In a recent interview published in Haaretz, Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil stated that the Jewish people are “part of the land.” At first glance, this appears to mark a shift—an acknowledgment of history and presence where earlier frameworks often denied both.

And yet, in the same formulation, Jewish sovereignty is rejected.

This is often described as a contradiction. It is not. It is a structure.

By structure, I mean a stable configuration of thought—psychological as well as political—that organizes what can be recognized and what must be excluded. Structures are not accidental inconsistencies; they are patterned ways of maintaining coherence under pressure. They determine, often outside awareness, which elements of reality can be admitted and which must be reshaped or denied.

Here, what is being articulated is a position in which the Jew may be recognized as present, but not as sovereign; acknowledged, but not as an actor in his own right.

This distinction is not new. As Dara Horn has argued, Jews are often most readily embraced when they are no longer alive—when they exist as memory, symbol, or moral artifact. The dead Jew does not act. He makes no demands. He introduces no limits.

What we are seeing now is an adaptation of this pattern. The question is no longer whether Jews belong, but in what form they are permitted to belong.

To say that Jews are “part of the land” is to accept them at the level of symbol. It does not require engagement with Jewish agency, power, or self-definition. Sovereignty, however, introduces an entirely different order of reality. A sovereign people defines itself, defends itself, and sets limits. It cannot simply be absorbed into a framework defined by others.

From a psychoanalytic perspective, this can be understood as a form of psychic organization—a system that must maintain internal coherence. When confronted with a reality that threatens that coherence—here, the existence of a sovereign Jewish subject—it does not simply reject it outright. Instead, it reorganizes around it.

The result is a compromise formation.

The Jew is accepted as presence, history, even indigeneity—but not as a sovereign actor. In this way, the system avoids having to fully encounter the implications of a living, self-defining, and non-passive Jewish people.

This is not recognition. It is management.

Historically, one might have described such an arrangement as dhimmitude—a condition in which Jews were allowed to exist, but within limits that denied full agency and autonomy. What is notable is not only the external restriction, but the internal psychological logic it reflects: a system that stabilizes tension by locating it in the other, who becomes the carrier of what cannot be borne within.

The terms have changed. The structure has not.

A similar configuration can be seen in contemporary discourse more broadly, where Jewish presence may be acknowledged while Jewish sovereignty is reframed as the central problem. The language of “equal rights in a single state” appears to universalize the conflict, dissolving sovereignty into a broader claim. But in doing so, it removes precisely what is at issue: the existence of a Jewish people that governs itself, defends itself, and determines its own limits.

The issue, then, is not simply whether Jews are recognized. It is whether Jews are accepted as a people who act.

This is where resistance intensifies.

Because a Jewish people with agency introduces something that cannot be easily absorbed: limits, reciprocity, and the possibility of refusal. It disrupts frameworks that depend, consciously or not, on a more passive or symbolic figure.

What emerges, therefore, is a position that appears to resolve the conflict while preserving its underlying terms. Jews are included—but only in a form that does not fundamentally alter the system.

This is the illusion.

It presents itself as recognition. It is, in fact, a way of avoiding recognition.

Because to truly recognize the Jew in this context would mean recognizing not only presence, but sovereignty; not only history, but agency; not only belonging, but the right to act on that belonging.

That is the point at which the argument breaks down.

And that is precisely why it must be confronted.

This essay is a shortened adaptation of a longer Substack post where it can also be read in AI translation in Hebrew and Portuguese.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)