When Dialogue Stands in the Way of Peace

“Justice”—grafitti on the Israeli West Bank barrier wall. All pictures © Mike Merryman-Lotze unless indicated

 

My engagement with Israelis and Palestinians began when I took part in the Earlham College Great Lakes Jerusalem Program in 1996. That program emphasized listening and interaction with both Palestinians and Israelis. We took classes with Israeli and Palestinian professors, lived with Palestinian and Israeli families, and traveled back and forth between the two communities. I met young Palestinians and Israelis who had participated in programs that brought them together, like Seeds of Peace, and I was inspired by their stories of overcoming their own prejudices. I came away from these encounters convinced of the importance of listening to competing narratives and bringing people together to build understanding, despite their differences.

The focus of the Earlham program on building understanding across borders and between communities is consistent with the approach taken by Quakers to peacebuilding in Palestine and Israel over the decades. Quaker involvement with Palestinians and Israelis has always been grounded in a commitment to remaining connected to both peoples and to listening to all concerns.

When American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) agreed to provide assistance for refugees in Gaza in 1948, it conditioned its acceptance with the requirement that it also should be allowed to provide assistance to those displaced in what became Israel. Its humanitarian relief work in Gaza was complemented by humanitarian work in the Haifa region. During the 1970s and 1980s, Quakers played a key role in facilitating backchannel communication between Palestinian and Israeli leaders when such communication was illegal. For decades Quakers have worked to open conversations where they are not happening.

When I first heard arguments against dialogue, my natural reaction was to push back by saying that dialogue is a vital part of peacebuilding and should never be rejected.

But in recent years, Palestinian peace activists have increasingly rejected dialogue and people-to-people programs, arguing that such programs normalize ongoing injustice. When I first heard arguments against dialogue, my natural reaction was to push back by saying that dialogue is a vital part of peacebuilding and should never be rejected. From my interactions with Quakers over the years, I know that many Quakers have also struggled to understand how they should respond to these concerns, given Quaker commitments to listening and building understanding across divides. But understanding why Palestinians have rejected people-to-people and dialogue programs is incredibly important, particularly as Quakers consider how they support and engage in peacebuilding work.

The general push against people-to-people and dialogue programs is most often framed as being a push against what have become known as “normalization” initiatives. Within Palestine, normalization is generally defined as any project; initiative; or activity in Palestine, Israel, or internationally that aims to bring together Palestinians and Israelis without addressing structural and power inequalities and/or without having its goal be opposition and resistance to the Israeli occupation.

To understand the concerns that exist regarding normalization initiatives, it is important to understand the post-Oslo history of these initiatives.

I spent the months leading up to the start of the Second Palestinian Intifada interviewing Palestinians and Israelis engaged in human rights education and peacebuilding work, including people-to-people and dialogue projects. I conducted my interviews as part of a listening process designed to ensure that learning from past peacebuilding work was integrated into curricular materials on human rights education, then being developed by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

Listening to Palestinians and Israelis talk about people-to-people and dialogue projects brought into clear focus the stark divide that existed between those communities. While many Israelis engaged in these projects remained positive about this area of work, there was near universal antipathy toward dialogue and people-to-people programs within Palestinian circles. What I heard from Palestinians at that time wasn’t simply a rejection of these programs because they didn’t think the programs were useful. Rather, people spoke about these programs as harmful, with some going so far as to say they felt abused when they participated in people-to-people initiatives.

That sense of harm is what led to the Conditions for Cooperation with Israeli Organizations issued by the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO) in October 2000. Those conditions called for both a halt to all joint programs between Palestinian and Israeli organizations and a halt to people-to-people programs. Exceptions were made for solidarity actions carried out within a framework that recognized Palestinian human rights, and for cooperation between human rights organizations. The PNGO decision was a key turning point in the ongoing Palestinian push against normalization.

Palestinian rejection of these initiatives came after years of engagement in them. Following the signing of the Oslo Accords, there was a flood of funding given by international donors to promote dialogue and other forms of people-to-people exchange. It is estimated that between September 1993 and October 2000 between $20 and $30 million was given to fund more than 500 people-to-people projects run by over 100 organizations.

Within a context of expected political change and an agreement designed to move toward an end to the occupation, these people-to-people programs initially made sense. However, as these encounters were taking place, rather than moves toward an end of the occupation and equality, the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory deepened.

Home demolitions, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, and other grave human rights abuses all continued despite political agreements.

After the signing of the Oslo Agreement, the confiscation of Palestinian land and the expansion of settlements moved forward at an accelerated pace. Shortly after my first trip to Israel and Palestine in 1996, Israel broke ground on the Har Homa Settlement. That settlement, built on land owned by communities in the Bethlehem district, is now home to over 25,000 settlers and effectively cuts off Jerusalem from the south of the West Bank.

As a result of the Oslo process, the West Bank and Gaza Strip were also divided into cantons separated from each other by Israeli-controlled territory. More than 100 checkpoints and roadblocks were set up throughout the West Bank and Gaza, limiting and controlling the movement of Palestinians. When I was conducting my interviews for UNRWA in 2000, I was living in the village of Birzeit north of Ramallah. Israeli checkpoints were regularly set up between Ramallah and Birzeit, and traveling between the two towns, I often saw Palestinians detained, harassed, and abused.

Jerusalem also remained isolated from other areas of the occupied Palestinian territory. Home demolitions, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, and other grave human rights abuses all continued despite political agreements. For Palestinians, the Oslo Peace Process never brought significant positive change.

It should be understood that the push against normalization is not about closing off communication because of issues of identity.

The entrenchment of the occupation during this period undermined the logic of people-to-people and dialogue programs that focused on building interpersonal understanding but that purposefully didn’t address political issues. Rather than building understanding that is needed to accompany positive political changes, these initiatives more often promoted normal relations in a context of deepening inequality and occupation. They created an illusion of normalcy in relationship between occupied people and their occupiers in a situation where Palestinians’ rights continued to be systematically denied.

Often, political issues and discussion of the occupation were explicitly banned as topics of conversation in people-to-people programs because they were viewed as divisive. The result of this was programs that focused on interpersonal interaction and surface level relationship building but that masked the deepening occupation and growing inequality. “Normalization” developed as a term to describe these types of initiatives that focused on building interpersonal understanding without ever challenging, and often purposefully dismissing, the legal, political, economic, and structural underpinnings of occupation.

It should be understood that the push against normalization is not about closing off communication because of issues of identity. Rather it is about identifying the principles and processes through which discussion and communication occur so as to not reify power imbalances or do harm to those who are already vulnerable or abused. It is about ensuring that when people come together, the focus is co-resistance to the structures that oppress people, and not coexistence within oppressive systems.

And people-to-people programs that don’t address deeper structural issues, or don’t push people to the point of addressing political issues, do cause harm. Youth-focused programs run by international organizations are particularly problematic. Such programs bring young adults together and hint at similarities. Relationships open as youth find that they like similar music, enjoy the same movies, play the same sports, or otherwise share interests. Youth under 18 (particularly in joint settings) can’t be pushed to examine and own the political, legal, and structural inequalities that exist between them, and years of societally imposed understandings are not undone by days or weeks of individual interaction.

Palestinian friends who participated in these programs have spoken to me about their deep sense of betrayal, anger, and hurt as Israeli friends that they’d met at camps joined the military and took up positions enforcing Israel’s occupation.

While there are examples of individual youth radicalized and transformed by their experience in people-to-people programs, most youth in these programs slip back into their regular lives after joint sessions end. Young Palestinians return to a reality of unchanged occupation. Young Israelis return to their schools, and later complete military service. Palestinian friends who participated in these programs have spoken to me about their deep sense of betrayal, anger, and hurt as Israeli friends that they’d met at camps joined the military and took up positions enforcing Israel’s occupation. Rather than building relationship, trust was broken and people were pushed apart.

This is some of the harm that the push against normalization initiatives seeks to end.

But in noting the problems inherent in many of these initiatives, it is also important to understand that the push against normalization has never been a push against all initiatives that bring together Palestinians and Israelis. Those working within an anti-normalization framework are clear that efforts to counter normalization are aimed at resisting oppression and are not aimed at severing all contact between people. Working relationships and coordination across borders is welcomed so long as there is a shared understanding of basic human rights principles and a shared commitment to resisting the ongoing occupation and inequality. This means that it is not considered normalization when efforts/groups like the Sumud Freedom Camp, Ta’ayush, Yesh Din, the Bilin and Nabi Saleh Protest Movements, and Ibala purposefully bring together Palestinians and Israelis as part of an effort to challenge and change the status quo in Israel and Palestine.

The normalization discussion is about addressing power imbalances and injustice…

So as Quakers committed to peace and engagement with all people, what should we take from this conversation?

First, we should recognize that Palestinians and Israelis are getting together and cooperating but on their own terms. One of the key problems with many past people-to-people programs is that they were initiated and led by outside actors who imposed their own goals and terms on interactions. The normalization framework pushed forward by Palestinians is a reassertion of ownership of the terms of interaction by those most impacted by the systematic injustice of Israel’s occupation and inequality. Normalization principles transform interactions, moving them from coexistence-focused dialogue sessions to action-based interaction with the goal of transformation through co-resistance against injustice. If you are thinking about supporting dialogue or people-to-people programs, it is important to consider who “owns” the process and how it resists structures of injustice.

Second, we should understand that dialogue is not an end in and of itself and that dialogue can be harmful. Particularly in situations of ongoing injustice, attempts to bring people together can’t simply focus on building understanding if there is no corresponding effort by all involved to end the injustice and inequality that stands between people. While dialogue and exchange can be important parts of transformation, they can also be tools used to block change; reinforce existing imbalances of power; and erase legal, institutional, and structural injustices. Whether we are setting up panel discussions or working to pull people together, we always need to understand issues of power. Dialogue is not a neutral process, and we must carefully consider how dialogue pushes toward action for change.

Third, it is important to understand that the normalization discussion is largely not about us. Normalization concerns do not place blocks on Quakers listening to, interacting with, or dialoguing with any party. Challenging normalization initiatives is not aimed at silencing select viewpoints or limiting who is able to speak. Indeed, listening to and engaging with those with whom we disagree is an important part of building understanding as we push for change. The normalization discussion is about addressing power imbalances and injustice in relationships between Israelis and Palestinians, not shutting off all dialogue or ending conversations that build understanding.

Finally, the normalization conversation points to the fact that dialogue and listening are not enough. To achieve peace and justice there must be political change that ends the system of inequality and oppression that exists between Palestinians and Israelis, as well as U.S. complicity in that injustice. To address this, Quakers must then move beyond positions that express concern for both parties and that encourage dialogue and listening but that don’t lead to direct action. Quakers should support direct action to end injustice, such as Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement (BDS) and AFSC-led No Way to Treat a Child Campaign. We can support discussions, but we must back up our support for talk with support for action.

It is political change and an end to injustice that will lead to dialogue and understanding, and it is political action that is needed to this bring change.

Mike Merryman-Lotze

Mike Merryman-Lotze is AFSC’s Middle East Program director, helping to coordinate its Israel-Palestine advocacy and policy work. From 2000 through 2003, Mike worked with the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq in Ramallah, and from 2007 through 2010, he worked with Save the Children, managing child rights programming in Palestine.

20 thoughts on “When Dialogue Stands in the Way of Peace

  1. Response to March 2018 Quaker Journal online article
    There’s no doubt that settlements encouraged by the Israeli government are immorally, and probably illegally, encroaching on Palestinian territory. However, nowhere in this thought provoking article about the downside of Israeli/Palestine youth encounters, do I see a mention of the Hamas political position that Israel has no right to exist. The adamancy of this position stops all meaningful dialogue at the government to government level, thus giving Netanyahu and his conservative party the perfect excuse to continue building more encroaching settlements.

    In friendship, Christine Pattee, Storrs (CT) Friends Meeting

  2. Great article, Mike. I especially like your clear explanation of normalization in the Is/Pal context, as well as the context for Palestinian rejection of dialogue and other “people-to-people” initiatives. A similar discussion is taking place between Indigenous people in Canada and their “settler” allies. The lecture below stresses that reconciliation can only come AFTER truth AND justice are substantively addressed. https://youtu.be/89s3l2mYGWg

  3. As an outsider who knows little about Palestinians and has never been to the Middle East, I have the following (probably ignorant comments):
    1. I believe that communication, listening and understanding other points of view is always beneficial. It does not mean agreeing with other points of view, but does mean understanding what motivates “the other”.
    2. A basis for peace between two groups should require acceptance of the existence of each group by the other.
    Just as Palestinians have been oppressed, divested of land, and treated unjustly, Israel has been attacked ever since it was established by armies of enemies, and by terrorists, and by rockets from Gaza. So far as I know, Palestinian institutions have not accepted the fact of the nation of Israel. Nor has Israel respected the fact of a Palestinian nation.
    3.Personally, I do not believe it helps the Palestinian cause to attack Israel, economically or politically. I believe we must try to help both sides when we can – e.g. by helping Israel to defend itself agains enemies like Iran and Hesballah, and by helping Palestinians to develop a democracy.
    4. Peace will only come about when these two national groups compromise and agree on a peace treaty and carry out the terms of a treaty. This means: recognition of Israel, recognition of Palestine, agreed settlement of borders and demolishing of Israeli settlements on land recognized by both as Palestinian. Borders cannot be decided by one side alone, but by both sides in agreement.
    I realize that in my ignorance I cannot understand why the Palestinians and Israelis have not solved this decades ago – it should’ve been solved soon after 1948. But it cannot be solved by outside pressure from the U.S.A. or by countries whose mission is to destroy Israel. It must be between the Palestinians and the Israelis to come than agreement and compromise. Perhaps the United Nations could help with its expertise on helping settle borders in countries like Poland, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, the former Yugoslavia – where borders and sovereignty has been changed in order to attain peace. This is the way the situation looks to me, an ignorant outsider!

  4. Mike Merryman-Lotze, you wrote:
    “…Palestinian peace activists have increasingly rejected dialogue and people-to-people programs, arguing that such programs normalize ongoing injustice.”

    It seems that you have chosen to defend that stance. Certainly Palestinians deserve justice. But if they define justice as the removal of the Jewish presence from the West Bank, and I think that is minimum demand, and a common view of the justice they deserve, then there is a problem because that can not be achieved without ethnic cleansing of their land of Jews. In fact, Jews have lived on both sides of the Jordan River from ancient times. It was only when Jordan captured the land called the West Bank during the War of Independence (1947-1949) that all the Jews who lived in the Jordanian controlled territory were either expelled or killed.

    There are in Israel a number of efforts at developing dialogue. I think those efforts deserve support. I am thinking of efforts to bring about dialogue such as Arava Institute, Hand in Hand: Center for Jewish-Arab Education in Israel, and Neve Shalom / Wahat al-Salam. By contrast, in my view, organizations like BDS are playing a zero-sum game.

  5. Mike Merryman-Lotze, you wrote: “Calling for a removal of settlements is not the same as calling for a removal of all Jews based on identity.”

    In fact both the PLO (now the Palestinian Authority) and Hamas are opposed tho the existence of Israel. The PLO charter calls for the removal of all Jews not there before 1917. Hamas calls for the destruction of Israel, and cites The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (the most infamous antisemitic tract ever written) in its Covenant.

    The Palestinians live under their own laws, enacted by their own government. There is, however, still a military occupation but the military only become involved if security matters are involved… and of course the murder of Jews in terrorist attacks.

    UN resolution 242 says that the occupation is legal, because the territory was occupied by Israel in a war of defense. But that is pending a land for peace deal. When the Palestinians are willing to recognize the right of Israel to exist, and willing to make a written promise to live in peace with Israel, the Israelis are obligated to withdraw from the West Bank. NB: Nowhere does 242 say the Arabs have a right to land that is judenfrei.

    The land the settlements are built on is all land purchased by Israelis. It is not stolen. The Arab owners were paid real money, and they sold to Israelis willingly. However the Palestinian Authority has enacted a law that forbids the sale of land to Jews; a law that could impose the death penalty for Arabs who sell land to Jews. If Israel had such a law that forbid Jews selling land to Arabs, what would you say about Israel?

  6. My hope was to initiate some discussion over the stand taken in all four articles of this issue of FRIEND’S JOURNAL. That has failed because there has been been no willingness by the authors of the articles to come forward to defend their views. One of the authors did make a boilerplate reply but failed to respond further. It is clear that the Friends World Service Committee, and others, intend to plow on with their decisions, and will continue to ignore all objections.

    The intent of BDS, the economic expeditionary force in which FWSC has enlisted, is to paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, ‘the continuation of war by other means.’ BSD uses boycotts, and blacklists of Israeli academics and artists, in an attempt to achieve what Arab armies could not achieve by war. That intent is the the destruction of Israel. There is in fact little that is new about BSD and, for example, the Arab League Boycott goes back to before the 1948 founding of Israel. BDS just dresses that in a nicer costume.

    Perhaps I have expected too much from Quakers as a group, but to me it seems absurd for a religious group, who’s very name is associated with peace, to advocate this aggression against Israel; and using, to boot, a false claim of apartheid to justify such a strange deviation of Quaker tradition.

    Let me remind you that the Quakers as a group have been fallible.
    1. Quakers long owned slaves and were active in the slave trade into the mid 1800s.
    2. Quakers were among the christian groups that ran horrendous Indian Boarding Schools that harmed so many individual Native Americans, and damaged the cultural heritage of entire tribes.
    3.For over 150 years Quakers were leaders in the whaling industry world wide.

    I think that the decision of many Quakers to follow the AFSC into this current adventure, the BDS boycott and blacklist, will be regarded in time to come as a mistake. But I am not a Quaker and I will leave you to your own choices without further bother.

    Farewell.

  7. Not all Quakers agree with BSD. I am a life-long Quaker, and am opposed to BSD. Re: slaves, Quakers were among the first to propose abolition of slavery and many Quakers were leaders in the abolition movement, even though many Quakers were blind to the evil. It takes a few brave souls to lead the way to better behaviour, and Quakers were among these brave souls. Elias Hicks, a Quaker from Huntington,Long Island, travelled to all the Quaker meetings and farmers in his area, discussing slavery, and convincing them to free their slaves which they did by the late 1700s. Abolition was a long-term process.
    Quakers in the past did run Boarding Schools for the Government, but currently, having learned better, Quakers have been leading defenders of First Nations’ rights.
    Quakers were leading whalers in the time when whale oil was the main fuel for lighting – fortunately for the whales, kerosene and gas came in and whale oil is no longer used for that. Currently some cultures are forced to use wood for heating and cooking fuel, and destroying the natural forests. Until substitute fuel is available they have no choice. It doesn’t do much good to point out the wrongs that human beings of whatever faith do, unless one is prepared to change the situation. It is like trying to stop poor African villagers from killing elephants and lions to sell, without providing alternative means of livelihood.
    I agree with you completely about the wrong-headedness of some of the anti-Israel stances of the younger generation of Quakers – they see one side but not the other – a failure of Quaker practice in responding to conflicts – based I feel on an unconscious anti-semitism absorbed from our society. Many reformers are constantly looking for a scapegoat to blame for whatever wrongs they wish to right- they don’t see the historical effects of the Turkish empire in Palestine, or the British mandate in Palestine, neither of which sponsored a peaceful solution. Nor did the UN which removed its peacekeepers suddenly, allowing the hostile nations to attack Israel. The Quakers supporting BDS are just pawns being used by the Palestinians to try to gain their goals, when they don’t wish to negotiate for more realistic but less sweeping goals. Quakers are not perfect, they are fallible and can make mistakes like others, but some Quakers are at the lead for human rights, justice and peace for ALL engaged in conflict.
    At any rate, go your way in peace. No sense trying to convince those who will not hear, or who do not have enough experience to see more than one side of a question.

  8. Work on reducing institutional or structural racism is being done in the United States as we observe our policies, legislative actions and even local laws that promulgate injustice. What is being done in Israel to affect this? There should be no place for violence. That’s something I think we all could agree but that’s what grabs the public’s attention.

  9. As someone who worked twelve years on site for peace between Palestine and Israel, I must point out that those who defend Israel by saying that the PLO or Hamas does not agree on the two state solution are wrong. Both agree on the two-state solution and have since l988 (PLO) and l997 (Hamas), and both have changed their Charters to reflect that agreement. Hamas, in fact, is responsible for preventing the other parties in Gaza from shooting rockets into southern Israel (unless Israel attacks them in Gaza); thus Hamas saves Israeli lives. But Netanyahu still scapegoats them to justify his illegal and immoral acts. Moreover, peace was moving well until a radical settler, who did not want two states and peace, assassinated Prime Minister Rabin. No Israeli prime minister since then has been willing to follow through and agree on two states. Netanyahu’s government totally rejects the idea. Therefore the Palestinians, including children, continue to be arrested, abused, tortured and, especially in Gaza, killed. Moreover, Israel has just passed a basic law defining Israel as the country of Jews. There is outrage among Israelis who want democracy, among the Druse and Beduins who have served faithfully in the Israeli army, and among the 18 % of Israelis who are Palestinians. Israel has become an apartheid country with different laws for Jews and for the others. Read the columns in Gush Shalom by the great Israeli peace activist and former member of the Knesset Uri Avnery for the details. In other words, anyone who wants peace there should support the non-violent way to convince Israel to make peace and accept the two-state solution–BDS.

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