An Integral Perspective
On the Israel-Palestine Conflict
Here is Corey deVos’s 4-stage model of the conflict. You can see his entire AQAL interpretation at https://integrallife.com/between-hope-and-history/
This is fine as far as it goes. It’s a standard description of the characteristics of the four stages. Notice that the term “Israel-Palestine conflict” appears exactly twice in the table. You could substitute for Israel-Palestine: Russia-Ukraine, China-US, India-Pakistan, etc., without changing anything else in the table. Again, I am not criticizing this. But it doesn’t tell us anything about the specific actors, values, strategies, stories, or global issues involved in the war, so his model is not as integral as it could be. Here is one way to flesh the table out with the specific values and views that are in play at the four stages.
Amber
Religious Zionists view the conflict as a struggle of Jews to recapture their rightful home in the land of Israel. Indigenous Palestinians have no right to the land and must be removed or exterminated, as Yahweh ordered against the Amalekites in the Old Testament. Religious Palestinians believe that both they and Jews are “people of the Book” and should have the right to live together peacefully on the land between the river and the sea. Extremist Muslims want to kill jews and destroy the state of Israel.
Orange
The war is playing out in a context of conflicting regional and international power struggles in which Israel, the US, and their European allies are pitted militarily against an Arab resistance movement consisting of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other armed Islamic groups who wish to end Israeli aggression in the region. Both sides see the conflict as a problem to be solved by defeating the other. The United Nations attempts to solve the conflict through negotiations in accordance with international law.
Green
Palestinians are the most oppressed ethnic group in the world. The Israeli state has escalated its oppression from conquest to dispossession to occupation to apartheid to genocide. Countless heartbreaking testimonials from Gaza and the West Bank require us to protest the war and to assist in the provision of humanitarian aid to the starving and traumatized population of Palestine.
Teal
A peaceful resolution to the conflict must take into account the legitimate claims at each level of development and reject those that are incompatible with the demands of justice, morality, and compassion. Amber religious needs must be honored, but not religious supremacy or sectarianism (Zionism and Islamism must be eliminated). Orange institutions – the UN Charter, its various conventions, international law, and the ICC and ICJ – must provide the sole framework for enacting a permanent solution, not any particular nation or alliance of nation states. Green humanitarianism must be empowered to assist all individuals damaged by the war, but not at the expense of the legitimate claims of parties at Amber and Orange.