Is Peace a Reasonable Goal?

Marc Ellis brings up his solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict in his book Israel and Palestine: Out of the Ashes, the Search for Jewish Identity in the Twenty-First Century. He coined this solution as the "Broken Middle" (). The Broken Middle suggests that both the Israelis and the Palestinians would need to move past the strict association to their ethnic identities and to align with a secular citizenship. By abandoning a religious or ethnic system, it encourages unity with regards to physical space rather than separation of identities. This would mean that the Israelis and Palestinians would have to accept the common ground upon which they both stand. 

The supposed simplicity of this design seems to be underminable. It would require both parties to be not just complicit, but actively willing to work towards a common identity aside from their religious and ethnic associations. Compromise is a central idea that must occur if the Broken Middle were to be successful. Both sides, the Palestinians and the Israelis, would have to understand that by uniting under a secular citizenship would mean that they share the land, to a degree. Since the argument of land ownership stems from the question, in laymen's terms, who does the land truly belong to, the integration of cultures under secular citizenship might allude towards a relinquishment of that claim. 

Something interesting about the Broken Middle is that it mimics the configuration of the United States government in a sense. Citizens of the United States come from all over the world, belong to various religions, identities, traditions, and cultures. Yet, all citizens are united by their nationality and secular citizenship. By creating a system somewhat resembling that of the United States in Israel and Palestine, it could be assumed that unity is attainable. The catch, however, is that the United States has constantly struggled with issues such as discrimination in various forms of social constructs, issues that Israel and Palestine would most likely have to face as well. This makes the world question; will there ever be a solution to conflict in Israel and Palestine?