Whoever witnessed a real discussion about the Israeli Palestinian problems is bound to feel often disappointed and even deceived. The reason behind this feeling is that the arguments of both parties seem to go pass each other as if they were engaged in two simultaneous monologues instead of a dialogue. The reasons are manifold: a high level of mutual dislike or even hatred, high stakes and may be personal involvement. However, besides these and other factors, the discussion of the Israeli Palestinian conflict often falls into one of the two pitfalls: being either narrow-focused or out-of-focus.
The first pitfall consists of analysing one of the players or even one aspect of the players’ behavior completely out of the general historical, political, economic and social context. This inevitably leads to harsh conclusions regarding the side under the investigation. This mistake is common for apologists of both sides. According to this type of analysis the Palestinians are motivated by irrational anti-semitic impulses and fanatical Islamic drive for violence exacerbated by an utter disregard for human life. This completely leaves out the reality of the occupation, the paucity and ineffectiveness of alternative means of resistance.
According to the partisans of the Palestinian side, Israel is an apartheid state striving to subjugate its neighbours and take their land and resources through permanent and premeditated exercise of gratuitous violence. This completely omits the true nature of the threats to which Israel is exposed and the real difficulties of fighting off armed guerrilla assaults.
The opposite pitfall is known as “but what with” strategy. People engaged in this kind of argumentation try to shift the focus from a concrete instance of abuse to other similar or purportedly similar behaviours perpetrated either by the antagonist or by other members of international community. This kind of strategy is even worse since it prevents any meaningful discussion of the problem.
The outcome of this two pitfalls are dire since the general understanding of the motifs of behavior for both sides is lacking and they end up being presented in a much more negative way than the history and the present achievements of these two outstanding peoples would otherwise merit. This, in turn, may have contributed to their own mistrust of the other and have brought the conflict to unhealthy realms of the war of good against evil.
In this blog I would like to put the political events back into their proper context so that the motifs of the people involved would become clearer to outside observers. My underlying goal is to make readers understand that in this conflict the logic of the context often dominates what outsiders would consider as common sense or sound judgement.
