Fractured Societies and Illusions of Peace

Last week, President Donald Trump stood in front of an audience of heads of state and pronounced that a historic peace had been reached in the Middle East. At least one analyst compared Trump’s assertion to Neville Chamberlain’s proclamation of “Peace in our time.” If Trump is going to deliver on his promises of peace, he’s going to have to find a way to address the fault lines in both Israeli and Palestinian societies that have sabotaged peace efforts so often in the past. For the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is as much about the tensions within Israeli and Palestinian societies as it is about the competing claims to the land of historic Palestine. Both Israeli and Palestinians societies are deeply fractured that in some respects are held together through the pressures of the conflict.