Of This Place

As an anthropologist researching peace initiatives and coexistence in Israel/Palestine, I have witnessed firsthand the profound and often violent consequences of importing Eurocentric frameworks into a context they do not adequately address or understand. Many international peacebuilding efforts in the region, however well-intentioned, have relied on Western liberal ideals and ontologies developed in Western Europe, premised on universalist assumptions about human nature, sovereignty, and secularism. These models, when applied to the Israeli-Palestinian context, have not only failed to yield lasting solutions but have often exacerbated tensions, fostering mutual alienation, disillusionment, and, tragically, bloodshed.

I joined the Jerusalem Circle as one of its founding members because it offers a radically different approach, one that emerges from within the region rather than being imposed upon it. The Jerusalem Circle is an initiative dedicated to cultivating local, tradition-based pathways for dialogue and peace. It recognizes that any enduring resolution to the conflict between Jews and Palestinians must be grounded in the moral, historical, and theological worldviews of the people who live here. This is not merely a political imperative but an epistemological one: peace cannot take root in borrowed soil.

Unlike conventional academic and activist frameworks that often remain beholden to Western liberal norms, the Jerusalem Circle creates a space where Jewish as well as Muslim, and Christian traditions indigenous to the Middle East, though often formed through migration and generational wandering, can engage one another on their own terms. Within this space, these traditions are not treated as relics of the past or as obstacles to modernity. Nor are they forced into the defensive postures they so often must assume in Westernized discourse, where they are interrogated for their compatibility with secular liberal values. Instead, these traditions are granted full legitimacy as moral and intellectual worlds in their own right, capable of addressing fundamental questions of justice, dignity, responsibility, and peace.

This endeavor is not only politically urgent; it is also methodologically resonant with the anthropological ethos that guides my academic work. At the heart of anthropology lies the principle of understanding people in terms of their own categories, through the concepts, languages, and grammars that shape their lives. It means resisting the temptation to translate difference into sameness, or to render others legible only through our own assumptions. The Jerusalem Circle is animated by this same spirit. It is an interdisciplinary forum where deeply rooted theological, legal, and philosophical traditions can encounter each other without being flattened into sameness or filtered through an alien worldview.

In many ways, the Jerusalem Circle reclaims the possibility of tradition not as an impediment to coexistence, but as a resource for it. The traditions of thought present in the Holy Land each contain rich reservoirs of reflection on peace, justice, and human flourishing. Yet these resources are rarely drawn upon in mainstream peace initiatives, which tend to marginalize religious voices or engage them only in instrumental ways. By bringing together scholars and practitioners from within these traditions in an atmosphere of mutual respect, the Jerusalem Circle seeks to generate new understandings, and new forms of trust, that can only emerge when people are not beholden to external frameworks.

At a time when many are searching for exit strategies, shortcuts, or externally imposed solutions, the Jerusalem Circle insists on a slower, more deliberate path: one that listens deeply, honors difference, and believes in the possibility of locally grounded transformation. It is not utopian. It is rooted in reality, painful, sacred, and complex. And it is precisely for that reason that I believe it offers one of the most hopeful and intellectually honest models for coexistence we have.

In co-founding this initiative, I am not only advancing a new political and intellectual approach to peace; I am also joining a community of thinkers and seekers committed to building a future that is truly of this place.