By Alexandra Woodruff
On April 3, 2014, Gershom Gorenberg, expert on Middle Eastern politics, discussed the peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians currently mediated by the US Secretary of State John Kerry. The discussion, co-hosted by Dartmouth’s Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences and the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, highlighted issues of occupation and Israel’s identity as concurrently Jewish and democratic.
Gorenberg, a historian as well as a journalist, began the discussion by contextualizing the current peace negotiations by tracing the history of Israel’s development as a nation. After dividing Israel’s history into three eras, beginning with its pre-state history, followed by “the first republic,” and the period of “the accidental empire,” Gorenberg suggested Israel might be on the verge of a fourth era: “a second republic.”
The character of this era, still to come, depends on the success or failure of the current peace negotiations. Gorenberg emphasized that if the current talks were to break down any future negotiations would find both sides worse off. Additionally, he emphasized the importance of the talks and of compromise in continuing Israeli democracy.
Gorenberg also emphasized the importance of narratives in the peace talks, and the significance of the conflict between Israeli narrative and Palestinian narrative. But he also suggested that a “reconciliation of narratives” is not the goal of the current peace negotiations. Instead, it is more important that these narratives do not prevent a successful compromise.
Gorenberg also raised thought-provoking lessons applicable beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When discussing the conflict between Israel as a democratic nation and Israel as a Jewish nation (can it be both at once? Does true commitment to one prevent the other?), he pointed to two important considerations: first, when thinking about global issues and peoples, we have a habit of imposing Western conceptions upon non-western peoples. Specifically, the concept of “Jewish” as distinctly a religion or a race is a Western concept, and thus not particularly meaningful in discussions of identity and democracy in Israel. Second, Gorenberg emphasized that adopting a pessimistic “change can’t happen” perspective is not only politically damaging, but also historically inaccurate.
Gorenberg’s remarks were introduced by the Dartmouth chapter of J-Street U, “a pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-Palestinian group that promotes American diplomatic leadership in achieving a two-state solution as an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Gershom Gorenberg is a senior correspondent for The American Prospect and contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times.