Conflicting meanings of time threaten Israel’s agreement with Hamas. More precisely, the directly impacted parties (one a state, the other an aspiring state) have very different understandings of chronology. If overlooked by Jerusalem, these differences will impair residual chances for a true peace.
In all such determinable matters, policy clarifications should begin at conceptual levels. For Israel, time is simply a tangible measure of clocks and calendars. For Hamas and its associated jihadi groups, however, it can mean something much less objective. Here, because it is drawn largely from religion-based notions of time (i.e., “sacred time”), chronology elevates a virtuous patience over mechanical compliance. For Hamas et al. it is about “God’s Time.”
What should be learned in Jerusalem from this elevation? As a starting premise, any enemy linkage of time to a presumptively divine mandate will reduce the importance of treaties and treaty-like agreements.
Accordingly, in the matter at hand: (1) Hamas and related jihadists will feel less obligation than Israel to comply with US President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan, and (2) Israel will feel reciprocal incentives to abandon the plan.
Eventually, this asymmetrical outlook on time will doom the agreement. Such plausible failure could happen incrementally or suddenly. Either way, it ought to be expected.
There are clarifying particulars. Doubtlessly, Israel and its American ally will stay focused on moment-by-moment checks on the ceasefire. “Is it “still holding?” will be the dominant query in both Jerusalem and Washington. On the Palestinian side, however, this will be a relatively insignificant question of tactics.
For Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and assorted others, there will be no comparable time urgency. Why should there be? Though Israel and its allies live in “profane time,” the Arab side moves with incontestable assurance toward an individual and collective redemption. This will take place in “sacred time.” In the final analysis, this core difference on the meaning of time will favor “Palestine.” To borrow an explanatory concept from economics, Hamas et al. will have a “comparative advantage.”
There is an element of irony to such different meanings of time. The pertinent notion of “sacred time” has its origins in ancient Israel. By first rejecting time as linear progression, the early Hebrews approached chronology as a qualitative experience guided “from above.” Ipso facto, this approach regarded time as something inseparable from inherently sacred content.
From its beginnings, the Jewish prophetic vision was delineated as a community living in time and under a transcendent God. In this original vision, political “space” was certainly important, but not because territory or land was considered valuable per se. For this early community, the relevance of “land” stemmed from the identifiably unique events that had taken place within its boundaries.
For present-day Israel, the space-time relationship has immediate agreement implications. Any considered territorial surrenders (e.g., accepting a Palestinian state) would reduce the amount of “clock time” that Israel has to resist war and terrorism. Reciprocally, new land surrenders by Israel could extend both “clock time” and “sacred time” opportunities for jihadi enemies (state and sub-state) to wait for optimal attack circumstances. The best surrender example would be prime minister Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan for Gaza in August 2005.
THERE IS more. For Israel, still facing war and terror on multiple fronts, the strategic importance of time should be expressed not just by its relationship to space but also by its place as a storehouse of Jewish memory. By recalling past vulnerabilities of Jewish life in the world, Israel’s current leaders could persuasively step back sensibly from future (and futile) territorial concessions. Among other advantages, such recollections could prevent continuously unreciprocated concessions and enhance prospects for a genuine peace.
Combatting the suicidal jihadist
Looking ahead, the jihadists’ subjective metaphysics of time – one that emphasizes “inner time” or “time-as-lived” – will impact the ways in which Israel confronts Hamas and allied foes. If it could be acknowledged that these adversaries embrace a longer time horizon in their search for “victory” than Israel does, Jerusalem’s response to enemy aggressions could be correspondingly protracted. Inter alia, this would mean relying more on the relatively passive dynamics of Israeli military deterrence and defense than on warfighting.
Of special and immediate interest to Israel should be the discernible time horizons of the jihadi suicide bomber. Though counterintuitive, this martyrdom-focused terrorist is grievously afraid of death. Paradoxically, this criminal adversary is so overwhelmingly afraid of “not being” that his/her “sacred” plan for “suicide” is based on avoiding death without redemption. Though rarely understood in Jerusalem or Washington, the “heroic martyrdom” sought by believers is actually intended to spawn immortality.
There are more questions. Operationally, how can such intentions be meaningfully countered? One way would require prior realization that an aspiring suicide bomber sees himself/herself as a religious “sacrificer.” This would signify not just “power over death” but also an escape from meaningless or “profane” time.
What should Israel do with more informed understandings of its jihadi enemies’ concept of “sacred time”? In principle, at least, Jerusalem’s immediate policy response should be to convince prospective suicide bombers that their intended “sacrifice” could never elevate them above mortal limits. But assorted would-be self-sacrificers would first need to be convinced that (1) they are not actually living in “profane time,” and (2) every sacrificial killing of unbelievers represents a sacred celebration.
No such task of persuasion would be easy. Immediately, Israeli policymakers will need to recognize differences of chronology as complex quandaries of religion and culture. They will also need to acknowledge that any search for an authentic peace must ultimately be rooted in far deeper intellectual and historical kinds of understanding. The plain fact that necessary understandings are absent from President Trump’s 20-point plan ensures the plan’s irreversible failure.
The writer is an emeritus professor of international law at Purdue University and the author of many books and scholarly articles on international law, nuclear strategy, nuclear war, and terrorism, including Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; second edition, 2018).