Penkin Warns Maximalist Claims Block Israel-Palestinian Peace

Adam Penkin says Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are among the groups claiming all the land and committed to destroying Israel. That makes any question of justice inseparable from the threat of continued violence. In his essay on the conflict, Penkin argues that competing claims are unlikely to converge. Instead, political debate should focus on how people already living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea can live there.

Competing Claims to the Land

Penkin describes Arab claims as drawing on the Islamic conquests of the seventh century, the designation of the land as Waqf, or eternally Islamic, and a history of Arab residency and integration with populations that preceded them. He writes that many Arabs see their struggle as opposition to Western colonialism and believe the British promised them the land. After losing control over most of the land in 1948, he says, Arabs regarded Waqf land as Dar al-Harb, or the abode of war or infidelity. Islamic law calls for its return to an Islamic state.

The Jewish narrative, he writes, draws on the Torah's account of God's promise of the land and a continuous Jewish presence that predates Islam and the Arab conquests. Penkin cites the Merneptah Stele, which he says refers to Israel as a distinct people as early as the 13th century BCE, and the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 CE. Jews regard Israel as holy, he writes, and see Islamic imperialism as a force that subjugates minorities. He points to Copts, Druze, Kurds and Berbers as minorities living under oppression or low-intensity conflict in places where Islam reigns.

Penkin calls Israel, since independence, the region's only successful de-colonial project and describes Zionism as a de-colonial land-back movement. Both sides claim indigeneity and ownership, he argues, regard the other as an oppressor and see their cause as just. Islamic Jerusalem and Jewish Jerusalem aren't separate; the Dome of the Rock stands atop the Temple Mount.

Justice, Violence and Political Choices

Penkin identifies Israel's settler movement and the current far-right, anti-peace government, along with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, as groups that claim all the land. He says they’re committed to destroying Israel and supported and engaged in the October 7th invasion. His essay links the demand for justice to opposition to compromise, quiet and peace. Any settlement leaves nobody with everything they want.

He connects the principle of “no peace without justice” to figures including Yigal Amir and Yahya Sinwar. The peace camp opposes Netanyahu's government, Penkin says, because it 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.

A Case for Public Reason

Penkin proposes “mutually acceptable reasons” as an alternative: an appeal to the shared desire to live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. He defines “public reason” as “a moral ideal requiring that political decisions be reasonably justifiable or acceptable from each individual's viewpoint.” This approach recognizes different narratives without asking people to reconcile them, and respects the desire to live without violence.

Further violence is unlikely to produce a satisfactory end, Penkin says. Peace comes before justice in a practical, not hierarchical, sense. For example, he writes, 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 acknowledges that a view from nowhere may not be possible, but says discussion and external perspectives could create conditions for broader fairness. His closing distinction isn't Jews versus Arabs, but ideology versus pragmatism, maximalism versus sharing, and justice versus peace.