If I had to define the Israel–Palestine conflict in one word, it would be “fear.”
Fear caused it, fear sustains and exacerbates it, and fear will either eternalize it or end it in a bloodbath the world will never forgive.
To change this, we must understand fear in the Israel–Palestine conflict, and how it operates psychologically.
The Jewish question asks, “Can Jews assimilate well enough to escape antisemitism? If not, what then?” Citing violent Russian pogroms and the Dreyfus Affair, Theodor Herzl answered in 1897, “No, so we need our own state.” He is regarded as the father of Zionism, the belief that Jews have a right to self-determination in their own state, and began the political movement to return to Eretz Israel, the ancestral homeland, now called Palestine. The Jews saw local Arab nationalist aspirations following the fall of the Ottoman empire as a threat, so they kept to themselves. This fear was quickly justified by anti-Zionist Arab attacks; the 1920 Nebi Musa riots; and Britain betraying the 1917 Balfour Declaration and shifting favor to the Arabs at Jewish expense, to the point that they attacked Jews fleeing to Palestine from Nazi territory. This caused Revisionist and Revolutionary Zionism to become more popular than Labor and General Zionism; the formation of the Haganah, which originally advocated for self-defense, now advocating for armed offensive resistance; the split of the Lehi and Irgun terrorist groups from the Haganah; and ultimately, the 1944–47 Jewish Revolt, which triggered the 1947–48 Mandate Civil War, which led to U.S. recognition of the foundation of Israel in May 1948. The Arab League immediately attacked and lost in 1949. Over the next two years, there was a mass Jewish exodus from Europe — mostly Holocaust survivors — and the entire Muslim world to Israel.
Sources disagree on when the Palestinian identity formed and nationalist movement began, but we know the nationalism was partly based on fear. The Arabs in Palestine at the time of the First Aliyah (1882–1903) lived under Ottoman rule in the early days of Arab nationalism; they saw the arriving Jews, descendants of exiles and reeking of Europe, as a threat to their land and identity. This fear was partially realized when landowning Arabs sold their land to Jews with no concern for the Arabs who actually lived on and worked the land. At their former landlords’ encouragement, these Arabs blamed the Jews for their loss and sometimes attacked them to get their land back. It was justified by Jews launching attacks of their own and initially having British favor, eventually triggering the 1936–39 Arab Revolt; Britain betraying the 1915–16 McMahon–Hussein correspondence via the 1917 Balfour Declaration and 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement; 1920 Nebi Musa riots; and the French church, during the Franco-Syrian War, validating Middle Eastern antisemitism by introducing European antisemitism. In 1945, the Arab League formed to oppose Zionism and promote pan-Arabism. This alliance lost in the 1947–48 and 1948–49 wars, which triggered the Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic). In 1964, the Palestinian Liberation Organization was founded, also in part to oppose Zionism. The PLO was the first time Palestinian nationalists unified in a way comparable to the organization of Zionists.
Because Zionism and Arab/Palestinian nationalism both formed out of fear and quickly incorporated fearing each other specifically, it’s easy to play the two “sides” off each other for one’s own benefit. Individuals, political parties, and even external powers have done and still do this, and it has devastating consequences every time. Since its start, the Israel–Palestine conflict has been plagued by a vicious cycle of mistrust and violence. Every time we’ve approached a solution or stasis, someone attacks someone else, violence breaks out, and trust erodes between all involved groups, ultimately halting whatever progress was made — an outcome desired by those who instigated the violence.
Fear is one of the basest and most important human instincts. It keeps us safe by alerting us to danger and preparing us to deal with it. But too much fear and misplaced fear are dangerous, and even healthy fear, like all emotions, has its inherent drawbacks.
The Radically Open Dialectical Behavioral Theory Neuroregulatory Model of Emotions dictates five neuroceptions of evocative cues and provides the physical, emotional, and social effects of each neuroception. When we appraise an evocative cue as threatening (potentially damaging or dangerous), our autonomic nervous system triggers a defensive avoidance system to promote fight/flight behaviors and engages our defensive sympathetic nervous system. As a result, we have the urge to flee or attack; our bodies feel tense and agitated with fast, shallow breathing, a fast heart rate, and sweating; we feel anxious, irritated, and defensively aroused; we socially present constrained facial expressions, tight gestures, an averted gaze or hostile stare, a monotonic voice, and a fight/flight response; and our empathic perception capacities and prosocial signaling capacities are both impaired, meaning we’re less able to read others’ emotions and send prosocial signals. Per RO-DBT, prosocial signals are (sub)conscious signals humans use to demonstrate willingness and ability to be part of the “tribe”; they trigger safety neuroception in tribe members and enable positive, effective social interactions. Antisocial signals are the opposite, signaling hostility and danger to the tribe members, triggering threatening neuroception in them, and hindering social interactions.
RO-DBT thus demonstrates how fear breeds fear. If you enter a situation afraid, you’re more likely to appraise cues in the situation as threatening and to signal antisocial cues, which in turn reaffirms the threatened neuroception and perpetuates the cycle. Just one threatened person can upend a situation by detecting and reacting to nonexistent threats, so imagine what can happen when everyone is afraid, and there’s a history of valid threat. This is the dynamic of the Israel–Palestine conflict, from political leaders brokering peace deals to average people encountering each other online. This is the dynamic we need to fix.
The RO-DBT Neuroregulatory Model of Emotions can also help us fix this dynamic. We can recognize when we’re threatened and manage its effects with awareness and self-soothing, and we can intentionally trigger safety neuroception in preparation for difficult situations. On an individual scale, this will let us have more productive conversations and work through our fears. We’ll slowly come to feel safe in each other’s presence.
To encourage this on a larger scale, I support the binational state solution: one state for both Jews and Palestinians. We will finally get to know each other and put an end to our fears, and the crux of the conflict will weaken. It won’t be easy by any means, but it will truly end the conflict.
