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Here's the key to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Palestinian and Israeli flags painted on a wall
Tuomas A. Lehtinen/Getty Images

Anderson edited "Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework" (Springer, 2014), has taught at five universities and ran for the Democratic nomination for a Maryland congressional seat in 2016.

The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is among the most complex conflicts in the world today – and in the history of the world. The war launched by Hamas against Israel, the latest piece of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is immensely complicated, notably because Hamas militants have used Palestinian citizens, especially women and children, as shields.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is rooted in rival conceptions of what happened when the Middle East was reshaped after World War I followed by the events of 1948, when Israel issued its Declaration of Independence and six Arab countries attacked the new nation. The roots go even deeper – all the way back to ancient times.

Any resolution of the conflict would have to deal with many issues, including the abundance of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the status of Jerusalem, the governance of Gaza after the current war and of course the very question about whether Palestinians will get a homeland.


There are two things that must happen for any resolution to be possible. They are the most basic impediments that have prevented peace for generations, one applying to Israel and one applying to the Palestinians. Israel must recognize that the Palestinians have a right to exist and to a homeland, and some group of Palestinians with a degree of authority must recognize that Israel has a right to exist and to a homeland. Both sides tried this approach with the Letters of Mutual Recognition in 1993, but the Oslo Accords were never implemented.

Israel already has a homeland, and thus the question here would be whether any parts of Israel need to be given to the Palestianians. The Palestinians do not have a state that is recognized by Israel and many other countries (although some land is recognized as Palestinian by the United Nations, notably the West Bank and Gaza).

Hamas, which represents Palestinians in Gaza, stands for the annihilation of Israel (as does Iran), although the Palestine Liberation Organization has gone back and forth on the position of seeking to annihilate Israel. Israel does not recognize a Palestinian state yet since 1947, with the United Nations Partition, it has frequently affirmed the right of Palestinians to have their own state.

The Palestinian position (and Iran's position), at least from the standpoint of Hamas, is a much more difficult obstacle to overcome because it is so extreme. Even Adolf Hitler did not stand for the annihilation of the countries (or all the citizens of those countries) he was fighting, notably France, England, Russia and the United States. He wanted territory, natural resources and naked power. What Hitler did stand for was the annihilation of the Jews, and he led an effort that killed two-thirds of the Jews of Europe.

There are a considerable number of Palestinians and Israelis (who count 2 million Arabs, mostly Palestinians, among their population) who want either a two-state solution or a confederation solution. Moreover, many major world powers, including the United States, Russia, China and a number of European nations, are also advocating for some form of a two-state solution.

It must be emphasized that there are not "two sides" in this conflict in any clear sense of the term, both because the Palestinians are divided and because Hamas, which has governed Gaza since 2007, is not governing it now. Moreover, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government, which many regard as extremist, could be replaced in the near future.

Thus the process of achieving peace over the next few years – especially with the United States and some Arab countries, notably Qatar, acting as brokers – is a very fluid situation. It is not even clear if Hamas or the Netanyahu government would be at the table when peace was achieved, let alone when monitoring would follow a peace deal.

However the politics evolves, it is still the case that the fundamental problem in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that both sides must recognize each other's right to have a homeland. Israel has been more consistent over the years in doing just this, but the Netanyahu years have been subject to international criticism for promoting policies that do not promote conditions for Palestinians to have their own state, notably a massive build up of settlements in the West Bank.

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This Isn’t My Story. But It’s One I’ll Never Forget.

Children with American flags

This Isn’t My Story. But It’s One I’ll Never Forget.

My colleague, Meghan Monroe, a former teacher and trainer in the Dignity Index, went out to lunch with a friend on the 4th of July. Her friend was late and Meghan found herself waiting outside the restaurant where, to her surprise, a protest march approached. It wasn’t big and it wasn’t immediately clear what the protest was about. There were families and children marching—some flags, and some signs about America being free.

One group of children caught Meghan’s eye as they tugged at their mother while marching down the street. The mom paused and crouched down to speak to the children. Somehow, Meghan could read the situation and realized that the mom was explaining to the children about America—about what it is, about all the different people who make up America, about freedom, about dignity.

“I could just tell that the Mom wanted her children to understand something important, something big. I couldn’t tell anything about her politics. I could just tell that she wanted her children to understand what America can be. I could tell she wanted dignity for her children and for people in this country. It was beautiful.”

As Meghan told me this story, I realized something: that Mom at the protest is a role model for me. The 4th may be over now, but the need to explain to each other what we want for ourselves and our country isn’t.

My wife, Linda, and I celebrated America at the wedding of my godson, Alexander, and his new wife, Hannah. They want America to be a place of love. Dozens of my cousins, siblings, and children celebrated America on Cape Cod.

For them and our extended family, America is a place where families create an enduring link from one generation to the next despite loss and pain.

Thousands of Americans in central Texas confronted the most unimaginable horrors on July 4th. For them, I hope and pray America is a place where we hold on to each other in the face of unbearable pain and inexplicable loss.

Yes. It’s complicated. There were celebrations of all kinds on July 4th—celebrations of gratitude to our military, celebrations of gratitude for nature and her blessings, and sadly, celebrations of hatred too. There are a million more examples of our hopes and fears and visions, and they’re not all happy.

I bet that’s one of the lessons that mom was explaining to her children. I imagine her saying, “America is a place where everyone matters equally. No one’s dignity matters more than anyone else’s. Sometimes we get it wrong. But in our country, we always keep trying and we never give up.”

For the next 12 months as we lead up to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we’re going to be hearing a lot about what we want America to be. But maybe the more important question is what we the people are willing to do to fulfill our vision of what we can be. The answer to that question is hiding in plain sight and is as old as the country itself: join with others and do your part, and no part is too small to matter.

At our best, our country is a country of people who serve one another. Some may say that’s out of fashion, but not me. Someone is waiting for each of us—to talk, to share, to join, to care, to lead, to love. And in our time, the superpower we need is the capacity to treat each other with dignity, even when we disagree. Differences of opinion aren’t the problem; in fact, they’re the solution. As we love to say, “There’s no America without democracy and there’s no democracy without healthy debate and there’s no healthy debate without dignity.”

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The American Experiment tested whether groups with diverse interests could unite under a declaration of common principles. In this moment, we face a critical juncture that tests whether distrust and political fervor could drive Americans to abandon or deny everything that unites us.

Henry Bolingbroke contends that party spirit inspires “Animosity and breeds Rancor.” Talking of his countrymen, he wrote, “We likewise derive, not our Privileges (for they were always ours) but a more full and explicit Declaration”; Whigs and Tories can unite on this alone. That Declaration of Ours was penned by Thomas Jefferson when his colonists repelled the redcoats at the Siege of Charleston and when Washington’s troops were awaiting battle in Manhattan. The American Declaration set out those principles, which united the diverse colonies. And the party system, as Bolingbroke said, brought animosity and weakened the Union. Critics disputed these claims. William Warburton attacked Bolingbroke as an evil-speaker with “dog-eloquence”—claimed his calls for party reform were an aristocratic conspiracy to cement the power of elites. An anonymous critic argued that the government is a union of unrelated people where laws supplant the natural bonds between families. Then, the government of the United States would not exist, or would not exist long.

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Social entrepreneur John Marks developed a set of eleven working principles that have become his modus operandi and provide the basic framework for his new book, “From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship," from which a series of three articles is adapted. While Marks applied these principles in nonprofit work, he says they are also applicable to social enterprisesand to life, in general.

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PRINCIPLE #4: KEEP SHOWING UP. It has been said that 80 percent of success in life is showing up. For social entrepreneurs, this means continuing to stay engaged without dabbling or parachuting. Like a child’s toy windup truck that moves forward until it hits an obstacle and then backs off and finds another way forward, social entrepreneurs should be persistent—and adept at finding work-arounds. They must be willing to commit for the long term. I found that this was particularly important when working with Iranians, who tend to view the world in terms of centuries and millennia.

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Two coloured pencils one red and one blue drawing a reef knot on a white paper background.

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It is a common refrain to say that Americans need to find common ground across the political spectrum.

Over the past year, AllSides and More Like US found >700 instances of common ground on political topics, revealed in Similarity Hub. It highlights public opinion data from Gallup, Pew Research, YouGov, and many other reputable polling firms.

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