When Peace Is Not Enough

How the Israeli Peace Camp Thinks about Religion, Nationalism, and Justice

Atalia Omer

Atalia Omer

Cloth $75.00 ISBN: 9780226008073 Published May 2013

Paper $25.00 ISBN: 9780226008103 Published June 2013

E-book $7.00 to $25.00 About E-books ISBN: 9780226008240 Published June 2013

The state of Israel is often spoken of as a haven for the Jewish people, a place rooted in the story of a nation dispersed, wandering the earth in search of their homeland. Born in adversity but purportedly nurtured by liberal ideals, Israel has never known peace, experiencing instead a state of constant war that has divided its population along the stark and seemingly unbreachable lines of dissent around the relationship between unrestricted citizenship and Jewish identity.

By focusing on the perceptions and histories of Israel’s most marginalized stakeholders—Palestinian Israelis, Arab Jews, and non-Israeli Jews—Atalia Omer cuts to the heart of the Israeli-Arab conflict, demonstrating how these voices provide urgently needed resources for conflict analysis and peacebuilding. Navigating a complex set of arguments about ethnicity, boundaries, and peace, and offering a different approach to the renegotiation and reimagination of national identity and citizenship, Omer pushes the conversation beyond the bounds of the single narrative and toward a new and dynamic concept of justice—one that offers the prospect of building a lasting peace.

Review Quotes
Contents

Scott Hibbard | author of Religious Politics and Secular States: Egypt, India, and the United States

“When Peace is Not Enough is an innovative work, one that ably bridges the fields of politics, religion and peace studies. Omer’s discussion of the ‘hermeneutics of citizenship’ in particular—and the need for reimaging both religion and the nation as a necessary prerequisite for peace building—is both genuinely interesting and enormously insightful.”

R. Scott Appleby | author of The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation

“When Peace Is Not Enough is a groundbreaking contribution to the literatures on comparative nationalisms and political theory, as well as to religion, culture and peace building. Drawing on Hebrew, English, German and Arabic sources, as well as insights culled from cultural anthropology, critical theory, political sociology and religious studies, Atalia Omer brings a new level of interdisciplinary prowess, theoretical sophistication, and explanatory power to the study of religion, nationalism and politics.”

Robert Orsi | editor of the Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies

“Using a ‘hermeneutics of citizenship’ to uncover the implication of liberal and secularist notions of religion in illiberal, racist, and exclusivist understandings of national identity, Atalia Omer shows how men and women of hybrid identities may make distinctive and necessary contributions to peacemaking. Ranging widely over political theory, cultural studies, history, and religious studies—and with an impressive command of comparative politics across the globe—When Peace Is Not Enough is a stunning and accomplished work and an intellectually and politically courageous one.”

Yehouda Shenhav | author of The Arab Jews: Nationalism, Religion and Ethnicity

“Timely and inspirational, When Peace Is Not Enough challenges the conventional wisdom on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—and on the so-called peace process. Atalia Omer’s fresh and original perspectives about the relationship between liberalism, peace, and war deserve to be read by everyone interested in the theoretical richness of the concept of liberal-nationalism.”

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction

ONE / Peace, Justice, and the Zionist Consensus: Peace Now and the Blind Spots of Peacemaking
TWO / Bridging Disciplines and Reimagining “Who We Are”
THREE / Critical Caretakers: The Hermeneutics of Citizenship and the Question of Justice
FOUR / Returning to Sinai: The Religious Zionist Peace Movement
FIVE / Rabbis for Human Rights and Reclaiming Alterity
SIX / Subaltern Visions of Peace I: The Case of the Arab Palestinian Citizens of Israel
SEVEN / Subaltern Visions of Peace II: The Case of the Mizrahim
CONCLUSION / The Hermeneutics of Citizenship: The Missing Dimension of Peacebuilding

Notes
Index

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History: Middle Eastern History

Jewish Studies

Middle Eastern Studies

Sociology: Social Change, Social Movements, Political Sociology

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