Get Rid of the Palestinian-Israeli Myth of Ownership or Surrender to Sisyphean Peace

Staff Writer

Table of Contents

One thing with any myth is that it is conceived without proof and transmitted from one generation to another as a matter of convention. At times, it goes on to help shape or form a people’s mindset and can lead to different extreme beliefs and disputes. Palestinian and Israeli territorial narratives are becoming mythical to both insiders and outsiders, ingroups and outgroups, and many inimical political actors and neighbours who take advantage of Palestinian-Israeli little foibles to fan the flame of hatred, violence, and war.

To the Palestinians and Israelis, it is not a myth; it is real. It is about survival; it is about their heritage. It is about true peace, harmony, and togetherness.

What will bring peace in the Middle East, or peace between the Palestinians and Israelis? Many have asked. If Palestine or Israel does not exist or have no place in the Middle East, then no nation exists in the Middle East. Some countries in the Middle East want Israel gone from the region and some want Palestine gone from the region. But this is not going to happen.   

There’s no legendary myth that is so absurd and cruel as the Myth of Sisyphus. The myth that either Palestine or Israel does not belong to the Middle East is as cruel as the Sisyphean myth. That is why you need to get rid of the Palestinian-Israeli Myth of Ownership or surrender to Sisyphean peace.

The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus is an essay about ‘Man in revolt,’ written by Albert Camus in 1942 (in French: Le Mythe de Sisyphe). The Myth of Sisyphus is Camus’ philosophy of the absurd, that is, the meaningless or unresponsiveness of the universe to the plights of human conditions. For Camus, such absurdity should not lead to suicide but rather to revolt. It became anecdotal when he compared the human situations in absurdity with the Sisyphean ordeal.

According to Greek mythology, in Homer’s Iliad BK VI, Sisyphus was described as the son of Aeolus and father of Glaucus; after Homer, he was described as the father of Odysseus. He was known as the founder of the Isthmian Games dedicated to Poseidon, the sea god. Nevertheless, when it was his time to die, Sisyphus contrived and chained death up so that no one died, and by so doing, he cheated death. Finally, when it was his time to die, a second time, for cheating death in the first, he was sentenced to a perpetual punishment in Hades.

For punishment, he was tasked to roll a boulder up a mountain, but as he and the boulder got to the tip of the mountain, he and the boulder rolled down, and that continued ad infinitum.

Death is a kind of eternal peace if your soul is at rest. But for Sisyphus, if that was peace, then he would not wish that for anybody. This is the struggle of everyone on earth. It is one of life’s puzzles: What can bring us peace?

One can argue that the Palestinian-Israeli myth of ownership engenders the proliferation of violence, threats, and attacks; the need to tackle them, and the ‘unreasonable arguments’ by Palestinian and Israeli neighbours, regional leaders (religious and political), and citizens in response to the violence, threats, and attacks. The Palestinian-Israeli myth of ownership is the reason some extremists have intentionally grouped and condemned themselves to perpetual attacks and donated them as weapons for carrying out further attacks.  

Misconceptions of Ownership

What is happening in Palestinian-Israeli inhabited territories is cruel and absurd. It is cruel on one hand because people are involved, children, women, and innocent people.  The struggle for ownership has brought untold suffering and hardships to the region. At times, you begin to wonder if their neighbours get any satisfaction from seeing the kind of pain and injuries the people go through. It is cruel because other occupants (other countries in the Middle East) of the region seem to lack empathy or compassion for the Palestinians and Israelis.

You see the leaders of the countries in the region gloating on television and different social networks at the suffering and pain of the Palestinians and Israelis.

On the other hand, it is absurd, because of the senseless killing and maiming of children and young people. It is irrational because of the destruction of life and property. Sending rockets of destruction that target civilian populations is cruel and barbaric. It is at odds with anything humane, reason, and godly. It is an outright human’s inhumanity to humans.

The Palestinian-Israeli myth of ownership is a cultivated misconception of the genesis of the different nations occupying the region and who owns which area of land. It is a false knowledge that has circulated and become a tradition (that is, a false belief that has been transmitted from one individual to another, and from one generation to another).

This misconception is the reason for so many violent deaths occurring daily in the region. This misconception leads to misdirected anger: against the innocent, against children, against women, against young people, against life, against love, against peace, against togetherness.

The myth is the misconception that Israel's first appearance in the Middle East was on May 14, 1948, after the United Nations approved the partition plan for Palestine, which led to the establishment of a Jewish state and an Arab state.

History tells us that the area currently inhabited by Palestine and Israel had been previously inhabited by various peoples, such as the Canaanites, the Israelites, the Philistines, and many other people in ancient times.

History also tells us that for many centuries, the region was occupied by different groups after conquest, such as the Romans, Byzantines, Muslims, Crusaders, Ottomans, and the British.

Any narrative about who owns the area currently inhabited by Palestinians and Israelis is a complex one. Both can claim rights to the area’s historicity, regionality, and jurisdiction. Both have deep cultural, religious, and supernatural ties to the land. Hence, the Palestinian-Israeli myth of ownership continues to be worrisome.

Path to Togetherness, Tolerance, Understanding, Respect for Each other

It is time to get rid of the Palestinian-Israeli myth of ownership of their currently inhabited piece of land. Both nations have great ties and deep historical connections to the same piece of land.

The way to live together between the Palestinians and Israelis can follow three pathways:

  1. Social Peace – There is a need to inculcate social peace that fosters living in harmony and Israelis and Palestinians co-existing together. Their systems must entrench social justice, treat everyone with respect, give everyone their rights and shun all forms of oppression against themselves.
  2. Inner Peace – It is when they learn to co-exist as a people though unique in culture and history, they will start to have that inner peace, and harmony, and promote the dignity of each other.
  3. Political Peace – At this third level of peace, both nations are at a plethora of conscious non-aggressive behaviours. At this level, the citizens of both nations are kind and show kindness to one another, they think about the well-being of their next-door neighbour and the welfare of others. 


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