What Real Peace would Take - A Reality and Honesty
Check
Israel and Palestine
R.M. Westerink; August 2026
|
Bottom line 1. An agreement between leaders (Layer 1)
holds only if the populations carry it (Layer 2). Without that, the first
crisis or power vacuum brings it down. 2. Every conflict narrative here is addressed
to three audiences at once: the group's own public, the other group,
and third parties (US, Europe, Arab states, UN, courts, media). A move at one
address ripples to the other two. Thinking in terms of "two
stories" misses this. 3. The decisive instrument is the recognition
declaration, the one act that can be made credibly at all three
addresses. Proposed sequence: West, then Israel, then Palestinians,
with each step valuable on its own so the chain survives a break. 4. If every party keeps its current role
(exclusive victim, exclusive rightful claimant, partisan judge), the balance
of sorrows compounds and the cost of recognition rises with each generation. 5. Full declarations are unlikely in the near
term. For use as benchmark and reality check. |
1. Why agreements alone are not enough
A peace settlement has two layers.
Layer 1 is agreements between groups and their leaders: treaties,
borders, security arrangements.
Layer 2 is what ordinary people in those groups believe: how they read
history and what they accept as justice. The literature on protracted conflict
is consistent on this point. Reconciliation requires a change in the society's conflict
ethos (its shared beliefs about its own goals, the adversary, its own
group and the nature of peace; Bar-Tal), and peace without a change in
attitudes and structures stays unstable (Galtung's negative versus positive
peace).
A signed agreement on top of an unchanged ethos pauses the war; it does
not end it.
2. Every narrative has three addresses
Each side's account of the conflict does three jobs at the same
time. The failure modes below are where processes most often break.
|
Address |
What the
narrative does there |
What goes
wrong |
Lever |
|
Own public |
Holds identity together;
justifies sacrifices already made. |
Any concession reads as
betrayal. Untreated trauma becomes the recruiting pool for the next
escalation. |
Let the group's own
suffering stay seen and commemorated. Trauma care. Credible hope that
situations can change. |
|
The other group |
Accusation plus a demand for recognition: "you must know
what was done to us." |
Recognition offered only where it is easy is not recognition.
Dehumanization prepares the next round. |
Recognition that answers the other side's grievance without
withdrawing one's own account. Equal-status contact. |
|
Third parties |
Legitimacy claim: post
our suffering to the international ledger. |
Each external validation
(resolution, ruling, prize) is harvested at home as proof of being right and
feeds the hard core. Facilitators get absorbed into one side's story. |
Affirm both narratives
instead of crowning one. Facilitator as symmetric witness. Coordinated
external narrative truce. |
Third parties are never blank slates:
Germany carries its own history as moral capital toward Israel, the US
its alliance, postcolonial States their liberation narratives.
Silence and judgment by outsiders are both positions in the story. This is why
the external address is not a side issue; after the failure of Camp David in
2000, the fight over who refused what was waged mainly before American and
international audiences.
3. Six success factors for lasting peace
|
Factor |
What it
requires |
Instruments |
Observable
test |
|
1. Recognition architecture in three directions |
Intra: own suffering may be
seen and remembered. |
Declarations (Section 4);
memorials; claims and fact-finding commissions; a positive-peace ethos in
schools, media and commemoration. |
Can each side retell the
other's story without experiencing it as capitulation? |
|
2. Facilitator as narratively symmetric witness |
Judge of the process, not of history. Procedural justice: voice,
neutrality, respect, trustworthy motives. |
Kelman-style problem-solving workshops (closed setting, no
audience to play to). |
Do both sides trust the facilitator as process holder? |
|
3. Sacred cores off the price axis |
Return, land, holy sites,
existential security cannot be bought; attempts to do so harden positions. |
Map each side's cores;
moral reframing and symbolic recognition. |
Is each core reframed
rather than bought? |
|
4. Trauma and hope infrastructure |
Mental health care at scale; messaging that groups and conflicts
can change (hope raises willingness to compromise). |
Care programs in Gaza and Israeli border communities; veterans
and survivors support. |
Are war generations treated, or recruited? |
|
5. Equal-status structures |
Contact works as a lever
only under structural equality; otherwise meetings reproduce the hierarchy. |
Institutionally backed
joint programs with equal standing. |
Do joint programs
reproduce or reduce hierarchy? |
|
6. External narrative truce |
Donors, media and courts coordinate how they address the
narratives. Only partly feasible, but without it the adjudication fight keeps
feeding hardening. |
Donor conditions; consistent standards; avoiding one-sided prizes
and resolutions. |
Is external validation still harvested as proof at home? |
4. Declarations: the central instrument
A declaration turns abstract recognition into a concrete spoken
commitment, and it is the one instrument that can be calibrated for all three
addresses. Drafts for each step exist in the companion documents. The design
requirements are the same throughout:
•
Concrete: what happened, how much, what followed. A grandmother must
recognize her own experience in the text.
•
No "but": justifications written into the same sentence cancel the
recognition. Security concerns belong in a separate, simultaneous statement.
•
Own role only: each speaker addresses what its own side did, not what the other
did.
•
Moral, not legal: recognizing wrong is not conceding a legal claim or the legitimacy
of the state.
•
Right speaker, right place: heads of government, in both languages, before the audience that
most needs to hear it.
•
Followed by a deed: a fund, a memorial, textbook revisions, an end to payments to
perpetrators. Words without a deed are read as rhetoric.
•
A defined end point for the claims covered, so the liability does not grow without
limit.
Proposed sequence.
Each
step lowers the cost of the next, and removes the paralyzing question of who
goes first.
|
Step |
Speaker |
Core content |
Main
audience |
Main
obstacle |
|
1 |
EU/UK and US
(simultaneously) |
Own role in the origins
(Mandate and Balfour, Holocaust, refused refuge, restrictive US immigration)
and in the continuation (arms, vetoes, unequal standard). Both narratives
affirmed. Material fund. End point for covered claims. |
Third parties; Israelis
and Palestinians |
US administration
unlikely near term; EU does not speak with one voice. |
|
2 |
Israel |
Specific acknowledgment of the 1948 dispossession, life under
occupation since 1967, and civilian harm in the Gaza war. No "but."
Moral, not legal. |
Palestinians; Israeli public |
Taboo around Nakba; coalition politics; fear that
recognition erodes legitimacy. |
|
3 |
Palestinians (joint
leadership) |
October 7 and attacks on
civilians named and condemned. End glorification of perpetrators and
payments. Recognition of the Jewish people's historic bond and right to live
in security. |
Israeli public |
Divided leadership;
Hamas; public opinion; the feeling of asymmetry. |
Why West first: a Western declaration
spreads part of the ledger across several debtors, so Israel is not the sole
debtor, which is the main source of defensiveness. It must cover both
narratives, or it will be read as delegitimization by one side and as erasure
by the other.
Test for every declaration: can it be told at all three addresses
without identity loss?
5. The hardening loop and where to interrupt it
The central dynamic is a self-reinforcing cycle: external
validation, then growth of the internal hard core, then less room for
concessions, then desperation and escalation, then more suffering, then more
external validation. A process that does not break this loop changes
nothing structural. Four points of intervention:
•
Break validation: an external narrative truce and symmetric affirmation by outsiders.
•
Shift the ledger: Western declarations and fund, so concession no longer reads as
defeat at home.
•
Shrink the hard core: trauma and hope infrastructure, so grievance is not converted into
recruits.
•
Protect the process: By a facilitator who stays symmetric. A facilitator who adopts one
side's frame ("deradicalization" or "security first" versus
"occupation first") becomes a character in the other side's story and
is no longer usable.
6. What is at stake if each party holds its role
The logic is symmetric, the content is not.
Scale of loss and power
are very unequal, and each side accrues liability in different ways: through
harm done and through recognition withheld.
The term Erbschuld
means inherited accountability for consequences, not inherited guilt; each
generation re-incurs it as long as recognition and settlement are deferred.
|
Actor |
Role it
tends to hold |
If it holds
the role |
Move that
breaks the pattern |
|
Israel |
Victim of October 7 and
decades of terror; security first; recognition feared as loss of legitimacy. |
Occupation and settlement
growth keep adding to the other side's ledger; the demand for recognition
grows heavier each generation; isolation and a hard core on both sides. |
Specific acknowledgment
of the Palestinian experience without conceding legitimacy; deeds that make
it credible. |
|
Palestinians |
Dispossessed and occupied; resistance as legitimate; recognizing
Israeli victimhood feared as erasing their own. |
Attacks on civilians keep confirming the other side's fear and
justify hard-line policy; leadership split persists; untreated trauma feeds
recruitment. |
Unambiguous condemnation of attacks on civilians and recognition
of Jewish historic ties, backed by action against glorification and payments. |
|
West (US, EU, UK) |
Partisan adjudicator:
shield for one side, selective critic of the other. |
Facilitator capture:
trusted by neither side as a process holder; each outside validation feeds
the hard core. |
Own-role declarations;
equal standards on arms and settlements; a fund that spreads the cost. |
|
Regional states, UN, courts, media |
Selective validation; instrumentalizing the cause. |
The adjudication fight escalates: more claims, more selective
validation, more hardening. |
Coordinated, symmetric treatment of both narratives; Arab states
acknowledging their own roles (1948 war, treatment of refugees and of Jews
who left). |
The compounding cost.
Failure of Layer 2
is demonstrably more expensive than prevention.
Without recognition, narratives
harden into doctrine, dehumanization becomes normal and makes the next
escalation psychologically possible, the logic of the "devoted actor"
(moral rather than instrumental rationality) displaces compromise, and
untreated trauma supplies the fighters and hardliners of the next round.
Skipping Layer 2 does not postpone the payment; it raises the interest.
7. If full declarations are not feasible. And they will not
Our own assessment is that full declarations from either side are
fundamentally unlikely in the near term. The asymmetry, and the unresolved
question of recognizing a right that arose from large-scale immigration, make
them politically very costly. Even where maintaining the conflict is even more
costly and even with an Erbschuld consequence on coming Generations.
What the current approach however may contribute is serve as an honesty benchmark
for all.
8. Caveats and evidence base
- The three-address model (intra,
inter, external) is a synthesis of the research literature, not an
empirically tested theory. The external layer is the least developed:
its mechanisms rest on well-supported theory but few direct effect
measurements.
- The declaration texts are constructs
following the logic, not predictions or proposals that any party would
accept. Historical details should be checked by historians from both sides.
- Figures and facts from earlier
sections of this analysis are rounded orders of magnitude and not all were
re-verified for this summary.
Appendix: The Four Declarations
The criteria a recognition declaration should satisfy are mentioned in Chapter
4.
Here we focus on the essential texts without trying to propose any
follow-up deeds.
Status of the drafts: these are constructs stemming from the logic of the Conflict
Situation, not predictions and not as texts any party has agreed to.
Historical
details were drafted from general knowledge.
Four Declarations
A. United States
Role addressed: continuation of the conflict
(arms, diplomatic cover, unequal standard), plus the historical refusal of
refuge.
Primary audience: Israelis and
Palestinians.
"We speak as Americans, about the role our country has played.
In the 1930s and 1940s we closed our doors to Jewish refugees who
asked us for help. That is part of the history that led to the founding of
Israel. We acknowledge it.
Since 1948 we have recognized and supported Israel, and we have
become its most important ally. We have supplied weapons, given billions in
aid, and used our veto in the United Nations to prevent decisions. In doing so
we have not always applied the same standard to Israeli policy that we applied
to others. We have tolerated settlements that we ourselves often called an
obstacle. We have led peace negotiations without securing results, and in doing
so we gave Palestinians the impression that we were not an honest broker.
In the war that began in 2023, tens of thousands of Palestinians
were killed in Gaza, with weapons that came from our country. We acknowledge
the suffering of those families and our responsibility for our contribution. We
also acknowledge that Israelis were attacked on October 7 in a way that nobody
may justify, and that we promised Israel we would protect it.
We do not say that our support for Israel was a mistake. We say that
friendship demands honesty, and that we owe Palestinians and Israelis the same
care."
B. European Union and United Kingdom
Role addressed: origins of the conflict
(Mandate and Balfour, persecution leading to the Holocaust, refused refuge,
partition of the region), and inconsistency since.
Primary audience: Palestinians and the Arab
world (as former colonial power), Israelis.
"We speak as Europeans, about what happened in and from Europe.
For centuries Europe persecuted, excluded and murdered Jews. The
Holocaust was conceived and carried out on European soil, with the cooperation
of many European countries and populations. When Jews asked for help in the
1930s, we too often refused them entry. After 1945 we did not do enough to
protect the survivors and to let them return to their homes. We acknowledge
that guilt.
Europe also let its Jewish question be solved partly outside Europe,
in a land that was already inhabited. In 1917 the United Kingdom promised a
national home for the Jewish people, then governed the land as the Mandate
power, suppressed the Arab revolt of 1936-39 with force, restricted Jewish
immigration in 1939 at the moment the need was greatest, and left in 1948
without a workable solution. European powers divided the region without
consulting its inhabitants. As a result, Palestinians paid a price for a
problem Europe had created. We acknowledge that wrong too.
Since then we have defended the rights of both peoples in words, but
have been inconsistent in deeds. We called settlements illegal and yet traded
with them. We financed Palestinian institutions and demanded too little
accountability. We supplied weapons without fully weighing the consequences. We
allowed antisemitism in Europe to grow again, and the treatment of Palestinians
and Muslims in Europe deserves equal attention.
We take responsibility for our share. We do not say who must follow
us. We say only what is ours."
C. Israel
Role addressed: the 1948 dispossession, life
under Israeli authority since 1967, and civilian harm in the Gaza war.
Primary audience: Palestinians; the Israeli
public.
"We stand here to say what has not been said for too long.
In 1948 about 750,000 Palestinians lost their homes. More than four
hundred villages disappeared. Many fled, many were expelled, and nobody was
allowed to return. Their children and grandchildren still live in camps and in
exile. That was a wrong, and we acknowledge it as a wrong.
Since 1967 millions of Palestinians have lived under our authority,
without the rights we take for granted for ourselves. We demolished homes, took
land, restricted movement, and let generations grow up with checkpoints and
humiliation. That too was and is a wrong.
In the war that began on October 7, 2023, tens of thousands of men,
women and children were killed in Gaza, and almost an entire population lost
its home. We acknowledge the suffering of every Palestinian who lost someone,
and we take responsibility for what our government and our army did in it.
We recognize that the Palestinian people is a people, with its own
history, its own loss and its own right to live in dignity.
We do not ask the families for forgiveness as a condition, but as a
hope. What we say today is not a demand. It is a debt we no longer deny."
D. Palestinians
Role addressed: October 7, 2023, and earlier
attacks on civilians; glorification of violence; the Jewish people's historic
bond with the land and right to live in security.
Primary audience: the Israeli public.
Speaker note: ideally the joint Palestinian
leadership, addressing Israelis in Hebrew and Arabic.
"We address ourselves to the people of Israel.
On October 7, 2023, about 1,200 men, women and children were killed
in their homes, in the streets and at a festival. About 250 people were taken
away. Sexual violence was committed. They were civilians, and it was murder. We
condemn it without reservation. No injustice exists that justifies this.
That violence did not come out of nowhere. For years Israelis were
killed on buses, in restaurants and in markets, and rockets were fired at
cities. That too was murder, and for that too we take responsibility. We have
for too long honored violence, congratulated perpetrators and paid their
families. That ends.
We recognize that the Jewish people has an ancient history in this
land, that it was persecuted for centuries, and that six million were murdered.
This land is also your home. You have the right to live here in security and
dignity, without fear for your children.
We acknowledge the pain of every family that lost someone, and of
the hostages and their loved ones. We do not ask you to forget. We ask you to
know that we see what was done to you.
We do not say this as an exchange. We say it because it is
true."
Notes on the
drafts: figures are rounded (about 750,000 displaced in 1948, more than 400
villages, about 1,200 killed and about 250 taken hostage on October 7). Each
text addresses only its own speaker's role; none makes statements about
borders, Jerusalem, the Palestinian right of return, or legal qualifications
such as genocide, which belong to the settlement and to the courts
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