Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of Terrorists (51 page)

Each set of trade-offs included an original offer we pretested as likely to be rejected (“taboo”), the same trade-off with an added material incentive (“taboo plus”), and the original trade-off with an added symbolic gesture from the other side (a separate test showed that the “tragic” trade-off held no material value for participants).

For example, a typical set of trade-offs offered to Palestinians might begin with this (taboo) premise: “Suppose the United Nations organized a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians; Palestinians would be required to give up their right to return to their homes in Israel; and there would be two states, a Jewish state of Israel and a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.” Second, we would sweeten the pot (with the taboo plus): “In return, the USA and the European Union would give Palestine one billion dollars a year for one hundred years.” Then the symbolic (tragic) concession: “For its part, Israel would apologize for suffering caused by the displacement and dispossession of civilians in the 1948 war.”

Many of the respondents insisted that the values involved were sacred to them. For example, nearly half the Israeli settlers we surveyed said they would not consider trading any land in the West Bank—territory they believe was granted them by God—in exchange for peace. More than half the Palestinians considered full sovereignty over Jerusalem in the same light, and more than four-fifths felt that the “right of return” was a sacred value, too. Among Palestinians, the greater the material incentive offered, the greater the disgust registered, and the more joyful the reaction to the idea of suicide bombing. In one scenario, Israeli settlerswere offered a deal to give up the West Bank to Palestinians in return for an American subsidy to Israel of $1 billion a year for one hundred years. For those among them who had chosen to live in the Occupied Territories for reasons of economy or quality of life, the offer led to increased willingness to accept land for peace, a decrease in disgust and anger at the deal, and a corresponding reduction in willingness to use violence to oppose it. But for those settlers who believe the Occupied Territories to be God’s ancient trust to them, expressions of anger and disgust and willingness to use violence rose markedly.

This sort of “moral absolutist” sentiment runs directly counter to prevailing economic theories of rational choice and also counter to political-science theories of rational play in negotiation. Our results imply that using the standard approaches of business-style negotiations in such seemingly intractable conflicts will only backfire, with material offers and sweeteners interpreted as morally taboo and insulting (like accepting money to sell your child or sell out your country). Given the closeness of elections in Palestine and Israel, even a small group of absolutists can thwart any peace.

So far, the findings we’ve described make prospects for peace seem very dark. Many on the outside looking in on these clearly expressed “irrational” preferences simply ignore them because in a sensible world they ought not exist. Seemingly, the only realistic alternative is to fall back on material aspects of a business-style approach and leave “value issues” for last. The hope, in the meantime, is that concrete moves on material matters (electricity, water, agriculture, and so on), however small at first, will eventually accumulate enough force to dissolve the harder and more heartfelt value issues. But in reality, this is only a recipe for another Hundred Years’ War, as progress on everyday material matters only heightens attention to heavy, value-laden issues of who we are and who we want to be.

Fortunately, our work also suggests another, more optimisticcourse. Absolutists who violently rejected profane offers of money or peace for sacred land were much more inclined to accept deals that involved their enemies making the symbolic but difficult gesture of conceding respect for the other side’s sacred values. For example, Palestinian hard-liners were more willing to consider recognizing the right of Israel to exist, if the Israelis apologized for suffering caused to Palestinian civilians in the 1948 war (which Palestinians call
Naqba’,
the Catastrophe).

Elliot Abrams, senior member of the National Security Council staff responsible for Middle East affairs during George W. Bush’s presidency, responded to our briefing on these results this way: “Seems right. On the settlers [being removed from Gaza, Israeli prime minister Ariel] Sharon realized too late that he shouldn’t have berated them about wasting Israel’s money and endangering soldiers’ lives. Sharon told me that he realized only afterward that he should have made a symbolic concession and called them Zionist heroes making yet another sacrifice.” Here, the settlers’ enemy was their own government.
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Remarkably, our survey results were mirrored by our discussions with political leaders from both sides. Musa Abu Marzook, former chairman and currently deputy chairman of Hamas, said no when we proposed a trade-off for peace without granting a right of return. He became angry when we added in the idea of substantial American aid for rebuilding: “No, we do not sell ourselves for any amount.” But when a potential Israeli apology for 1948 was brought up, he brightened: “Yes, an apology is important, as a beginning. It’s not enough, because our houses and land were taken away from us and something has to be done about that.” This suggested that progress on sacred values might open up negotiations on material issues, rather than the reverse.

We got a similar reaction from Benjamin Netanyahu, then the hard-line leader of the Israeli opposition and now prime minister again. We asked him if he would seriously consider accepting atwo-state solution following the 1967 borders if all major Palestinian factions, including Hamas, were to recognize the right of the Jewish people to an independent state in the region. He answered, “Okay, but the Palestinians would have to show that they sincerely mean it, change their textbooks and anti-Semitic characterizations and then allow some border adjustments so that Ben-Gurion [Airport] would be out of range of shoulder-fired missiles.”

Of course, there are leaders on both sides who currently refuse any notion of compromise, and there may be some posturing on willingness to compromise from both Marzook and Netanyahu, although neither has publicly brought up these ideas before or since, and both responded to our questioning in a deeply personal way. Making these sorts of wholly intangible “symbolic” concessions, like an apology or recognition of a right to exist or a simple but sincere show of respect, simply doesn’t compute on any utilitarian calculus. Words—of an apology, recognition, or respect—aren’t enough on their own, but they are the beginning; they are the things that just might make the other side willing to listen and calm the heat in their anger. Words have the extreme power to change emotions. They can express the abstract and the factual, but they can also change and inspire. And the science says they may be the best bet to start cutting the knot.
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SACRED VALUES IN INDONESIA, INDIA, AND IRAN

In studies in Indonesia, we found that support for violence among moderate as well as radical madrassah students was significantly greater in response to a deal that involved a large material incentive to give up the struggle to have the country “ruled strictly according to Sharia” (Muslim law).
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From India, Sonya Sachdeva and Doug Medin show that the sacred and secular don’t mix in the conflict over Kashmir, although the issue appears to be more symbolically charged for Muslims than for Hindus. Hindus andMuslims are equally likely to disapprove of a material compromise over Kashmir (taboo trade-off: “Instead of the current two-to-one split of Kashmir, it would be evenly divided between Pakistan and India”) and to envisage rioting over the issue. Muslims, however, are much more likely than Hindus are to approve a deal and to downplay rioting were the other side to make a symbolic concession (symbolic [tragic] trade-off: “India would recognize the sacred and historic right that Muslims have to Kashmir and apologize for all the wrongs done over the years”).
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In an Internet experiment designed by Morteza Dehghani and Rumen Illiev, our research team asked Iranians from inside and outside Iran to imagine these hypothetical situations:

Iran will give up its nuclear program; Israel in return will give up its nuclear program and destroy any existing nuclear weapons.

Iran will give up its nuclear program; Israel in return will give up its nuclear program and destroy any existing nuclear weapons. In addition, the EU will pay $40 billion to Iran.

There was a clear difference between the first hypothesis (taboo) and the second (taboo plus): Iranian subjects were generally approving of added material incentives, whereas a minority of 11 percent were strongly disapproving. For at least some Iranians, acquiring a nuclear capability had perhaps become something of a “sacred value” that cannot simply be bought off with material incentives.
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Is 11 percent too few Iranians to matter? Perhaps not: even a minority, if it is committed enough, can carry the day if it is associated with a power structure that is willing to do almost anything to stay in power, like the Alawites in Syria who number between 10 and 20 percent of the population yet have ruled for decades.

In a much larger follow-up study conducted in 2010, we found that the more strongly religious people were, and the more closelythey identified with Iran’s rulers, the greater their anger toward material offers. But we also found that while acquiring a nuclear capability for energy and medicine had reliably become a sacred value for a significant minority of Iranians both inside and outside the country,
acquiring nuclear weapons was not reliably a sacred value.

It appears, then, that sacred values can emerge for issues with relatively little historical background and significance when they become bound up with conflicts over collective identity. Specifically, achieving nuclear capability seems to have the capacity for assuming sacredness among at least some Iranians.
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One political analyst cautioned the U.S. administration, “You don’t bring down a quasi-holy symbol—nuclear power—by cutting off gasoline sales.”
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Indeed, Iranian officials claim that “we cannot have any compromise with respect to the Iranian nation’s inalienable right” to acquire a nuclear capability.
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In fact, our results suggest that a “carrots (or sticks) approach,” which is favored by the United States, European Union, and the U.N., may actually backfire for those who identify most closely with the Iranian regime.

One obvious problem is that while people often recognize their own side’s sacred values, they often ignore or downplay the importance of the other side’s values. In chapter 15, we saw that Pashtun tribesmen will defend to the death the ancient code of honor known as Pashtunwali, which requires protecting valued guests at the risk of one’s own life.
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We also found that in many Middle Eastern, Central Asian, and North African societies, political, economic, and social structure is organized according to patrilineal descent (exclusively through the father’s line), so the patriline’s “honor” depends on “respect” and on the enforced modesty and protection of women. Thus even a small gesture that impugns the esteem of a senior male or the modesty of a postpubescent woman can rouse a whole patriline to implacable hostility, along with people from the entire community who feel their culture’s most sacred values havebeen threatened. But even small gestures of respect toward elders and obvious attempts to maintain social distance toward women can broadcast intent to cooperate with a community in a surprisingly effective way. Here, an almost no-cost act becomes amplified through the local value system to great benefit.

REFRAMING SACRED VALUES

People hold sacred values to be absolute and inviolable. So any symbolic “concession” must not appear to violate or weaken one’s own sacred values. Doing so would likely be seen as tantamount to abandoning or altering core social identity. What often makes values incompatible is the way they are applied to the here and now. While values can be held firmly, their application depends a good deal on how they are understood and what they are taken to imply, and these interpretations and applications of sacred values are not always fixed and inflexible.

The opportunities for reframing issues that involve sacred values arise from the fact that their content is generally open-textured, especially if they involve religious values, which survive in time and spread in space because they are readily reinterpretable in ways that are sensitive to changing contexts. Indeed, sacred values that seem incompatible within certain frames may actually become compatible when reframed.

What follows are some ideas for reframing sacred values in order to overcome barriers to conflict resolution, based on my with work political scientist Robert Axelrod.

EXPLOIT THE INEVITABLE AMBIGUITY OF SACRED

People often apply the “same” sacred values in different ways, which facilitates creative use of ambiguity. Many Americans consider “equality” to be a core value, a self-evident truth as stated in the Declaration of Independence and codified under the law in theFourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution or before God. Historically, though, popular and legal notions of equality have varied considerably and continue to do so: from voting privileges only for property-holding white males to “universal suffrage,” and from “separate but equal” education for whites and blacks to “equal opportunity” for all men and women.