By Ira Sharkansky
JERUSALEM — We can’t solve the issue, or the problem, of Palestine. So, we cope.
Years ago, I asked my daughter, who was studying to be a clinical psychologist, about her dissertation. It dealt with coping. What’s that? She explained, and I came to see coping as the essence of dealing politically with insoluble problems.
Coping does not seek to solve problems once and for all times. Synonyms include contend, deal with, endure, fight successfully or on equal terms, handle, hold one’s own, manage, accommodate, struggle, be ambiguous, subsist, survive, negotiate, bargain, barter, weather. adapt, and satisfice. These imply decisions that are “good enough,” even if they are not what any of the participants really want.
Coping is everywhere in politics, policymaking, and program implementation. It may be the essence of political behavior.
Psychologists have developed the concept of coping more fully than those of us dealing with politics. They use it to describe how individuals deal with stress that they can’t get rid of.
We cope in many situations. Insofar as life is imperfect, much of our behavior may be one or another kind of coping. Most of it is trivial, as when the store does not have exactly the item that we want. In politics, the concept lends itself to extensive discussion. Coping explains behaviors of Israelis and Palestinians amid the stresses of their conflict. Coping serves to emphasize how they manage the stresses, without really trying to do away with them once and for all times.
Not all cope. There is violence of Palestinians against Jews, and of Jews against Palestinians and other Arabs. The violence kills and injures, but the problems remain after the clean up.
There is a humane quality as well as a pragmatic utility to coping. More than being the best that can be achieved, coping seems valuable in its own right. The tactics of accommodation and ambiguity are ways of keeping together a family or a polity split by contending demands and loyalties. Coping helps to keep groups in the realm of antagonists who can negotiate with one another, rather than turning them into enemies who must battle one another.
Coping is untidy and frustrating, but inevitable. It is inherent in the ambiguity of politics that there are no clear boundaries between what should be permitted and forbidden. The messiness of coping is likely to be more humane than the perfection, discipline, and completeness that, if it were possible, would meet the aspirations of those who demand decision-making that is more fully complete in the pursuit of a total solution for serious problems.
The term “final solution” conjures up the ugly regime of the Nazis. When he was a ranking member of the opposition in the Knesset, Yitzhak Rabin used the phrase, “Bang and we’re finished” as a derisive criticism against the grandiose plan of the Likud government to end the threat of terrorism via the war in Lebanon.
We know that the war did not end well. Few, if any wars do end well. Tension remains, sometimes with bits of violence, hopefully kept under control by those who cope.
Coping is not for those who aspire to be heroic.
Platitudes like “two people, one land” do not go far beyond explaining the problem
The lack of an available solution need not lessen the importance of goals. Goals may be achieved, assuming they are not too grandiose.
Would it be possible to “solve” the Israeli-Palestinian problem with more forceful means?
I do not expect a solution for the problems of Palestinians and Israelis in the near future. Or maybe ever. Admittedly, “ever” is a long time. Hopefully there will be a period of quiet,
Coping does not promise success, but it is a way of avoiding disaster.
“So far” comes along with explanations of coping. The expression reflects the temporary accommodation. They are all temporary.
Will there be a Palestinian State? When? And what about Israeli settlers in the West Bank? Who knows?
And to you all, my best wishes for 2022 and beyond.
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Ira Sharkansky is professor emeritus of political science at Hebrew University. He may be contacted via ira.sharkansky@sdjewishworld.com