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to Elazar, strict statist definitions and interactions ought to be tempered
with other forms of organization that are culturally based, such as the
millet framework of the Ottoman Empire, and traditional Jewish perspec-
tives, which have been ambivalent toward unbridled state sovereignty.
The case for interreligious dialogue is further reinforced by other in-
sights from the literature in this period of increased regional and global
polarization. Indeed, Samuel Huntington concluded his well-known
analysis concerning the clash of civilizations with the suggestion that
the West would have “to develop a more profound understanding of the
basic religious and philosophical assumptions underlying other civiliza-
tions.... [This process] will require an effort to identify elements of com-
monality between Western and other civilizations.”^39
While the current period of increased regional tension in the Middle
East has dampened possibilities for Israeli-Palestinian peace building,
which began in the 1990s, current painful events need not necessarily
sound the death knell for future efforts. Various researchers have ac-
knowledged that potent interethnic identity conflicts, such as the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict, can regress back into violence. Thus emphasizing the
importance of maintaining a “vision” of peace even during a crisis can
provide the creative energy to enable processes to eventually go forward
again, when contextual conditions allow.^40 I have presented here a review
of findings and analysis to encourage further exploration in both theory
and practice of the use of religious culture as a basis for dialogue and
perception change to occur between Israelis and Palestinians along with
a federally oriented approach to dialogue.
Notes
- Ben Mollov and Chaim Lavie, “Culture, Dialogue, and Perception Change
in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” International Journal of Conflict Management
12, no. 1 (2001): 69–87; Ben Mollov, David Schwartz, Gerald Steinberg, and
Chaim Lavie, “The Impact of Israeli-Palestinian Intercultural Dialogue: ‘Vir-
tual’ and Face-to-Face,” paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Inter-
national Association for Conflict Management, Cergy, France, June 2001; Ben
Mollov, Chaim Lavie, Elana Cheshin, and G. Springman, “Contact, Gender,
and Arab-Jewish Inter-religious Dialogue Evaluated,” paper presented at the
Annual Conference of the International Association for Conflict Management,
Pittsburgh, June 2004; Ben Mollov and Chaim Lavie, “Arab-Jewish Women’s
Inter-religious Dialogue Evaluated,” in Yaacov Iram, ed., Educating towards a
Culture of Peace (Greenwich, Conn.: Information Age, 2006), 247–58.