The source of animosity between Arabs and Israelis and between Israelis and Palestinians has a long history and a complicated web of interrelated causes and attributions of causes. Yet, at its core, and without minimizing the heartwrenching loss and displacement of life that has occurred on both sides, it must be said that Arab-Israeli enmity is not about land, nor about resources, nor about refugees, nor about military power. These highly charged issues arise out of something far more central, something that is at the heart of each of them. At its core, the Arab-Israeli conflict is about respect - not just respect for the political, social, economic and geographic integrity of two peoples, but respect for the very existence of these peoples, their being, which is both physical and spiritual.

    These two peoples are brothers - brothers who feel threatened and humiliated by the attitudes and actions of the other; brothers who pray for the special blessings and favor of the same God whom they worship in different ways.

    The currency of this respect is visible in the problems that arise today concerning land, occupation, and political rights. But this currency is the outer sign only of an interior cause that is much deeper. It is the absence of the acknowledgment of the sacred being of the other that fuels the present conflict. Instead of mutual support, there is rivalry of such intensity that it prevents the recognition of brotherhood altogether. For it is not just that Palestinians feel dispossessed and oppressed by Israeli occupation of their territories. It is that they feel that Israeli actions, past, present, and future, both militarily and politically, are designed to keep them disenfranchised - a people without a home, a nation without a capitol, a religion without a religious center. These are the things that all people want, Palestinians as well, and for which many are willing to die. They are the same things for which Israel has fought and which she presently defends.

    Respect is not merely a social observance or a behavioral standard.  It is, in its most profound meaning, the acknowledgment of equality of being before God. It gives rise to the various permissions and willing compromises that can attend peacemaking in all its many forms. When respect is absent, peoples or nations strive with each other not only for equality of being but for superiority of being based in power, a pursuit which in the long run undermines the possibility of respect even further.

    The perception of equality of being in the sense of spiritual status before God is what is missing in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is missing for those who seek to possess what belongs to another. It is missing in the lack of accordance to others of their basic human rights. When respect is missing, those who feel bereft, deprived, or robbed of it often seek to deprive in return the one who seems to have taken it. Or, simultaneously, they create in themselves a stance of moral or spiritual superiority to compensate for the lack of equality. Both positions do not foster respect. They foster the intensification of ongoing rivalry. This is what we see in the present Middle-East situation.

    If we look at the present situation with wide-open eyes that see beyond the physical, we observe that not only do Palestinians feel dispossessed and disrespected by Israel. Israelis, too, feel threatened by dispossession - by the hatred which surrounds them which would take away their land, their nationhood, their right to exist as a people in a Jewish state.

    Anti-Zionist fervor which Israelis perceive around them is very real and is a source of policy-making, both militarily and politically. While Palestinians feel dispossessed by the policies and practices of Israel, Israelis in the past have felt dispossessed because of their identity as Jews, and are now trying to protect themselves from the threat of further dispossession by their Arab neighbors as they continue to strive to insure their own right to exist. In doing so, however, they become vulnerable to the tendency to employ the very same mechanisms of oppression and dispossession that they, too, have experienced and are afraid of again experiencing. Indeed, the movement toward survival among Palestinians and their striving for the restoration of dignity as a people is arousing greater sympathy in the world today, while Israel's drive toward self-protection in the midst of hostile forces is perceived, by many, as a desire that fundamentally disregards the rights of others.

    The issue of disrespect is no small thing. Its deepest root lies in the perception of unequal spiritual status - the inequality of being before God. It is and has been the source of violence, bloodshed, wars, feelings of humiliation, motives toward revenge, and of hatred so intense that the wish to obliterate the 'other' becomes natural, even inevitable. Being deprived of human dignity on the level of one's being can, and often has, fostered the most intense kind of anger among dispossessed people everywhere.  We may well ask if such anger is indigenous to the human heart, and if so, how it can be healed?

II.

    The answer to this question lies in the ancient archetypes of human consciousness - consciousness that has become separated from its oneness with God. These archetypes, revealed to us in Biblical stories of the past, show us that it is possible to feel humiliation, envy, and resentment of such intensity that it leads to 'bloodlust' - the need to completely obliterate the one who seems to be the cause of the humiliation.

    Such archetypes can be found at the dawn of mankind's history. To understand them, we need to view them against the backdrop of separated consciousness, the consciousness that resulted from what both Judaism and Christianity refer to as 'the Fall'. This is the basis from which the roots of envy grow. The 'Fall' is a word used to describe the collective cosmic and human event that occurred to souls during mankind's pre-history as a result of their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. No matter how we view this event, its end-product was a loss of the inner experience of oneness with God. Because of this event, it became possible for one human being to wish to murder another instead of loving the other. It also became possible to hold inflamed feelings of hatred so pervasively inside oneself that they extinguished love. These feelings have always surrounded the seemingly endless and insatiable rivalries between specific peoples, nations, and ethnic groups. At root, these ancient rivalries have but one goal, that of the restoration of respect and the recognition of equality of being - the spiritual status of souls who are equally favored by God. When this goal is relinquished, it may appear that superiority is what is desired, politically, militarily, or in any other way, but this shift is a defensive one - one that becomes possible only in a state of separation. Such a state is intrinsic to a consciousness that seeks its own ends rather than the ends of unity.

    In considering the archetypes which form the basis for the present Middle-East situation, in the Book of Genesis we find the earliest prototypes of the present conflict. This Book reveals to us in story form, the seed of all conflicts of this kind in terms that are both descriptive and a warning. The archetypes presented in the Book of Genesis portray the very first conflicts which take place at the dawn of human history. What is the source of these conflicts? It is rivalry - rivalry for equal spiritual status - rivalry translated into resentment toward the one favored by God.

III.

    Let us look first at the story of Cain and Abel - the earliest story of conflict in the Bible. Here is the story of two brothers, one a shepherd, the other a tiller of the land, both devout, both seeking the blessings of God. Yet one is favored and one is not.¹ Cain could not tolerate Abel's being more favored by God, more blessed than he was. He was envious and he was angry. This envy and anger filled him with such 'bloodlust' that it caused him to take Abel's life. For most of us, there are other options available in the presence of envy, other alternatives.  In this story, God himself points out an alternative and says to Cain, in essence: "Why could you not wait and just continue praying and deepening your love for me so that you, too, would become blessed as Abel was?"² But Cain did not feel this to be an option. He felt the situation to be intolerable. He did not hear God's voice within him and he did not feel special to God. He felt cut off, envious, and angry, and so he took Abel's life. For Cain, as for many entangled in the Middle-East dilemma, there seemed to be no other option.

    This story is followed by two others in the Book of Genesis which revolve around similar themes. The second pair of brothers are Ishmael and Isaac, the sons of Abraham, one promised by God to become the inheritor of the Covenant made with Abraham,³,⁴ the other a son who does not carry this seed.⁵ Here, at the beginning of the story, the opposing factions are not the sons themselves but the mothers who are rivals in the domain of conception. The rivalry between Hagar, Sarah's maid, and Sarah, appears to be based on the question of fertility: who is capable of producing an heir to carry Abraham's line forward. Though the conflict is presented on the surface as a matter of feminine pride, on a soul level it is also and more importantly a question of title, the title which confers to the heir the promise that he will be the bearer of the Covenant, the creator of the future. Despite Sarah's initial encouragement of intimacy between Hagar and Abraham to insure the continuity of Abraham's line, once Hagar conceives, Sarah feels that Hagar has done something wrong. Ultimately, Hagar gives birth to a son, Ishmael. Once again, the theme of two brothers who are rivals for the favor of God is sounded - Ishmael and Isaac. These two are separated by their divergent spiritual destinies. They are brothers who will become the founders of two separate nations, brothers of whom it is prophesied that one will be a "wild man" whose hand will be against every man and every man's hand against him.⁶ This brother will become the founder of a great nation.⁷ The other will be the bearer of the Covenant⁸ whose seed will inherit the earth.

    The third set of brothers are twins, Jacob and Esau. Here, too, the rivalry is about spiritual inheritance - who is to be the one chosen by the father as favored. The prophesy concerning these two twins is revealed by God to Rebekah, Isaac's wife, while they are yet in her womb. It is that the elder son, the firstborn, shall serve the younger.⁹ Within the forum of her inner consciousness it is made known to Rebekah that the Covenant shall be carried forward by the younger son, Jacob. Here, it is the blessing of God transmitted through Isaac that becomes the source of contention.

    Jacob is the one chosen by God to carry the seed of the Covenant, yet Esau is strictly speaking the firstborn with the rights of the firstborn. In this story, Jacob feels that it is necessaary to take action against his brother, Esau,¹⁰ to insure the fulfillment of the prophesy, and that it is also necessary to deceive his father¹¹ with the same end in mind. In order to do this, he undertakes an act of deception so that he will receive the blessings of Esau from his father. While deception is not as serious an offence as murder, it nevertheless suggests that the essence of rivalry - the desire to insure superiority, and the fear which is based on separation from God - can issue forth from every human breast - even from the one who is meant to be blessed by God. 

    These three stories within the Judaeo-Christian heritage are part of our earliest emotional history and have a bearing on what we deal with now in the Middle-East. They are educational, and they are also admonishing. Whether legendary or factual, they speak to us across the ages about the importance of the emotions that give rise to rivalry between brothers - brothers who seek the same thing from the same God. Each of the stories, especially the first concerning Cain and Abel, has relevance to our understanding of the underlying issues coursing through the Middle-East conflict. Each shines a light on the core of human divisiveness and hatred.

SUMMARY

    The Biblical archetypes described above are timelessly human, for as long as separation from God remains true. In any situation, rivalry for superiority can become a substitute for the direct perception of equality of being established through knowing our relationship with God. Such rivalry can create intense feelings of envy, humiliation, and the desire to overcome such feelings through taking corrective measures of one's own. Such rivalry presently infuses attitudes of both Palestinians and the Arab world toward Israel.  It also influences the attitude of Israel toward its neighbors. For many in the Arab world, the actions of Israel toward Palestine are seen to reflect pretensions toward superiority that ignore the consequences of their behavior upon others. Therefore, the feeling that Israel needs to be 'brought down' or made to pay can seem natural, even inevitable. To the extent that there is truth in this perception of arrogance, the response of enmity grows.  

    In the end, the story of the 'two brothers' shows us that one brother cannot be 'chosen' without difficulty coming between them.  Both must be chosen to create peace.  To be 'chosen' can mean many things, but among the things that it does not mean is to seek superiority for itself or to be motivated by a desire to be better or more powerful than others. This is a function of rivalry that is based in separated consciousness, not a function of one's true relationship with God.

    Ultimately, the historical basis for rivalry, the vying for position and the tendency toward self-elevation can only be eradicated by one thing - a fundamental and complete change in consciousness which restores the original perception of unity with God to each soul so that conflict of the kind we see in the Middle-East is no longer possible. This is the goal that all who seek peace need to hold before themselves.  It is one whose time has come.