Interreligious Dialogue and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: An Empirical View · 301as varied as Canada and Malaysia, societies with large ethnic minorities
and varied subgroups are faced with the need to maintain their cohesion
despite this heterogeneity.^36
By applying elements of a federalist model (with links to the Jewish
tradition itself), as articulated by Elazar, to regional and intrastate dy-
namics, Israel can retain its central narrative as a Jewish-Zionist state
while still allowing for diverse subculture identities to be retained in
its Jewish and Arab sectors. This in effect allows for “diversity within
unity.”^37 Indeed, one interpreter of Israeli society has pointed to the ben-
efits of federally oriented efforts to manage Arab-Jewish tensions within
Israel.^38
Conclusion
This chapter has focused on the potential of interreligious dialogue be-
tween Islam and Judaism in the contemporary period to positively affect
perceptions in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Jewish-
Arab interactions in general. Drawing upon fieldwork either conducted
or analyzed by me and my colleagues, it suggests that the discovery of
similarities by Israeli and Palestinian students in their respective heri-
tages has the potential to moderate perceptions, which is a critical tool in
advancing sustained dialogue and relationship building—a key element
in helping to promote peace.
From this most basic level of discovering similarities, interreligious
dialogue in the Israeli-Palestinian context has the potential for clarify-
ing the existence of a “constructive” stalemate, as both sides discern the
depth of commitment that they have to being on the same land, which is
evident from the clash of mutual claims and convictions. This can then
serve as a basis for eventually transforming the conflict as “people-to-
people” efforts are carried out between the two populations aimed at
generating the active relationship building necessary for the possibilities
of conflict transformation and even a mutually positive commitment to
the “Holy Land”; this while not relinquishing respective identities as Is-
raelis and Palestinians.
The approach to interreligious dialogue is further enhanced by the
work of Daniel J. Elazar in the area of federalist thinking. The attempt to
“think federally,” which offers the possibility of maintaining both unity
and diversity, has important implications to the Middle East. According