated on many levels it can in many ways be reduced to those
two disparate experiences; homecoming versus invasion. Homecoming is
something someone does, while invasion is something that happens to you.

Follow the line of thought on any issue related to the conflict and it will most
likely end at these two perspectives.
For the Palestinians the Balfour Declaration was but the latest attempt by
European imperial powers to control the Middle East, especially when it came to
the Holy Land. As early as April, 1799 after Napoleon had defeated the Ottomans
in Egypt and his army had marched through Palestine and laid siege to Acre, he
issued a call for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. This call he
hoped would lead Jews to serve his growing imperial interests in the region. He
was defeated at Acre by the Ottomans with the help of the British who had their
own imperial designs on Palestine. In 1800 Napoleon declared, “If I governed a
nation of Jews, I should reestablish the Temple of Solomon.” For the next 150
years the British and the French would be frenemies when it came to Palestine
and their own imperial interests with conflicting promises made to Zionists and
Palestinians.
With the defeat of Napoleon by the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo in 1815 the
British became the main carrier of the message of a Jewish homeland in
Palestine. As with the French they were motivated by Jewish support for their
own imperial interests. In 1840 the British Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston
wrote to the British Ambassador in Constantinople, “There exists at the present
time among the Jews dispersed over Europe, a strong notion that the time is
approaching for their nation to return to Palestine…It would be of manifest
importance to the Sultan to encourage the Jews to return and to settle in
Palestine because the wealth which they would bring with them would increase
the resources of the Sultan’s dominions; and the Jewish people, if returning
under the sanction and protection and at the invitation of the Sultan, would be a
check on any future evil designs of Mehmet Ali or his successors…I have to
instruct Your Excellency strongly to recommend to hold out every just
encouragement to the Jews of Europe to return to Palestine.” Inherent in this
declaration was the idea to use the Jews to keep the Egyptian Viceroy and
reformer Mehmet Ali expansionist ideas, including Palestine, in check.
In 1880 in his book, The Land of Gilead, former British MP Laurence Oliphant
wrote about his support of Jews returning to Palestine. There he advocated for
the local Palestinian population to be placed on reservations in the same way
Native Americans had been treated in North America. He wrote, “In fact, the
same system might be pursued which we have adopted with success in Canada
with our North American Indian tribes, who are confined to their ‘reserves,’ and
live peacefully upon them in the midst of the settled agricultural population.”
In 1907 British Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman wrote in a report

which he submitted to the British government, “There are people (the Arabs,
authors note) who control spacious territories teeming with manifest and hidden
resources. They dominate the intersections of world routes. Their lands were the
cradles of human civilizations and religions. These people have one faith, one
language, one history and the same aspirations. No natural barriers can isolate
these people from one another…if, perchance, this nation were to be unified into
one state, it would then take the fate of the world into its hands and would
separate Europe from the rest of the world. Taking these considerations
seriously, a foreign body should be planted in the heart of this nation to prevent
the convergence of its wings in such a way that it could exhaust its powers in
never-ending wars. It could also serve as a springboard for the West to gain its
coveted objects.”
Through the Balfour Declaration ten years later the Zionists were more than
happy to serve the interests of the British and be that foreign body planted in the
heart of the Arab lands. In 1915 Sir Henry McMahon met with Sherif Hussein of
Mecca and made a series of promises to the Arab people. In exchange for their
helping the British and the allies push the Ottomans out of the Middle East those
lands would be given back to the Arab peoples. Based on the McMahon-Hussein
correspondence Arabs clearly believed that included Palestine. The British
decided otherwise and two years later issued the Balfour Declaration showing
their alliance with the Zionists. To compound matters in 1916 the French and
British, anticipating victory over the Ottomans, secretly agreed on how they
would divide up the Ottoman Empire after the War in an agreement known as
Sykes-Picot Agreement. This too was counter to the McMahon-Hussein

correspondence.
Because for two-thousand years, including during the formative years of Islam,
Judaism as discussed above presented itself as a religion with its national
identity much less visible there was a perception that being Jewish was only
about belonging to a religion. This would lead to Arab opposition of Zionism by
saying that a religion was not entitled to a country. While the clash of this
conflict is between two nations it has taken on an increased religious narrative
by both sides during the more recent decades of the conflict. Those narratives
range from exclusivist positions saying that only their groups have rights to the
land to the exclusion of others to more inclusive positions that are motivated by
the values of peace and the interconnectedness of humanity.
One of the most irritating aspects of the Balfour Declaration is that the point of
reference in the document for the local Arab population was not them but the
Jews, who for the most part had just arrived. The Balfour Declaration refers to
the local Arab population as the “existing non-Jewish communities,” even
though they made up 86% of the population and well over 90% of the land
ownership. The wording implied that the Arabs are a minority, when at that time
they were the great majority of inhabitants and landowners in Palestine.
The Zionist movement was largely motivated by the latest long chapter of anti-
Jewish activities in Europe as it pushed for The Balfour Declaration. For the
Arabs of Palestine, that was a problem for Europe to address in Europe, and not
address their anti-Jewish sentiments by supporting Zionism as a cover to
colonize the Arab land with Jews. In addition, who were the British to give away
a land that was not theirs and much less a land they had not even conquered yet.
The defeat of the Ottomans in Palestine with the fall of Jerusalem to General
Allenby did not take place until five weeks later on December 11th. The Battle for
Beersheva had only taken place two days earlier on October 31st, and the Battle
of Huj, one of the last cavalry charges of the British Army, would not take place
until November 8th. From the perspective of the Arabs of Palestine the Balfour
Declaration was the latest unjust, illegal, and illegitimate European colonial
activity.
The Fifty Years from 1917 to 1967
The half century from the Balfour Declaration to UN Resolution 242 first
witnessed the two and a half decades of the British Mandate that saw numerous
acts and periods of violence particularly in 1929 and 1936 through 1939.
Between 1919 and 1939 some 370,000 Jews moved to Palestine; that number
increasing greatly with the rise of Hitler in 1933. As a reaction to the violence the
British would begin to place restrictions on their support of Zionist activities and
then back track to a degree. This pattern only increased the hostility of the Jews
and Arabs to the British. In the 1937, eighty years ago, the Peel Commission, in
response to the violence, advocated for a partition of Palestine, the first attempt
at a two-state solution. The Zionist leadership supported the Plan, but there was
fierce debate and division within the Zionist movement. The Arab leadership
opposed the plan, but quietly there were those who supported the idea. In the
end the plan went nowhere.
Two years later in 1939, concluding that the Partition Plan was unattainable, the
British issued their last White Paper of the conflict. The Paper called for an
independent state, neither Jewish nor Arab, a Binational State, to be established
by 1949. The Paper also stated that from 1939 to 1944 75,000 Jews would be
allowed to immigrate to Palestine and after 1944 only with consent from the
Arabs. Jewish land purchases were also restricted. World War II would break out
that year and the Shoah, the extermination of 6 million Jews would last until
1945.
In response to that catastrophe the United Nations voted to partition Palestine

in 1947 and the State of Israel declared itself into existence in May 1948. In the
course of the fighting that began right after the announcing of the Partition Plan
on November 29, 1947 Israel was attacked first by the local Palestinian
population and later by seven Arab countries. At the end of the fighting in March
1949 Israel had increased its territory beyond the Partition Plan and some
700,000 Palestinian Arabs became refugees either by fleeing the fighting or
being expelled by Israeli forces. At the end of the fighting where Arab armies
stood no Jews remained or were allowed to remain. In many ways it was a war
with both sides fighting for keeps. The Israelis called the war, Milkhemet
Ha’Atzma’ut, The War of Independence, the Arabs called it Nakba, Catastrophe.
In the decades that followed an unsettled tension existed with various levels of
violence erupting ranging from Fedayeen attacks on Israel from neighboring
Arab countries to all-out war. In 1951, King Abdullah I of the Hashemite
Kingdom of Jordan, while visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, was
assassinated because of his support of peace with Israel. Prince Hussein,
Abdullah’s grandson, life was saved in the assassination attempt when a bullet
was deflected by a medal that his grandfather had had pinned to his chest.
Prince Hussein, would become King Hussein the following year, succeeding his
father, King Talal, who abdicated from the throne for health reasons. In 1994
King Hussein would sign a peace treaty with Israel.
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In light of the ongoing Fedayeen attacks and Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez
Canal, war broke out in 1956. It was known as the Suez Crisis, or the Sinai War
in Israel, and the Tripartite Aggression in the Arab world as Israel, France, and
Great Britain joined forces to attack Egypt. In 1964 the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) was founded in Jerusalem. In the mid 1960’s tensions grew
between Syria and Israel over water. This led to an alliance between Syria and
Egypt. Falsely informed by the Soviet Union that an Israeli invasion of Syria was
imminent Egypt mobilized troops, demanded the UN Peacekeepers leave the
Sinai Peninsula and closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. On June 5th
fearing an attack by Syria and Egypt, Israel preempted beginning the Six-Day
War. Israel told Jordan, who had occupied the West Bank since 1949 (which was
only recognized by England and Pakistan), that she had no interests in war with
Jordan. King Hussein, who was given false reports of Egyptian success, attacked
Israel. In response Israel captured East Jerusalem and the West Bank and some
250,000 new Palestinian refugees were created. Israel also captured the Sinai
Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights during the course of the
fighting. On September 1st the Arab League meet in Khartoum and declared, “no
peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it.” On
November 22 the United Nations passed Resolution 242.
Resolution 242 and the Palestinian Narrative
As with the Balfour Declaration fifty year earlier when the Palestinians were
referred to as the “non-Jewish communities in Palestine” in Resolution 242 they
were referred to as “the refugee problem.” For Palestinians it was another
example of their non-identification by outside parties.
With no representation at the UN, they were not able to partake in any of the
deliberations. Seven years later in 1974 the PLO was granted “observer status” at
the UN and in 2012 it was upgraded to “non-member observer status,”
culminating in 2015 when Palestine was recognized as a state by the UN. In
calling for the “end of belligerency” Resolution 242 acknowledged the
“sovereignty territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the
sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the
area.” Since Palestine was not recognized as a state at that point the Resolution
bypassed Palestinian aspirations.
In the 1960s Palestinian identity was in transition from a clear localized identity
to a separate national identity. In the early stages of Palestinian opposition to
Zionism Palestinians saw themselves not as a separate nation but rather a part of
Greater Syria. At the first Palestine Arab Congress held in Jerusalem in 1919 in
addition to asking that the Balfour Declaration be rescinded they called for
Palestine to be included as, “an integral part of…the independent Arab
Government of Syria within an Arab Union, free of any foreign influence or
protection.” This was also the findings of the King-Crane Commission sent by
the President Wilson in 1919 to determine what should be done with the
Ottoman Empire. That Commission, based upon its interviews within the region,
recommended that Palestine become part of Greater Syria and that the Zionist
plan be greatly curtailed. As the decades rolled on a Palestinian national identity
surfaced and strengthened in opposition to Zionism. All nationalism has a
beginning; the ancient Israelite national identity defined itself in many ways
against the local population it found there at the time.
One of the bones of contention between Israel and the Arab world over the
Resolution was the order of events when it came to establishing “a just and
lasting peace.” The resolution lists withdrawal from territories first to be
followed by “termination of all claims or states of belligerency” and the “right to
live in peace with secure and recognized boundaries.” The Arab world insisted on
this order while Israel said it would only follow the opposite order. In the end
when it came to the Israeli-Egyptian (1979) and Israeli-Jordanian (1994) peace
treaties signed between those governments modalities addressing both
simultaneously were created. In 1988 the PLO accepted Resolution 242.
The other area of disagreement came from the wording when it came to
discussing the withdrawal from territories captured by the Israelis in the Six-Day
War. The Resolution reads, “Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories
occupied in the recent conflict.” In drafting Resolution 242 British Ambassador

to the UN, Lord Caradon, American Ambassador, Arthur Goldberg and US
Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Eugene Rostow, who all played
important roles in the wording of the text, specifically left the definite article,
the, out of the sentence so it did not read withdrawal from the territories. By not
including the definite article the sentence left room for adjustments of borders.
The Arab world objected to this and would refer to the French version that had
the definite article, les. While the definite article is used in the French version, it
is there for grammatical reasons. .. At the United Nations when there is a
disagreement over texts words of the text of a resolution drafted become the
version that is followed; in this case the English version without the the.
Resolution 242 and the Israeli Narrative
In contrast of the Three No’s of Khartoum the Israelis were pleased that the
Resolution implied the neighboring Arab states needed to engage with Israel in
negotiations and eventual peace and recognition. The Israelis also read the line,
“a just settlement of the refugee problem,” as referring not only to the
Palestinian refugees but also to the Jewish refugees from Arab lands. As
discussed above the Israelis agreed with the English version of the Resolution
and the missing definite article that allowed for flexibility when it came to
creating permanent borders, as well as the need for withdrawal from territories
and the end of belligerency that would happen at the same time.
Finally…
One of the greatest challenges in this conflict, or any conflict for that matter, is
the dynamic of allowing one’s own narrative to block out the ability to hear the
other narrative. Israelis need to understand how their endeavor can legitimately
be seen by Palestinians as an invasion, while at the same time Palestinians need
to understand Zionism is based on an authentic historic connection the Jewish
people have to the land.
In his in depth study on Israeli-Palestinian people-to-people NGOs, A future for

Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding Ned Lazarus makes the important point about
Israeli Palestinian peacebuilding, Ned Lazarus makes the important point about
the positive impact that projects the sharing of narratives has on participants.
Referencing a report by USAID’s Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation,
Lazarus found 80 percent reported greater willingness to work for peace; 77
percent reported increased belief in the possibility of reconciliation; 71 percent
improved trust and empathy for the other; and 68 percent increased levels of
acknowledgement and knowledge about the other narratives” in such dialogue
groups. This underscores the invaluable role of the Dual Narrative as a tool that
should be more utilized in this conflict.
An acknowledgment by Israelis of the Palestinian narrative will not lessen the

validity of their cause, and such a recognition by Palestinians of the Israeli
narrative will not take away from their national aspirations. Rather, such mutual
acknowledgments can open doors to new perceptions and opportunities. This
conflict will not end when both sides agree on everything, rather the challenge is
for both sides to learn to acknowledge the profound different narratives and by
so doing discover a different way to go forward. An accord will not bring about
instant peace with all the problems disappearing the day after the treaty is
signed; such an agreement will be the most important step to continue the work
of reconciliation. 100 years after parts of Austria were given to Italy after World
War I not all the tensions from that change have disappeared, but people have
found ways to move on.
This point cannot be stressed enough. The phrase, “I hear you,” means more
than an audio encounter has taken place. It means, “I recognize and understand
who you are.” A major obstacle in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians
is the belief that the other really doesn’t understand who they are; and with that
comes the chasm of no trust. Trust can be built with someone who you feel
grasps who you are; if you trust someone you can still disagree with them and
find ways to advance. The 100 plus organizations of the Alliance for Middle East
Peace (ALLMEP) model this.
Three caveats need to be addressed when discussing the Dual Narrative. The
first is, just because words have been exchanged it does not mean that both sides
understand each other. When it comes to Israelis and Palestinians most of the
time the lingua franca they use is English which is at best the second language of
the speakers. This raises the problem of translation, and translation across
cultures which is addressed on the metal level by Richard O. Collin in Moving
Political Meaning across Linguistic Frontiers and on the macro level by
Raymond Cohen in Culture and Conflict in Egyptian-Israeli Relations: A
Dialogue of the Deaf. The anthropologist Edward Hall in his groundbreaking
1976 book Beyond Culture writes about how some cultures communicate
through explicit messages while other cultures rely more on context. Israelis are
an example of the former and the Palestinians are an example of the latter. This
is all to say that facilitators of such dialogues need to be very attuned and
sensitive to these dynamics and help participants better truly hear and
understand each other.
The other issue that needs to be addressed is the idea of the Dual Narrative as a
binary approach to dialogue. The concept of a Dual Narrative implies two sides,
which there may be, but that does not mean they are entirely monolithic. That is
to say not all Palestinian think one way, or for that matter do all Israelis,
Zionists, Jordanians, Muslims, Jews, etc. Within each group there is a spectrum
of viewpoints and understandings. While the Dual Narrative is a tool towards
greater understanding of the other the nuance of a range of perspectives should
never be lost.
Finally for Palestinians an engagement with the Dual Narrative which focuses for
the most part on the history of the conflict, should in no way be seen as a
substitution for, or avoidance of addressing the realities of today. As Jonathan
Kuttab has written dialogue must take in to account the realities of asymmetry
and never be a substitute for action when it comes to the status quo.
For decades peace initiatives have focused on what are called the core issues of
the conflict: borders, security, refugees and Jerusalem. While core, not much is
left to negotiate with regard to those issues. In many ways, what is preventing an
agreement from being reached are the issues under the table including fear,
mistrust, trauma, responsibility, cultural differences, breaking down myths, and

acknowledgment and a better understanding of the other. At the end of the day
the Dual Narrative has the ability to create an innovative process between
Israelis and Palestinians that addresses those critical interpersonal issues. Until
they are addressed and scaled up with more participants, both in formal
negotiations and in more and more encounters between Israelis and
Palestinians, any agreement will be much harder to reach. For an exploration on
the necessity and complexity of the addressing those under the table issues see
Reconciliation from a Social-Psychological Perspective by Herbert Kelman and
Instrumental and Socioemotional Paths to Intergroup Reconciliation and the
Needs-Based Model of Socioemotional Reconciliation by Arie Nadler and Nurit
Shnabel.
It was perhaps said best by the Muslim jurist from the Islamic Golden Age,
Imam Al-Shafi’i, “Never do I argue with a man with a desire to hear him say
what is wrong, or to expose him and win victory over him. Whenever I face an
opponent in debate I silently pray – O Lord, help him so that truth may flow
from his heart and on his tongue, and so that if truth is on my side, he may
follow me; and if truth be on his side, I may follow him.”
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How To Commemorate Resolution 242 and The Balfour Declaration

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10/20/21, 7:59 PM How to Commemorate Resolution 242 and the Balfour Declaration

INTERNATIONAL POLICY DIGEST

LONGFORM / NOVEMBER 27, 2017

How to Commemorate Resolution 242 and

the Balfour Declaration

As an example the Dual Narrative is an indispensable component of the Arava

The Israeli Narrative

The Palestinian Narrative

something someone does, while invasion is something that happens to you.

In 1907 British Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman wrote in a report

Sykes-Picot Agreement. This too was counter to the McMahon-Hussein

The Fifty Years from 1917 to 1967

In response to that catastrophe the United Nations voted to partition Palestine

Resolution 242 and the Palestinian Narrative

occupied in the recent conflict.” In drafting Resolution 242 British Ambassador

Resolution 242 and the Israeli Narrative

In his in depth study on Israeli-Palestinian people-to-people NGOs, A future for

An acknowledgment by Israelis of the Palestinian narrative will not lessen the

mistrust, trauma, responsibility, cultural differences, breaking down myths, and

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