Professors Offer Wide-Ranging Views on Future of Middle East Conflict
A panel discussion covers such topics as divestment and ways to achieve lasting peace

By James Todd

Monday, Dec. 7, 2004 -- A panel of six Duke professors with personal and professional ties to the Middle East on Wednesday reflected on the current conflict there, proposed ways to address it and mused about visions of peace in the region.

The panelists were Bernard Avishai, a visiting professor of management and public policy; Kalman P. Bland, a professor of Judaic studies in the religion department; Miriam Cooke, a professor of modern Arabic literature and culture; Sidra Ezrahi, a visiting professor of Judaic studies; Bruce Lawrence, a religion professor who studies Islam and comparative religion; and Eric Meyers, a religion professor, biblical archeologist and director of the Center for Judaic Studies.

George McLendon, dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences, moderated the discussion, which drew an audience of about 25 people in the Social Sciences building.

During the wide-ranging discussion, panel members disagreed over such topics as divestment from Israel and a one- or two-state solution to the conflict.

The panelists already had experience disagreeing with one another. They know each other well (Avishai is married to Ezrahi, and Cooke is married to Lawrence) and have had long-running conversations and debates about the Middle East. During the Palestine Solidarity Movement conference at Duke in October, Lawrence and Cooke participated in the conference and Avishai, Ezrahi and Meyers spoke during related events sponsored by Duke’s Freeman Center for Jewish Life.

Despite their various points-of-view on the topic at hand, the panelists agreed that the evening’s "one-panel solution" was important to the ongoing campus debate.

"What happened at PSM and Freeman was in fact a kind of microcosm of what’s happened on the ground in the Middle East in the last 15 years," Ezrahi said. Ezrahi is an Israeli who, with her husband, has for years participated in meetings with Palestinians, even sneaking into the occupied territories in disguise. "There’s a kind of hermetic turning inwards in both communities."

Discussions between the parties at universities can counter, and have countered, that tendency toward disengagement, she said. "The only place that Israelis and Palestinians in the 1980s could speak to each other -- and ‘70s for that matter -- was under university auspices."

Sophomore Brandon Levin appreciated the openness of the panel discussion. "This really was an opportunity for people who spoke on both sides to express their opinion and disagree openly," he said.

None of the panelists advocated for Israeli annexation of the occupied territories, Palestinian armed resistance, a complete boycott of Israel or a more explicitly Jewish Israel. And discussion stayed away from specifics about borders, accommodations for Palestinian refugees and security arrangements.

During the panel, Cooke called for divestment from companies that have dealings with the Israeli military’s occupation of Palestinian territories. Others disagreed.

Avishai argued that because Israel’s military purchasing is tightly intertwined with its wider economy, "selective divestment" would undermine Israeli entrepreneurs who he said generally support peace with the Palestinians.

A student in the audience also objected to divestment, saying it only punished one side in a conflict with two aggressors.

Also from the audience, professor Ebrahim Moosa, who with Cooke co-directs the Center for Study of Muslim Networks, defended selective divestment, particularly when aimed at highly symbolic targets like Caterpillar Inc., whose D9 bulldozer is used by the Israeli military to demolish Palestinian homes.

Having lived in South Africa during Apartheid, Moosa said he has seen the benefits of pressuring a government with symbolic boycotts, even when innocent citizens are somewhat affected.

Bland described his vision of peace as a "hyphenated dream," with a single state called "Israel-Palestine" or "Palestine-Israel."

"Let, then, these two communities of suffering pool their intertwined heritages of tragedy,” he said, “creating a new culture and a newly imagined community out of their Hebraic and Arabic pasts."

Avishai described the possibility of a three-state federation of Israel, Palestine and Jordan, modeled after -- and possibly even participating in -- the European Union.

"If you look at water, electricity, labor, law, currency, … tourism, there’s not a single jurisdiction that I can imagine Israel exercising which would not require very close cooperation with Palestine," he said. "And [there’s] not a single jurisdiction I can imagine Palestine exercising which would not require reciprocal cooperation with Jordan."

Lawrence took the theme of unity one step further by imagining Jerusalem as "an open city, the future capital of the world," embracing not only Jews, Muslims and Christians, but all people.

Meyers, who has kept a research office in East Jerusalem with his wife Carol for more than 35 years, was not so optimistic.

"I lament for the children of Abraham who have lost their way," he said.

"Why can’t the Israelis and their Jewish brothers and sisters talk with their enemy?" he asked. "Why can’t Hamas call a permanent ceasefire and talk to their enemy?

"Where are the Christians in the West, who have let the Palestinian Christian community dwindle to a fraction of what it used to be?

"How have we allowed the Israel-Palestine conflict to become a war between Muslim and Jew, between East and West?"