Public Reason Puts Peace Before Rival Claims

Adam Penkin argues that the conflict is not Arabs against Jews, but a struggle between people who put justice first and those who prioritize peace. His proposed way out is “public reason”: political decisions, he writes, should be “reasonably justifiable or acceptable from each individual's viewpoint.” He’s making an argument about how people might live together. But political decisions—and the institutions that make them—remain central to his picture.

Whose justice, whose authority?

Penkin says Arab and Jewish claims to the land draw on different histories and values, and their narratives are unlikely to converge. He describes Arab claims through the Islamic conquests of the seventh century, the designation of the land as Waqf, Arab residency, and the belief among many Arabs that Britain promised them the land. After the loss of control over most of the land in 1948, he writes, land regarded as Waqf became Dar al-Harb, and Islamic law calls for its return to an Islamic state.

His account of Jewish claims draws on the Torah, a continuous Jewish presence predating Islam and the Arab conquests, the Merneptah Stele, and the destruction of the Jewish Temple by the Romans in 70 CE. Penkin describes Israel as the region's only successful de-colonial project and Zionism as a de-colonial land-back movement. Those are his characterizations. He sets them beside his account of competing Arab claims, rather than presenting either narrative as a shared definition of justice.

Penkin identifies Israel's settler movement and current far-right, anti-peace government, as well as Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, among those making claims to all the land. He says they’re committed to destroying Israel and supported and engaged in the October 7th invasion. The essay describes these political forces as competing over territory and authority, while presenting ordinary people’s shared desire to live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as a possible basis for agreement.

Peace as a practical demand

Penkin argues that demands for justice can keep people opposed to compromise, quiet and peace. He connects that approach to arguments about reparations, justifications, and which side deserves victory, and invokes Yigal Amir and Yahya Sinwar as figures associated with the belief that there can be “no peace without justice.” He says compromise leaves nobody with everything they want.

His alternative, “mutually acceptable reasons,” asks people to appeal to what they share: a desire to live in the same territory. Public reason, as he defines it, recognizes competing narratives without requiring people to reconcile them. Penkin presents it as a pragmatic way to respect a desire to live without violence, not as a demand that advocates of peace turn against people seeking what they consider justice.

The proposal has a boundary. It asks how political decisions can be justified from each person’s viewpoint, but it doesn’t explain how to make decisions without political authority. Penkin’s examples include partition, the United Nations, Israel's government, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority; the essay proposes changing the reasons offered for decisions, not replacing those institutions with horizontal organizing.

The price of maximalism

Penkin says pursuing justice through further violence is unlikely to produce a satisfactory end. He argues that if Arabs had accepted partition in 1948 while rejecting its moral validity, the conflict could have continued through debate in the United Nations rather than violence. He also acknowledges that a view from nowhere may not be possible, while suggesting discussion and external perspectives could create conditions for broader fairness.

He describes people who see an Arab state carved out of the Jewish homeland as an affront to God, and others who see Jewish sovereignty over an Islamic Waqf as an abomination. Most people, he argues, would rather live disappointed than die pursuing a maximalist ideal. His peace camp opposes Netanyahu's government, which he says sends young soldiers to their deaths, and Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which he says recruit children and pay stipends to fund attacks against Jews as preliminary steps toward a second Holocaust. These are Penkin's claims, stated in his argument.

The essay’s closing divide is ideology versus pragmatism, maximalism versus sharing, and justice versus peace—not Jews versus Arabs. Its proposed common ground is a shared wish to live without violence. The harder question remains: who gets to turn that wish into binding political decisions?