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The current resurgence in the cycle of violent Israeli-Palestinian retaliation and recrimination stretches back, depending on who you talk to, to Passover 2002, the past 24 months, the war of 1967, the war of 1948—or right back to the time of Isaac and Ishmael. The acts of Palestinian suicide bombers and those of Israeli occupation and incursion must end. In this note, I will consider the current phase of the long-running conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in the context of wondering about dissociated patterns of relating on both sides. I would like to suggest that to see the conflict through such a lens allows us to consider the present impasse in the political and diplomatic relationship between the two parties as temporary and as being generated by a kind of mutual annihilation anxiety and a difficulty recognizing the subjectivity of the other. What can be done to reduce the fear, anger, hopelessness and vengeance and in so doing introduce the idea again of mutual dialogue, of a co-constructed conversation between the two parties, with perhaps even the mediating support of a third party?
The current “intifada” or uprising began in September 2000 and has made life in Israel and in Palestine particularly intolerable. The ambient anxiety and uncertainty affects everyone. The Israeli Army's grip on the West Bank and Gaza has increased with aerial bombings, frequent town closures, curfews, roadblocks preventing food and medicine entering, mass arrests, more settlements, targeted assassinations, home demolitions, destruction of water resources, farm lands and olive groves. In Israel, tourism and capital investments are down and unemployment is up. Suicide bombers have turned daily life into a giant existential game of chance. These days Israelis have to ask themselves: Can I buy lettuce without being killed today? Can I take the kids to eat pizza without being killed today? Can I go to a Passover Seder without dying? Over the past few months, the answer was at b