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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has often been described as “eternal”. But it is just a child of the 20th century and its partly realized and often failed promise to establish democratic efficacy and responsibility through the representation of homogenous groups. As such, it will be overcome in the 21st century through establishing democratic efficacy and responsibility based on citizens and civil societies. Focusing on these social representation dynamics allows to foster ending the conflict through an orientation, a method, and a shared historical understanding.
- The orientation is towards building a shared peaceful, just, and prospering society through solving social problems together.
- The method is Civil democracy with nation-based veto powers, that is making decisions together with individualized participation and individualized representation among options that are for both sides acceptable.
- The historical understanding is that 20th century thinking brought us together into this mess, and that 21st century thinking can bring us out if we apply it.
Let’s review these three in reverse order.
Historical understanding: The 20th century was the time of the promise to establish democratic efficacy and responsibility through the representation of homogenous groups. Organizing individuals in non-overlapping and homogenous groups had fostered the European ascent to wealth and power, it had replaced monarchy through democracy, and in the late 1940s, everyone expected that to be the case soon globally. The fascist extremism in making societies homogenous had killed one in three Jews worldwide, with a long threatening build-up before. So, building on continuous small Jewish presence throughout the centuries, the 20th century brought Jews in great numbers to the land, and it brought the mass expulsion of Arab inhabitants. Historians will continue for long to discuss who did what exactly.
We can, however, agree that both developments happened under the impression that societies would demand homogeneity to prosper, an impression dominant on both sides and everywhere else, not only in the West but no less in Islamic societies. In this process, a mass Jewish presence (with the state of Israel as its organization) and in response a Palestinian identity developed. Any attempt for peace demands to accept that both are here to stay. Palestinians are not just Arabs that could go to other Arab countries, and Israelis are not just Jews that could go to Europe. Both are here to stay, so any attempt for peace demands common solving of common problems in a peaceful manner.
Unfortunately, for a very long time this did not take place. In societies not organized in non-overlapping groups from the outset, the partitioning representation aspect of traditional democracy sets incentives to politicians to secure political support through constructing identity in a conflictive way. Since the 1990s, we see this in the growth of populist and exclusionary movements throughout Western societies, including the Israeli one.
But already much earlier when it became apparent that the promise of the Western democracy model would not work in Islamic societies, this mechanism had played out in the larger discourse of non-Western societies. No one saw that social representation dynamics and the lack of developing more adequate democratic institutions were to blame for the lack of social progress. Incidents of Western power exertion were taken as explanation instead, since 1948 fostering a continuous myth of “armed resistance” with the goal of “liberation”, concepts taken from cases where English or French inhabitants could easily reintegrate in true homelands.
Method: Using Civil democracy allows to overcome these destructive incentives. Democratic responsibility is ultimately the responsibility of the citizens, so they need to exert it directly through participation in all relevant decisions. Avoiding democratic fatigue demands individualizing this participation in a individualized combination with representation. Exerting responsibility through representation as precisely as possible demands to individualize it through letting individuals be presented not by just one representative but all political actors they trust. As for this function of representation political actors have to disclose their preferences on decisions, they are called ‘Open actors’, a concept embracing civil society organizations, individual politicians, experts, and traditional representatives, allowing for the necessary integration of existing traditional trust structures.
Orientation: With Civil democracy, the shared goal is building a common peaceful, just, and prospering society through solving social problems together. A society in which angry young people are no longer labeled neither liberation fighters nor terrorists but young people with problems that need a helping hand to become part of this process of building a society of peace, justice, and prosperity.