Close Encounters of the Third Kind

I have been teaching the seminar “Negotiating Middle East Peace,” which addresses successful and failed peace processes in the Arab Israeli conflict, in different settings, for the last 23 years. For some, the title of the seminar might reflect political fiction (“peace in the Middle East”?), similar to science fiction movies masterly directed by Steven Spielberg.  For me, it is not science fiction, but an attempt to blend knowledge about facts (documents, peace treaties, peace plans) with different narratives and interpretations.  I have taught the subject to foreign and Israeli students here at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel; in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Madrid, Spain; and in Washington D.C, the United States.  Yet, I have never experienced the challenge of teaching the topic in an intensive four day-seminar setting that took place in a European capital, involving a group of twenty graduate students coming from Spain, Mexico, Italy, the United States, Israel, Belgium, and several countries from the Arab Middle East.  That was an extraordinary and challenging experience for me, both as a Professor of International Relations and as a peace scholar, and as an involved Jewish Israeli citizen, who moved from Argentina to Israel forty-six years ago, mostly because of my  Zionist ideology (one of my tasks was to explain to the students the original and benign significance of Zionism as the national liberation movement for the Jewish people established by Theodor Herzl, and why Israel is not necessary a clear-cut case of a ‘settler colonialist’ state, like Spain in the Americas).

With the exception of a student who decided in the first day to boycott me (in her opinion, as an Israeli political scientist who teaches peace, I am not qualified or morally entitled to teach her, due to the actions Israel committed in the last two years against the Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese), the rest of the students actively participated and engaged in the seminar. At the same time, many of them openly challenged me and asked very difficult questions (mostly regarding the motivations behind the jihadist/genocidal acts of Hamas on October 7, 2023, and the alleged Israeli ‘genocide’ in Gaza in the aftermath of the massacre).

In the morning of the first day, I asked them, before immersing ourselves in the history and analysis of the convoluted Israeli Palestinian and Arab Israeli conflicts about “possible futures”.  Among the initial answers I got there were:  The impossibility of making peace; the need to build peace bottom-up; Israeli paranoid attitudes about security; the ‘Palestinian fatigue’ among Arab countries; the need to stabilize the cease fire, to change the leaderships on both sides, and to have an able mediation; the need for an international (imposed?) solution like in Bosnia in 1995; the need for education; the lack of trust; the tension between justice and peace; the spectrum of Israel becoming a malign regional hegemon; the possibility, in the long-term, of a two-state solution, versus a widespread and shared pessimist position that the conflict is intractable and unresolvable at this stage, and into the foreseeable future.  In the afternoon, I taught them some theoretical and conceptual tools, differentiating between conflict and war, different types of peace, bargaining and mediation, cooperation vs. conflict, and my own model of peaceful territorial change.

In the second day we covered the historical background of the conflict, and I answered a specific question regarding the meaning of the so-called ‘Zionist project’, including the benign (pragmatic Zionism) versus malign, degenerative, versions of Zionism, as embodied in Betzalel Smotrich’s plan of a one-state, apartheid, solution.  In the afternoon we had a very engaging session discussing possible solutions for Jerusalem and for the refugee issue. For instance, I taught them that alongside the Palestinian refugee issue, nobody talks about the fate of about 800,000 refugee Jews from Arab countries who had to leave in the aftermath of the first Arab Israeli war, like the case of my wife’s family, who left Bagdad, Iraq.  I was surprised that most of the students agreed that a feasible solution to the Palestinian refugee issue should take place within an independent Palestinian state (alongside Israel, not instead of it), ruling out the possibility of a ‘right of return’ to the State of Israel itself.

In the third day, we studied about the inter-state peace processes that succeeded (Israel-Egypt, 1979, and Israel-Jordan, 1994), and those that failed (Israel-Lebanon who signed an ephemeral peace treaty in May 1983 that lasted only for six months; and Israel-Syria who negotiated between 1991 and 2011).  In the afternoon, we addressed the historical events regarding the Israeli Palestinian complex relationship and inconclusive peace processes, especially between 1993 and 2023.  I was surprised that none of the students (Europeans, Americans, Arabs, and Israelis) knew anything about the Arab Peace Initiative of March 2002, which is still on the table, and it is a vital and relevant document regarding “negotiating Middle East peace.” Actually, not many Israeli students (or citizens in general) know about the Arab initiative as well, or about similar Israeli initiatives from within our civil society, like “The Israeli Initiative” published by the Mitvim Institute in January 2024.

The fourth and last day was the most difficult to cope with.  In the morning, after reviewing the Kerry Plan (December 2016) the Trump Plan (2020) and the Abraham Accords (2020) we had a very difficult discussion about the causes and consequences of the Israeli-Hamas war.  I asked the students for their opinions regarding the Hamas’ December 2025 document, where it presented its narrative in terms of a ‘military operation’ and justifiable ‘resistance,’ versus the sheer facts of a genocidal massacre perpetrated by Hamas against Jews, Palestinians, and foreigners in the Western Negev. Though most of the students condemned and recognized Hamas ‘wrongdoing’, they focused their comments on ‘Israel’s genocide’ in the Gaza Strip.  When they asked for my own opinion, I quoted the recent address by Prof. Michael Walzer in Jerusalem, one of the most important political philosophers of the 20th century and author of Just and Unjust Wars (1977).  Walzer recently said that “the war was necessary, but wars must have an end-in-view.  Your government (i.e. Israel) consistently refused to commit itself to any substantive end.”  In Walzer’s view, “Hamas designed and fought a war that Israel could not respond to without killing civilians, destroying homes, and displacing populations,” setting a moral and strategic trap to Israelis.  At this point, one of the students, a professional nurse who worked in the Gaza Strip for one year in 2024-2025, shared with us her personal tragic stories, and we all cried, in a unique moment of shared humanity, notwithstanding nationalities, ethnicities, and clashing narratives.

In the last afternoon of the fourth day, I summarized the workshop and asked them, again, about possible futures, and about what they learned during the four-day seminar.  Regarding the future, about half of the students agreed that in the immediate term, the Palestinians need international protection, and that in the long term, the only feasible and moral solution should be a two-state solution.  At the same time, some argued that there is need to establish Confidence-Building-Measures (CBMs), to de-radicalize both sides, and to bring about disarmament, not just of Hamas, but of Israel as well.  Several students insisted that the conflict remains intractable.  One student suggested a one-state solution, in the form of a federal scheme (a benign ‘Israstine’), as a ‘more just’ and feasible solution than the two-state solution.

As for the question what they did learn during the seminar, the answers were quite striking and straightforward:  We are all human beings. Hope should be stronger than fear. It is hard to separate emotions from rational positions. Righteousness and certainty are a barrier to dialogue. There is a need for empathy to ‘the other’. There is an urgent need for knowledge. We should find a common language.  We should meet in ‘neutral places’ that facilitate dialogue. Israelis (and other countries) should not patronize Palestinians and treat them like children.  Perfection is the enemy of progress.

For me, the seminar was an instance of Roger MacGinty’s argument about ‘everyday peace’, though in a benign and neutral setting, a close encounter of the third type.  I traced consensus among most of the participants regarding the following points:  the ‘right of return’ to Palestinian refugees should be to their own Palestinian state, and not to Israel; Israel is a fact, whether you like it or not, and it has a right to exist; Palestinians should get international protection; the best solution, in rational and moral terms, is a two-state solution; both Hamas and Israel violated international law and committed war crimes; there is a need for ‘ripeness,’ and dialogue should prevail.  At the same time, many students did not agree with the premise that a future Palestinian state should be de-militarized for their own benefit (I told them that the Palestinian negotiators themselves agreed to that in the past!), there was no consensus regarding the definition of Zionism, whether Israel is a settler colonial state, and what is the clear distinction between guerrilla (morally justifiable) and terrorism (not justifiable).

With all the inherent difficulties, prejudices, boycotts, emotional outbursts, we managed to have a constructive dynamic of dialogue, and ultimately to sustain hope, during these four intensive days.  There was not science fiction or political fiction at work, but clear evidence that we should work hard in creating a better reality to Israelis, Palestinians, and all peoples in the region (and in the world), in the aftermath of this horrible war.  And that we should talk, study, teach, work, and bring peace as the only possible way-out of the current Israeli Palestinian tragedy.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)