Insufficient Support - Jewish and Muslim Religious Leaders and the Declaration of Principles (Hebrew)

• In Event: Issues on Religion and State

Abstract

The recent events in Israel since 7.10.2023 have proven how deep is the Arab-Israeli conflict, which revolves around sacred territory as well as aspects of identity on both sides, claiming national, cultural, and religious belonging to it. The Declaration of Principles (DOP) in September 1993, part of the Oslo peace process between political elites aimed at resolving the conflict, was considered a historic event capable of bringing peace to the Middle East. But the Oslo process has slowly and torturously collapsed, and much research has been written about this failure, from many different perspectives. Political agreement alone is insufficient to properly resolve a conflict with such deep-seated identity underpinnings, especially when the agreement ignored the religious issues at the root of the conflict, and religious leaders were not involved from the outset in creating public legitimacy for it. This paper seeks to examine how the very positions of religious leaders who supported the DOP reflect ideas that obstructed transforming the political process into one of substantive reconciliation between Israeli and Palestinian societies, based on the writings of three religious leaders in Israel and the PA who supported the DOP. The approval of these leaders – Rabbi Yehuda Amital, an Israeli religious-Zionist Rosh Yeshiva and thinker; Sheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish, head of the Islamic Movement in Israel; and Sheikh Imad Faluji, a former senior Hamas member and former PA minister – could not be taken for granted, especially because some of them even emphasized the importance of peace itself as a religious value. However, the rationales they present surprisingly point, among other things, to the use of religious practices belonging to the realm of conflict incitement rather than resolution. Their important positions were characterized by pragmatism based on temporary interests, lacking the ideological and religious depth that could provide a proper counterweight to the prevailing public perceptions that see religious principles as an obstacle to peace. I argue that this was one of the many factors that prevented the political agreement between elites from becoming a process of reconciliation and recognition between peoples. Understanding it could assist in properly constructing future peace processes.

Author

• Odeya Schuz, Bar Ilan University