The United State of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Nation-State Religion

This essay offers a critical reflection of the discourse concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its basic hypothesis is that the notion of "conflict," a situation of radical disagreement, necessarily assumes an even more radical agreement on the unity underlying the difference: an agreement on the situation. Its basic question is accordingly: What is the underlying agreement that is presupposed and imposed-that is, performed-by the discourse of an Israeli-Palestinian conflict? What is the "united state" of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? What are the logos and logic that generate this synopsis of different, conflicting, warring narratives? Drawing on Marx, Schmitt, Heidegger, Arendt, and Anidjar, the essay attempts to look at the notion of an Israeli-Palestinian conflict as arising from the hermeneutic unity of a liberal logos of state and a fundamentalist logos of religion.