The Israeli-Palestinian war is one of many conflicts happening around the world and yet it seems the most intractable. Why? Is it because, as many commentators have discussed, both sides seem to have become paralysed in their ability to reach a settlement? Or is there something else, less to do with ancient hatreds and more to do with our human tendency to project onto others what we don’t like in ourselves?
Many of us feel increasingly cynical about wars fought on another’s turf in the name of democracy and the protection of our way of life. The Jungian term ‘projection’ means that we are unconsciously and automatically transferring content from our own unconscious to another person or object. This is also known as our shadow.
When one country declares war on another it is no different from one person throwing an insult at another in a domestic argument. Often, in a dispute, we say things about the other person that are actually the things we dislike about ourselves.
Jung said that projection is a part of the process of individuation. We need the chance to project our unconscious onto others so we can clearly see it, with our conscious mind. But if we keep blaming and reacting to our projection by declaring war on it, we’ll never move into the next stage – that of withdrawing projections and learning who we really are.
It’s as if our apparent enemy is showing us some attitude deep in our unconscious that we don’t want to acknowledge, so we blame them for that same attitude. For instance, if I feel my partner is trying to control me when they tell me what to do, I can react with hostility and declare war by fighting back with hurtful words, or I can look at what my partner is reflecting back to me about my own unconscious attitude to control.
This is not easy because the attitude is deeply buried and may go back into childhood, but at the end of the day, being willing to look at my part in the conflict is the only means to a resolution.
Any political situation in the world is no different from my domestic dispute. It’s just that it’s expressing itself through groups of people instead of between two individuals. For those of us not directly involved, the Middle East conflict is like watching two people in a domestic dispute.
It’s easy to wonder why they’re so hotted up about the issue. “Can’t you just see it from the other’s perspective and each get on with your life?” we may ask in genuine bewilderment, while at the same time we watch in horror as a mother helplessly cradles her child, bleeding and screaming, and adults lie in hospital beds with staring, sunken eyes reflecting the mixture of terror and anger that is their daily life.
Living among the dust and dirt of constant war it’s nearly impossible for anyone to be able to look at any situation, let alone our enemy, with detachment. But with the benefit of distance, those of us living further from the battlefront can try and see the fighting between the Israelis and the Palestinians from each of their perspectives – what is each side projecting onto the other from within their unconscious?
This may take some knowledge of their history, but even without that, we can see that each seems to blame the other for things that they are doing. That’s why the situation seems intractable. Like a domestic dispute, each sees the other as the culprit in trying to control, and yet both are just reflecting this attitude back to the other.
So what can we do, other than sit in our lounge rooms trying to fathom who’s in the wrong, feeling torn apart by the sight of untold innocent people, especially children, being wounded and killed?
The 2003 Geneva Accord, supported by most of the international community and by leading Israeli and Palestinian moderates, is like the mediator in our marital dispute. It sets down new ways of thinking and doing things that are acceptable – with compromises – to both sides.
The key to this accord, according to Jerome Slater, writing in The Buffalo News, is the two-state solution – the settlement supported by the international community and described in the Clinton Plan of 2000, the Saudi-Arab League Peace Plan of 2002, and the Israeli-Palestinian Geneva Accord of 2003. This accord is based on the proviso that both sides will compromise on some treasured beliefs about what constitutes their inalienable rights.
However, just as in personal mediation, the path to compromise can be trodden only as long as the two people involved show the goodwill to change their patterns of behaviour. And this can only be present if there is enough genuine care for the other, underneath the differences of opinion, to maintain the change momentum when old patterns re-emerge.
The goodwill needed to sustain change comes from the history of love, trust, and friendship built between two people over time. If there is not enough of this foundation built up, then the mediation will fail because those involved lack sufficient will to push through when the times get tough again.
We can see this happening in the Middle East, and it’s easy to throw our hands in the air in frustration. In a marital situation, the two people may choose to leave and live separate lives, having little or no contact. But in the case of two countries, people can’t just move away and ignore each other. If there’s nowhere to go, and to avoid complete slaughter, a resolution must be found.
Jerome Slater suggests that Barack Obama is an important part of this bridge because, “an end to the Israeli occupation and the creation of a viable Palestinian state has now received important high-level bipartisan support.” Slater says that Obama’s widespread popularity has provided the United States with a unique opportunity to exercise its own powers of goodwill to assist Israel and Hamas to agree to a two-state solution.
This solution is like the agreement reached by the couple in mediation. Unable to continue to live together through lack of goodwill, at least they can agree to build new lives apart, after an amicably worked-out resolution of their differences and divvying up of assets, including children.
By allowing ourselves to feel what it must be like for these people – their helplessness, their terror, their desperation for peace – we can open up to our own power to be part of the solution. If the goodwill has been completely destroyed between so many Israelis and Palestinians then we can provide our own energy of goodwill to help bridge a path of resolution.
This luxury of distance from the conflict is not accorded to those struggling to survive in the war zone, but we can help by virtue of our living further away ‘down the street’ by supporting practical initiatives like the Geneva Accord and also through creative, positive visualization.
Like our married couple, who may now, with time and distance, be able to see how they were projecting their own issues onto their partner, so also can we see how each side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is fighting its shadow. We can use our personal power in constructive ways by visualizing* the goodwill so lacking in the mediation room at the moment, to help restore some of the trust vitally needed for this peace process to be sustained.
Source:
Jung, C. G., The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1969
Jerome Slater, The Buffalo News: Opinion, December 30, 2008
*For a visualization to give practical assistance to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process go to the Spiritual tab.