What did you see when you were studying other conflicts about how they negotiated the past? What was that process? | Just Vision דילוג לתוכן העיקרי

What did you see when you were studying other conflicts about how they negotiated the past? What was that process?

Ofer Shinar 9

What did you see when you were studying other conflicts about how they negotiated the past? What was that process?

I think what you tend to see, and Alex Boraine talks about a lot, is that the process of reconciliation has to be reinvented every time from the beginning, because each society is so different, and each conflict is so different. And you have to bear in mind that the IsraeliPalestinian conflict is perhaps the most complex, at least one of the most complicated conflicts of our times. So it's going to be an extremely complicated affair to untangle what we have now. Other societies have developed ways that were unique, and if they worked, they were very dependent on the social structure, the values, the narratives, the histories, etc. of that culture. The anthropologist Clifford Geertz1 talks about the importance of narratives and how each society is different from the other because of seemingly slight details that you have to bear in mind. This is why we have to do something different with regard to the Israeli and Palestinian societies.
  • 1(b. 1926) Professor of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University.