246 • CONCluSION
each side’s conception of its counterpart. Israel’s rapidly growing ultra-
Orthodox community wields immense power in domestic and budget-
ary politics (evidenced, not least, by the popularity of political parties
formed for hardly another purpose than to rein in this power), and
the religious nationalist settler movement exercises its muscle in the
state’s policies in the West Bank. At the same time, that Hamas— the
Islamic Resistance Movement, which, according to its charter, “owes
its loyalty to God, derives from Islam its way of life and strives to raise
the banner of God over every inch of Palestine”— won the Palestinian
parliamentary elections in 2006 and retains control of the Gaza Strip
is indicative of the prominent place of Islam in today’s Palestinian pol-
itics. As important, each side perceives religion as a central, guiding
force in the other’s actions. Many contemporary Israelis believe that the
Palestinians are all— or are dominated by— Islamist extremists whose
religious requirement of jihād ensures that they will continue to fight
Israel until they have removed the Jewish infidels from Palestine. That
mass violence erupted when Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon visited
the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary in September 2000, and that the
half- decade of bloodletting that followed quickly became known as the
al- Aqsa Intifada (after the mosque that sits atop the mount), reveal not
only the enduring importance of religious symbols in the conflict but
also the sense among many Palestinians that, notwithstanding their
protestations of secularism, Israelis actually have a religious agenda
that seeks to undermine Islam’s (literal and figurative) foundations in
Palestine. While we must not draw a straight line from this book’s
conclusions about the Ottoman period to the contemporary conflict in
the twenty- first century, the prominence of religion in today’s mutual
perceptions should be recognized not as a historic aberration but rather
as the latest stage in the story of evolving ideas and perspectives about
religion in this encounter that began more than a century earlier.
If religion remains, or has again become, central in today’s mutual
perceptions among Israelis and Palestinians, what may be said of the
present status of ideas of race? To be sure, explicitly racial discourse
has largely fallen out of favor,^34 especially in light of the widespread
perception of the horrific potential of racial thinking as articulated by
Nazism and as evidenced in the Holocaust. Yet, at least in the minds
of each side, its antagonist tenaciously employs racial, indeed racist,
ideology. This accusation was made most famously in United Nations
General Assembly Resolution 3379, adopted in 1975, which declared
(^34) A recent Israeli exception can be seen in the case of upper Nazareth mayor Shimon
Gaspo. See “If you think I’m a racist, then Israel is a racist state,” Haaretz, August 7,
2013, http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.540278.