The Israeli-Palestinian Dispute Is Only Partly About Land

Is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict fundamentally about land and territory? It is certainly partly about that. But when you hear the objections and grievances of both sides, the issue of who has what part of which territory doesn’t necessarily figure all that prominently.

I recently took part in a study tour on religion and nationalism in Israel organized by the Philos Project. One Palestinian official whom we met told us, “I’m not going to compromise my dignity.”

The problem with what we know of the Trump administration’s “” is that it asks Palestinians to do precisely that. The entire Donald Trump approach seems to be premised on calling for unilateral surrender. It is premised over political progress, but this misunderstands most of what we know about human motivation.