I was visiting my mother in my home town up North over the Thanksgiving weekend. The weather was mostly glorious: cool, dry, sunny. There were still leaves on the trees: red maples, yellow birches, orange oaks, iridescent spikes amidst the grey-green needles of spruces, pines, and cedars. I was able to indulge one of my favourite simple pleasures: to walk aimlessly in the bush in the morning, impelled by the joy of forward motion, enlivened by the autumn chill, stepping without orienting goal, just moving in open space, alone for an hour, my mind and eye open to whatever presents itself– maybe I tarry with a thought, but most I let go, perhaps a bird or tree catches my attention, but I don’t stop– I am not hunting for stories to tell but seeking release from the demands of projects, the freedom of moving my feet.

I wondered: what if, instead of baroque boardrooms and imposing wooden tables covered with laptops, important papers, and crystal pitchers full of water, surrounded by aides and flunkies, cameras and microphones, the political leaders of two sides locked in conflict met at the edge of the bush and walked side by side, deeper and deeper into the trees, without security personnel, unobserved by the media, in whatever clothes they normally wear at home when no one is looking. It takes profound trust to walk into the bush with a stranger. Each would be wary, the first steps around the corner past which they could not be seen would be taken with trepidation. But if they kept going they would both feel that release from tension that all good walks produce.

Then, maybe they could start to think outside of the self-enclosed dogma-worlds of politics. Looking down, they would see their different shoes supported by the same ground. Listening, they could hear the silence of the earth and feel its indifference. The earth supports whomever walks upon it; it does not recognize borders; it does not care about traditions; it does not speak human languages. Above, the sky would not look down upon them: it too is just there, indifferent to what goes on down below. If they could hold their tongues (but, alas, as Spinoza says, even though “the human condition would would indeed be far happier if it were equally in men’s power to keep silent as to talk … experience teaches with abundant examples that nothing is less within men’s power than to …hold their tongues.” Ethics Part 3, Scholium Proposition 2) but if they could, perhaps the felt indifference of sky and earth would help them put their historical conflicts into geological perspective.

History is short, geology is long. A century of tension and war is as nothing to the 4 billion year old planet, the 13 billion year old universe. Maybe, if they shut up long enough, and there were no cameras to posture in front of, no one to hear the pithy catch phrase or slogan, the thought would take shape in both of their heads that neither of them, nor the people they represent or claim to represent, live for even a century, and, therefore, if they are to enjoy the goods of mortal life, they have to enjoy them right now and not in some future that never arrives in which absolute justice would have been been attained.

Perhaps cool, still morning air would calm their passions and their measured steps would slow their thoughts. After kilometers, perhaps, Spinoza’s desire to talk would overcome them and they would both start to speak at once, but, freed from the coiled tension of enclosed spaces, they would both stop and say: “you first.” And that willingness to mutually yield would teach them that both of them have something to say and the right to say it, but if they shout slogans at each other at the same time, neither one will get across what they intend to say. And then, perhaps, they would realize that they are capable of staying silent and listening, and that it takes strength and courage to hold one’s tongue so that the other can speak.

They would have to mutually adjust their pace so that they stayed side by side so that one could hear when the other talked. They would give themselves over to the spontaneous logic of footsteps and conversations: walks end when the walker gets tired, talks end when neither side has anything more to say. A walk is not a race, a discussion is not a speech. Just as there is strength in silence there is strength in giving ourselves over to spontaneous dynamics. We lose sense of the passage of time, we lose sense of our self as controlling ego, we become part of a process that embraces our interests but in a more comprehensive unity with the interests of others and the world in which those interests are formed. We recognize ourselves as an active power, but in an order of things that we did not invent and cannot one-sidedly control. All understanding is understanding of limits; all understanding of limits is recognition of the implications of interconnection and relationship.

Socialists have paid much attention to political and economic structures, historical forces, and the dynamics of social struggle, but relatively little to the people that stand in social relations to each other. They have paid little attention to the inner dynamics by which people might change themselves, to free themselves from ancient hatreds, from the desire to punish and harm, convictions of absolute superiority and the righteousness and heroism of sacrifice They have tended to see personal transformation as a sub-political problem that will be mechanically solved by institutional changes. But people who are motivated by hatred, by belief in their superiority, by the need to be absolutely right will not transform into receptive, open, people capable of understanding others’ perspectives just because they succeed in making an institutional change. They will just be the same people in different institutions, and treat people as they have always treated them: as subordinates whose job is to do what they are told. Resources might be spread around somewhat differently, but social relationships, at a depth, emotional-ethical level will not have changed. Old conflicts will re-appear in new forms so long as we cannot walk side by side with people and listen to what they have to say.

Political conflicts are ultimately relationships between people, and in relationships, both sides are causally implicated in their dynamics. If they are dysfunctional, both sides will have to understand their role and change themselves. Activists might fantasize that the opponent will be completely overcome by the righteousness of their cause, but total victory that would eliminate the opponent entirely is never possible, and even if it were, it would require such monstrous levels of life-destruction that the outcome would be as bad or worse as the system it was supposed to replace and improve upon. There will be no solution to destructive human conflicts until individual people learn to relate to each other as human beings: free from ceremony and symbolism, free from history, free from rhetorical posturing, free from ritualistic displays of power and superiority, and, most of all, free from the belief that their side is absolutely right and the other side absolutely wrong.

Another way of putting this point is to say, simply, that warring sides need to learn to communicate. Communication is reciprocal: one side talks, the other side listens, back and forth until agreement is reached. Marxists tend to pay most attention to Hegel’s master slave dialectic, but they have to keep reading, to the end of Chapter Six, to find out how Spirit becomes self-consciously present to itself. Individuals recognize that they are essentially spirit (social self-conscious agents) when they forgive each other for their failures. Forgiveness is the highest form of recognition: since we are finite and fallible mistakes are inevitable, but since we are all parts of the same social whole, we have to live with each other. Freedom becomes a concrete reality in a society in which each recognizes themselves as parts of a greater whole, accepts their own and, crucially, others’ limitations. Cooperation presupposes that on its own each side is incapable of accomplishing its goals, but together they can create a world in which each of them can fully develop, contribute, and enjoy. Until people want that for the other as much as for themselves there will be no end to violent antagonism.

I developed my initial reaction to the October 7th attacks through a critical dialogue with a blog post written by Gilbert Achcar. Achcar explained the historical context that prompted the attacks but also criticized Hamas’s fundamentalist fanaticism and the potentially severe consequences their terrorist adventure might have on ordinary Palestinians. I agreed with the thrust of his position but in my own (on-going) analysis I tried to steer clear of the issue of the historical background to this latest phase of the conflict, not only because most everyone on the Left was focusing upon it, but, more importantly, because I think that the conflict will never be solved if both sides keep appealing to history to justify their failed tactics and strategies.

My two major conclusions at the time were:

“The Netanyahu government is composed of open racists who
have long dreamed of a pretext to crush all Palestinian national liberation struggle if not expel
the Arab population of Israel and the occupied territories outright. Shockingly, Hamas has given
them this pretext. All oppressed people have the right to resist oppression and to choose the
means by which that resistance is pursued. But it is the most lunatic, abject, political stupidity to
launch an invasion of a state with vastly superior military means under the assumption that a
spectacular assault by a few hundred guerrillas will be a crushing blow.”

and:

“Attacking military targets is one thing, gunning down unarmed teenagers attending an all night rave is indeed barbaric. Anyone who believes that such tactics can advance a liberatory cause is both politically deluded and morally bankrupt: ends do not justify any means whatsoever. Liberation and vengeance are distinct. Vengeance is born from hatred, justified or not. Liberation is born from the need to live freely: free to create democratic institutions that give voice to the collective goals of people, but also free from ancient hatreds that imprison the emotions and imaginations of people and poison their relationships with each other.” (See “Love is not the Answer, but it is a Start.“)

The year that has passed since October 7th 2023 has not given me any reason to revise those initial arguments. However, it has given me more reasons to believe that unless movements on both sides of the violence emerge and convince people of the need to free their thinking from attachment to past atrocities, the present problems cannot be solved and a future peace never constructed. Impossible as it might sound, Palestinians and Israelis have to sit down and start talking about what happens today, for the sake of tomorrow. That means no one at the table invokes the Holocaust or the Nakba, to say nothing of God’s will. The problems are human-made and can only be solved by human creative intelligence focusing on the way in which the current cycles of attack and counterattack are undermining everyone’s most basic interest in the social peace necessary for the secure enjoyment of life. Policies which manifestly undermine the interests that they are intended to achieve are materially irrational. Rational people, regardless of which side they are on, should be able to recognize this fact.

However, “utopian” would seem to be too mild a criticism of this argument. Materially irrational or not, everyone is, for the moment, locked into the thinking that generates revenge cycles. Ayatollah Khameini argued that Iran’s missile attack at the end of September was “legal, legitimate, and rational.” I doubt that it was legal, perhaps it was legitimate by the rules of the existing game, but it was certainly not rational, given Israel’s (in alliance with the United States) capacity for disproportionate response. Following the strike, and entirely predictably, Israel assured the world that it would respond in kind. Netanyahu argued that Israel had a “duty” to respond to bombs with bombs. If politicians have duties towards their citizens they would be, first and foremost, duties to ensure that the conditions of life-security and life-development are met. Those conditions have deteriorated for Israelis since October 7th. If Netanhayu is serious about duties, and Khameini is serious about rationality, and if the different Palestinian factions and their allies are serious about making political progress towards some sort of political solution, radically different strategies and tactics are needed.

Again, “utopian” seems too mild a criticism of this argument. The problem is not only leadership– although that remains a major problem. The problem is that the general population on both sides of the conflict seems to have given up hope that peaceful co-existence is possible. The recent “Pulse” Israeli-Palestinian poll, jointly conducted by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) and the International Program in Conflict Resolution and Mediation at Tel Aviv University found, unsurprisingly, that the two camps were more polarized than ever. Almost identical numbers viewed their people as the primary victims of the conflict (84% of Jewish Israelis and 83 % of Palestinians) and there is an almost total absence of trust between the communities (94% of Israelis and 86% of Palestinians say the other side cannot be trusted). The reason why? 66% of Jewish Israelis and 61% of Palestinians believe the other side wants to eradicate them.

But is the situation totally hopeless? There do seem to be constructive political attitudes, at least on the Palestinian side. Notwithstanding the almost complete destruction of Gaza and repeated attacks across the West Bank, more Palestinians support a two state solution (40%) than a single state in which the Jewish population would enjoy limited rights (33). Implicit in this finding is the sort of constructive thinking that can free people from revenge cycles. Those who prefer the two state solution view Palestinian self-determination as a creative, forward-looking project and not an opportunity to punish Jewish Israelis by depriving them of the rights that Palestinians have been denied. They understand that ‘resistance” is not an end in itself. Ultimately, political struggles for national self-determination are about creating an institutional structure in which people exercize collective control over the resources and institutions that good lives require. Resistance movements must ultimately justify themselves on the basis of positive results for the lives of the people they claim tor present. Rhapsodizing about heroism and martyrdom as hellfire rains down from F35’s ensures only that the pile of bodies and rubble will grow higher.

Unfortunately, as support for a two state solution rises in Palestine, it has declined among Jewish Israelis. Twice as many Jewish Israelis support annexation of the West Bank without equal rights for Palestinians (42%), as those who support a two-state solution, (21%). That figure represents a 13-point decline from 2022 and the lowest since the early 1990s. 14% of Israeli Jews support a single democratic state.

If one wanted to view those results with rose coloured glasses firmly on, one could say that it is encouraging that even a quarter of Jewish Israeli’s have not abandoned hope in favour of a policy of expulsion and eradication. But to believe that they can win the political battle within Israel would seem naive in the extreme. Half a million Israelis demonstrated in favour of a negotiated ceasefire for the sake ensuring the release of the remaining hostages. Instead, Netanyahu delivered an invasion of Lebanon. The first step towards calming this conflict as a precondition for renewed negotiations towards a political solution is going to have to be taken by the one actor outside the region who could halt the fighting tomorrow: the United States.

While US policy seems rudderless and ineffective, people should recall a few months ago, prior to the invasion of Rafah, when Biden halted delivery of 2000 pound bombs and demanded that Israel vastly increase the quantity of aid allowed into Gaza. The result was immediate. Israel complied with US demands. It is also true that they soon resumed ignoring US concerns about the invasion of Rafah, but the lesson I take from that incident is that credible US threats to halt military assistance get Israel’s attention. Hence, a credible threat to suspend all military aid would force Israel to the bargaining table, first for the sake of a ceasefire and then– if consistent and credible pressure were maintained– toward a political solution to decades of violence and dispossession. Without US leadership the conflict can continue indefinitely, to the detriment, primarily, of Palestinians and their allies. Neither Hezbollah nor Hamas can effectively repel Israeli airstrikes and Iran, although it is too large to conquer or subdue, could be seriously damaged by joint Israeli and US strikes. I doubt that the restive population of Iran is interested in the further erosion of their living standards for the sake of Khameini’s foreign adventures.

Everyone concerned, therefore, has a reason to climb down and start to learn how to work together. As it is with people so too with peoples: the free development of each is the precondition of the free development of all.