Peace or Justice? An Israeli Essayist Rejects the Choice

Adam Penkin wants to change the question. In an essay published on the Times of Israel's blogs platform, he argues that the central dispute between Israelis and Palestinians isn't who has the right to live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. It’s how everyone already living there can keep living there.

Penkin describes himself as an international Jew who made his home in Israel and studied philosophy at Cambridge. He says the usual framing is false: the conflict is routinely cast as Arabs against Jews, with one side expected to win and the other to lose. The deeper divide, he writes, runs between people who put justice first and people who put peace first. He presents his essay as a personal view, not scholarship. His attached biography quotes Amos Oz on the value of writing by someone living through events rather than an expert observing them.

Two Narratives, One Land

The essay sets out two historical claims, neither of which, Penkin insists, will give way. In his account of the Arab narrative, the claim to the land draws on the Islamic conquests of the seventh century, its designation as Waqf, or eternally Islamic, and a long history of Arab residency and integration with earlier populations. Many Arabs, he writes, see their struggle as resistance to Western colonialism and believe the British promised them the land. After most of it slipped from Arab control in 1948, he says, territory regarded as Waqf became Dar al-Harb, the abode of war, and Islamic law calls for its return to an Islamic state.

The Jewish narrative, he writes, rests on the Torah's account of God's promise of the land and on a continuous Jewish presence that predates Islam. He cites the Merneptah Stele in Egypt, which he says mentions Israel as a distinct people as early as the 13th century BCE, and the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 CE. Penkin describes Israel as the region's only successful de-colonial project and Zionism as a de-colonial land-back movement. Palestinians would reject that contested characterization; it reflects how the author sees his own side's story.

Both sides, he argues, claim indigeneity and ownership, regard the other as the oppressor, and consider their own cause just. The same events produce opposite conclusions. Islamic Jerusalem and Jewish Jerusalem aren't separate places, he notes: the Dome of the Rock stands atop the Temple Mount.

Maximalists on Both Sides

Penkin doesn't spare his own camp. He identifies Israel's settler movement and what he calls the current far-right, anti-peace government as one group claiming all the land. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, he writes, are another. He says both groups are committed to destroying Israel and supported and took part in the October 7th invasion. The essay gives no year for that date.

The demand for justice, he argues, can keep both populations opposed to compromise, quiet and peace, since compromise leaves nobody with everything they want. He connects that logic to debates over reparations, justifications and which side deserves victory. It links figures as different as Yigal Amir and Yahya Sinwar, he writes, in their belief that there can be "no peace without justice."

Public Reason as an Alternative

His proposed way out is what he calls "mutually acceptable reasons." He draws on "public reason," which he defines as "a moral ideal requiring that political decisions be reasonably justifiable or acceptable from each individual's viewpoint." The approach begins with the one thing he says both peoples share: a desire to live between the Jordan and the sea. It accepts competing narratives without requiring reconciliation and respects the wish to live without violence.

Penkin says this isn't a call to divide people further or turn peace advocates against those seeking what they regard as justice. He argues that pursuing justice through more violence is unlikely to end well, and that peace comes before justice in a practical sense, not a hierarchical one. If Arabs had accepted partition in 1948 while rejecting its moral validity, he suggests, the dispute might have lasted 70 years as a debate at the United Nations rather than a war. He concedes that a view from nowhere may not be possible, but says discussion and outside perspectives could create conditions for broader fairness.

Some see an Arab state carved from the Jewish homeland as an affront to God, he writes, while others view Jewish sovereignty over an Islamic Waqf as an abomination. Most people, he argues, would rather live disappointed than die pursuing a maximalist ideal.

What the Essay Leaves Out

This is a work of argument, not reporting, and it reflects one Israeli's perspective. It includes no Palestinian voices and says nothing about Palestinians' daily conditions. Penkin's list of minorities he says live under oppression or low-intensity conflict where Islam reigns—including Copts, Druze, Kurds and Berbers—is his own characterization, not a sourced finding.

The peace camp he describes opposes Netanyahu's government, which he says sends young soldiers to their deaths. It also opposes 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. His conclusion is blunt: the divide isn't Jews versus Arabs but ideology versus pragmatism, maximalism versus sharing, and justice versus peace.

Why This Matters: Penkin's essay captures a debate running through Israeli and Palestinian politics: must peace wait for a settled account of who was wronged? His answer is no. He argues that insisting on full justice first has left civilians on both sides paying the price. The piece comes from one voice and sidesteps questions of power, occupation and daily rights that Palestinians would put at the center. Still, its core claim deserves attention. If each side's moral case can't be reconciled, a settlement has to rest on something narrower and more practical: the shared need to live without being killed. Whether leaders on either side will accept that remains an open question.