No lasting peace will be possible between Israel and Palestine until there is a dramatic change of consciousness comparable in depth to the kind of change that took place in the United States as segregation was dismantled; as the women’s movement put patriarchy on the defensive and dismantled many (but not all) aspects of sexist oppression that predominated for 10,000 years in much of Western society; or, more recently in the United States, as the LGBTQ movement fought to achieve marriage equality—all changes that were dismissed as “unrealistic” in the first decades of those struggles. A similar change of consciousness in Israel-Palestine will require a strategy of nonviolence, compassion, and empathy.
Such a strategy requires the development of a powerful movement that at once critiques both the Israelis and the Palestinians, and at the same time tries to convince each side that it is through generosity toward the other...
