Dangerous persistence of identity issues

Unfortunately, in the Middle Eastern theatre identity has been made to matter over the decades. Consequently, the conflict has come to be defined by some as an armed struggle for supremacy and power between the Muslim Arab world and the Jews, who have identity markers in respect of religion, language and culture that are distinct from those of Arab Muslims.

The ‘Israel-Hamas war’ has, very understandably, spurred a welter of issues on the law and order and other relevant fronts but it seems to be insufficiently realized that the conflict is at bottom also closely connected to identity. It also seems to be little realized that the persistence of matters related to identity is rendering the Middle East crisis exceptionally difficult to resolve.

Going forward, this neglect of the identity dimension in the war could prove perilous to the Middle East region and the world. Any policy prescriptions to defuse or manage the ongoing conflict, by the international community, could prove limited if the identity problems at the heart of the crisis are continued to be soft-peddled or ignored.

Admittedly, this is no easy challenge. This is on account of the fact that identity is a profoundly sensitive issue to most communities. Most discussions of identity often prove to be of a highly emotional and controversial kind since identity captures the distinctiveness of human societies.

This distinctiveness is usually jealously guarded by social groups and it is generally considered commonsensical for public discourse to discuss identity issues with the utmost carefulness or to side-step them altogether.

However, the persistence of identity-related issues in some currently unfolding conflicts internationally is reflective of the fact that democratic development is lagging the world over. Because in the most vibrant of democracies personal or group identities are not made to matter.

In such dispensations, personal merit becomes prime and one’s placement in the world, for instance, is not made to be dependent on identity, which is considered a highly personal matter.

That is secularism, which essentially denotes the separation of religion, which is a prime identity marker, from politics, takes centre stage in fully-fledged democracies. In fact, secularism could be considered a defining essence of democracy, in the truest sense of the term.

Unfortunately, in the Middle Eastern theatre identity has been made to matter over the decades. Consequently, the conflict has come to be defined by some as an armed struggle for supremacy and power between the Muslim Arab world and the Jews, who have identity markers in respect of religion, language and culture that are distinct from those of Arab Muslims.

As long as this is so, the Middle East conflict would prove difficult to manage or resolve by the world community headed by the UN, because identity is considered almost sacred by most communities of the South and is seen as an area of life that is not open to critical discussion or tampering with by particularly external quarters. Often, when discussed in public, the process unleashes volatile, even destructive emotions among the group’s concerned.

However, as matters stand, identity is at the heart of the Middle East conflict. For instance, in the present splurge of savage violence, the Hamas, backed by religious fundamentalist states of the region, is fighting towards the destruction of Israel, which is, of course, distinct from the Arab world in respect of most identity markers. Israel is seen as the archetypal ‘Other’, which needs to be destroyed on account of its perceived alien nature.

Thus, a most unfortunate situation has been allowed unfold over the decades from which there could be little chance of escape provided the world community kick-starts the faltered search for a democratic solution to the region’s tangle. That is, proactive moves need to be made to reactivate and put in place the ‘Two State’ solution, which essentially envisages the establishment of a Palestinian and an Israeli state, within clearly demarcated boundaries, in the contested territories, where both ethnic and religious groups could, hopefully, coexist peacefully.

The above scheme, may seem idealistic at present, but there is no alternative viable solution ‘on the table’. In the absence of giving it another try, the world would be forced to witness in the Middle East in the days ahead, wave upon wave of dehumanizing violence, and we are seeing, perhaps, a mere sample of such mutually-destructive savagery in the Gaza at present.

The main adversarial sides and their key external backers in the Middle East ought to perceive that what is being perpetuated is a spiral of violence from which there could be no easy escape. There would be no winners in the current monumental blood-letting because humans, both young and old, from both sides, are being brutalized beyond recognition in it. The stage has just been set, apparently, for decades of violence to come, unless the sides enter into political negotiations in earnest.