Unprocessed trauma driving the Israel/Palestine Conflict

How can this be transformed, or even healed? How can we work with societies suffering from PTSD? As a psychotherapist I can't give all Israelis and Palestinians EMDR (though some one to one work is underway in the region). Work being done by the Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem is stepping straight into the cauldron by using trauma healing to open up different pathways of conflict response. By carefully selecting Jewish, Muslim and Christian community leaders as participants, the Trust is facilitating a profound shift in perception amongst key decision makers. That instead of each party being locked in the hopelessness of the past, believing there will never be peace, they are enabled to first express their own pain and trauma. Then through listening and empathy ultimately they can be enabled to hear the pain and trauma in the other's story. Sami Awad described how one Israeli Holocaust survivor, after remaining silent for almost a week, finally spoke. The man owned how he personally had victimised Palestinians; how there was a Nazi alive in him and how he felt imprisoned by his own fear. Not the admission of a conventional peace process.

I believe we need a patchwork of different approaches to release Israelis and Palestinians from the prison of fear and trauma. One Israeli psychotherapist, Avigail Abarbanel, renounced her citizenship of Israel, handing it back at the embassy in Canberra, after she was prompted to question the tenets of Zionism by the writings of exiled Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, who has extensively documented the planning and implementation of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948. Her mother denounced her and hasn't spoken to her since.

Avigail went on to Avigail went on to edit the book Tribal Loyalties describing her personal toll and that of other Israeli activists who have dared to challenge the 'cult' of Zionism - a cult born of unprocessed trauma. She sees her role as enabling Israelis, and others in the international community, to develop the emotional resilience necessary to come to terms with the past: "Poor emotional resilience is a human, not a Jewish, trait. I think the non-Jewish world that does not stand up to Israel, and that has been colluding in the destruction of the Palestinian people, also lacks the ability to tolerate uncomfortable feelings. I am told that the reason there is so much support for Israel in the Western world is because of guilt over the Holocaust" (Abarbanel, 2012: 288).

Trauma does not 'take sides' in a conflict. The responses of both Israelis and Palestinians display the influence of trauma both in everyday life and from collective experience, transmitted from previous generations. In making this observation, I do not imply any spurious equivalence in the present situation of the conflict. Israel is the occupying power, and its Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land – the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem – represent an unacceptable violation of the laws of war. The Fourth Geneva Convention states baldly: "the occupying power must not move any portion of its population into the territory it occupies".

What is at stake, in acknowledging, understanding and overcoming trauma and its influence, is the prospect of conceiving and fashioning a way forward, building a consensus to bring an end to the occupation and build a society of equals in the Holy Land. That will require people to heal, and restore healthy brain functioning so their responses contribute to a healthy society.