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22.01.2025 Research
Can the Israeli-Palestinian Troubles Be Solved With a Lesson From Northern Ireland?
Northern Ireland's Derry is living proof of a successful yet cold peace – political peace without interpersonal peace. We fell in love with reconciliation efforts, but Jews and Palestinians will remain conflicted in their hearts
On October 7, a raft of fundamental conceptions collapsed. Much more will be said about the intelligence failure and our flawed perceptions of Hamas. But we must also explore the shattered assumptions in parts of the Israeli left, especially those concerning our relations with the Palestinians and our efforts to resolve the conflict.
We fell in love with trying to forge friendships and make connections, seeing the two sides as a conflicted couple, and this blinded us from the truth: the solution to ethnic conflicts is political.
At the signing ceremony of the peace treaty with Jordan in 1994, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin declared: "Peace between nations is peace between people." Since the Oslo Accords of that decade, the Israeli right has doubted the feasibility of a political settlement, arguing that only "peace between people" should be promoted, mainly by deepening economic ties.
On the left, though we paid lip service to the idea of a political agreement, our political weakness led us to focus on interpersonal reconciliation. Our approach to the conflict took on a therapeutic idiom, and psychological practices substituted political action.
In academia, the trendy buzzword is "restorative justice." This approach, which originated as an alternative to liberal criminal law, with its emphasis on retribution and punishment, aims to allow all stakeholders in the crime to come forward and address their grievances. It's a kind of group therapy in which all parties can express their feelings rather than evaluate the evidence.
The restorative justice approach to ethnic conflicts became fashionable following the efforts of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the collapse of apartheid. Yael Abessira, a specialist in African history, even suggested in Haaretz's Hebrew edition that we learn from the experience of African states that have overcome trauma and hatred via "an emotional face-to-face conversation in a safe and respectful environment."
On the left, We fell in love with "people-to-people" activities; conferences abroad, philanthropic activities and other reconciliation initiatives. Personal relationships under controlled conditions were seen as a way to sow the seeds of peace.
Frankly, we must acknowledge that it was also easier to promote such efforts to foreign donors. The paradigm was that the conflict should be resolved with therapeutic tools and that Israelis and Palestinians needed domestic harmony. They needed a neutral therapeutic environment for patching up the emotional rifts and weaving the ties of friendship.
A prime example of this approach is the Geneva Initiative. Founded in 2003, the Geneva Initiative promoted a comprehensive peace plan drafted by prominent Israelis and Palestinians. It was the Israeli Left's last big political initiative. Today, however, it focuses on dialogue and reconciliation meetings.
The organization's flagship program now is "Building a Future: The Young Leaders Reconciliation Initiative," offering joint seminars, with the main focus being "psychological barriers thwarting conflict resolution, a joint lexicon of reconciliation, and mutual understanding, and advancing cross-community reconciliation."
That is, politics out, psychology in.
Many on the Zionist left were amazed by the reactions of their Palestinian colleagues to October 7. Expressions of joy over Hamas' attack turned into an effort to create symmetry between the two sides. We were astonished. How could people with whom we've spent pleasant time together in air-conditioned meeting rooms now support violence and identify with the murder of civilians?
The philanthropic efforts also yielded meager results. Oded Lifshitz, who was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz, volunteered for years with Road to Recovery, a group that helped Gazans receive medical care in Israel. When his wife, Yocheved, was released from captivity, she described the disappointment, telling how she rebuked somebody she believed was Yahya Sinwar: "For many years, we fought for peace; how are you not ashamed? Why do you do such things to us?"
To be fair, our Palestinian peers must be equally frustrated by our lack of vociferous criticism, if any at all, over the destruction in Gaza. . A Palestinian acquaintance from Britain, for example, said he believes that I place more value on the life of an Israeli child than on the lives of Gazan children. I replied that I don't know about value, but October 7 highlighted that I care more about the Israeli child.
Indeed, the bitter truth is that in times of crisis, every collective suffers a moral blind spot vis-à-vis members of the opposing collective. This is precisely the flaw with the therapeutic approach: It sees huge collectives as a conflicted couple.
However, whereas a political approach to the conflict allows for recognition and sympathy for different perspectives, personal encounters require identification and empathy. In extreme situations, empathy becomes a zero-sum game.
The therapeutic approach stands on shaky ground from the outset. The therapeutic process demands a commitment to a joint journey, with the therapy taking place in a controlled neutral space. These conditions can't be replicated for entire populations.
Even if it were possible to bring together greater numbers of Israelis and Palestinians, it's doubtful there would be any benefit. The mere knowledge that there are people on the other side with a different narrative isn't enough to temper nationalist sentiments. In times of mental emergency, herd and siege mentalities rule.
A meta-analysis by Roni Porat and other researchers, published in Haaretz in 2021, showed that therapeutic approaches to reducing racism and resolving conflicts fail decisively. These findings, along with other studies, show that "you can't train people to be less racist," as the article's headline puts it.
The researchers' concluded that "instead of trying to influence the attitudes and feelings of individuals, in the hope that they will influence the system in which they operate, we suggest focusing on changing the system."
The way these meetings were conducted should also be explored. They mostly took place in a neutral space over a weekend during which each side learned about the other's narrative and feelings. Maybe they hastily tried to ponder together future reconciliation efforts.
The attendees were overwhelmingly members of civil society groups, and the participants were usually more educated and often politically active, with an over-representation of Palestinians close to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
In practice, the therapeutic approach sought to bypass the therapeutic process between the collectives and implement it between their respective elites. It assumed that the elites could set aside nationalist sentiments and develop relationships between individuals who could forge a foundation for peace. The two sides' reactions to October 7 should encourage us to admit that this elitist project has failed miserably.
The main reason is that these meetings were always conducted with built-in asymmetry. The Israeli side was always expected to behave with absolute cosmopolitanism, but the Palestinian side – "the object of the oppression" – wasn't. The Israelis came without an identity, leaving their national symbols at the door, while the Palestinians remained Palestinian and were allowed to be themselves. Maybe that's why our Palestinian colleagues are disappointed now that they're found out we're Israelis, after all.
From here we must answer the troubling question: What alternative to peace between people can be offered? How can we sell the peace project to Israelis when we ourselves can't achieve it? The problem lies in the question itself. Peace is a political project. If it's accompanied by reconciliation between people, that's a bonus.
The West Bank boys and Derry Girls
The West Bank boys and Derry Girls
A year ago, I crossed Northern Ireland's Peace Bridge, whose 235 meters over the Foyle River connects the two parts of the city of Derry. On the east bank lives the Protestant minority, who call the city Londonderry, and on the west bank lives the Catholic majority.
The city returned to the headlines a few years ago thanks to the British sitcom "Derry Girls," which cleverly portrayed the absurdity of life under a violent conflict. Derry was a focal point of "the Troubles," the decades of bloody clashes between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.
According to the Conflict Archive on the Internet at the University of Ulster, in Derry (which is roughly the size of Tel Aviv suburb Ra'anana), the conflict claimed the lives of 227 residents between 1966 and 1998. In July 1972 the British army even sent tanks into the city to dismantle "Free Derry," the fortified autonomous area set up by the Catholics under the historic city walls.
After two decades of a complex political tango, all this officially came to an end in April 1998 with the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. The telling sign that this is a successful deal is that no one was satisfied with it. Still, it halted the cycle of violence and fear that had claimed the lives of around 3,500 people.
The Good Friday Agreement was a tour de force of political acrobatics in that it reconciled various radically different demands. It established a new parliament for Northern Ireland and enforced the forming of a Catholic-Protestant coalition government. The agreement also included the release of all paramilitary prisoners, the decommissioning of the major militias, and the option for any citizen to hold dual Irish and British citizenship.
Indeed, Northern Ireland doesn't enjoy political stability and the parliament in Stormont is often paralyzed as cooperation falters, but the figures don't lie: The number of deaths and violent incidents has dramatically decreased.
Still, visitors to Derry expecting to see a dazzling success story are likely to be disappointed. The Protestant minority remains entrenched on the east bank and the Catholic majority in the west. The flags of Protestant militias, bearing the symbol of the red hand, hang from power lines, and on the west bank, graffiti of the Catholic underground adorn the walls. Both sides have murals glorifying the terrorists.
The school system remains separated; Catholic and Protestant children have little contact with one another. They hardly make friends with kids on the other side of the river. Each community neither forgives nor relinquishes its ethos or grievances. From one city in conflict, Derry has become two cities with minimal interaction.
Derry is living proof of a successful but cold peace – political peace without peace between people. If this sounds bleak, let's remember that the peace agreement achieved its most important goal: stopping the killing and suffering.
Northern Ireland demonstrates the inadequacy of the restorative justice approach, which sets too high a bar for resolving conflicts. In addition to the need for political arrangements to stop the violence, the reconciliation approach also demands that these arrangements mend the emotional wounds.
However, the resolution of national conflicts focuses on painful compromises, not reconciliation and healing. If "there is no peace without justice," as its proponents declare, then most often there simply will be no peace. Even the flagship example of the reconciliation approach, South Africa, only became possible after the fall of apartheid and the calling of free elections.
During Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's long reign, political engagement in ending the conflict has been relegated to the corner. In the absence of any political horizon, parts of the left settled for demanding negotiations without much regard for what was being discussed.
To a certain extent, Netanyahu's conception that focused on rounds of fighting with Hamas and endless negotiations on short-term settlements also captured our hearts. The mere fact that Israel was engaging in talks with any Palestinian made us drop the demand to aim these talks at a long-term peace and settle for the amorphous goal of "mitigating the conflict."
An accelerated political process may emerge from the current devastation. One way or another, the Israeli left must recalibrate its approach to resolving the conflict. The future of the Israeli left and the peace camp doesn't lie in interpersonal peace and an attempt to build a bridge between the communities.
There is nothing wrong with meetings with Palestinians so that Israelis can hear their narrative, but our political vision can't be limited to that. The crucial lesson from Northern Ireland and other conflict zones is that national and religious conflicts are resolved through political agreements, not emotional bonding. Stopping violence is a prerequisite to reconciliation – not the other way around. We must return to dealing first with the macro questions concerning the cessation of violence as a condition for reconciliation in the future.
Nevo Spiegel is a doctoral student in philosophy at Tel Aviv University and a research fellow at the Molad Center for the Renewal of Israeli Democracy.
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