They won’t like hearing it, but the loudest supporters of both sides of the Israel/Palestine conflict are misguided. The struggle is not an existential clash of civilizations, competing nationalisms or religious fundamentalism vs. liberal democracy. Even comparative devastation — horrific, albeit asymmetrical, what some have called a competitive “Olympics of suffering” — is not the key issue.
At the risk of being unduly reductive, this struggle is one of territory; literally, the soil — the soil of homeland, not just dirt. From the perspective of 30,000 feet and 3,000 years of history, no one has an exclusive claim to the Holy Land.
Since the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea was at the crossroads of empires, it has always been a strife-torn neighborhood. Stripped of current incendiary rhetoric, the historical conflict is a turf battle over real estate. The Book of Deuteronomy says the struggle began when formerly enslaved Hebrews led by Joshua arrived from Egypt and fought the Canaanites.
Formal, prior nationhood is often cited as a contemporary claim. But each tribe in the land — Jews and pagans — had their petty kings and dynasties that rose and fell, both before and after Israelites arrived.
In following millennia, the contested land was never an empty “land without a people.” There were indigenous Israelites, Judeans, Idumeans, Samaritans, Phoenicians, Philistines, etc. Each tribe made divine claims to the land. All built temples and shrines and made sacrifices.
The Israelites believed the Hebrew God gave the land to them, building........