A study funded by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Department, conducted among 4000 Israelis and Palestinians from 2004 to 2008, contradicts any idea that secular political divisions are the major obstacle to a Middle East peace. Scott Atran, an anthropologist, and Jeremy Ginges, a psychologist, found that both groups rejected ideas commonly offered by diplomats, such as trading land for peace or sharing control of Jerusalem, because such proposals contradicted deeply held religious values. Israeli settlers said they would not consider pulling back from any land because they believe that God has given them the right to live in the West Bank. More than 80 percent of Palestinians felt that the “right of return” to their (or their ancestors’) pre-1948 homes was a sacred value. Former President Jimmy Carter has just been making the rounds of talk shows, promoting his new book, “We Can Have Peace In The Holy Land.” Doesn’t this new research suggest that the perception of this region as a “holy land”—by both groups—is in fact the overwhelming barrier to any settlement?
Atran and Ginges, in a peculiar op-ed essay for The New York Times, write that their research also offers “hints of another, more optimistic course.” They note that Isarelis said they could consider a partition of Jerusalem and giving back some land for peace if only Hamas and the other major Palestinian groups explicitly recognized Israel’s right to exist. Palestinian groups were more amenable to peace if Israel apologized for the suffering of Palestinians in the 1948 war after the United Nations divided Palestine into the separate states of Israel and Jordan. The authors describe such gestures as “symbolic, but difficult.” But this makes no sense: A declaration by Hamas recognizing the right of Israel to exist, for example, is a violation of the extreme Islamist religious belief that Israel has no right to exist. If “sacred” values are the major obstacles to peace, how can it be expected that either group will make a “symbolic” gesture that violates those very values?
