Mutual recognition

The research group "Decolonization of Israel/Palestine: Towards Mutual Recognition" focuses on exploring possibilities for historical reparation and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians, with the understanding that the future of the two peoples is intertwined. The group aims to shape a new discourse that acknowledges past injustices and historical inequalities, and suggests ways for mutual integration, equal rights, and mutual recognition of the right of both peoples to live in security and dignity. Through a series of meetings, research papers, and a research retreat in Heidelberg in 2026, the group seeks to expand the boundaries of existing thinking and propose a horizon of peace based on freedom, justice, and equality.
The lab's activities are held under the auspices of the Center for Applied Research on Risks to Democracy (CARRD) at Tel Aviv University and in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for International and Comparative Public Law.


The Vision of the Shared Home: Israel/Palestine as a Shared Homeland Based on Equality and mutual respect

Eyal Benvenisti and Rawia Aburabia
17 July 2026

The historical struggle over the Land of Israel/Palestine between the Jewish and Palestinian peoples is expressed, among other things, in opposing claims to exclusive ownership rooted in conceptions of historical possession across different periods. These ownership claims are anchored in myths of a constitutive bond between this land and the very existence of each people as a people, since this territory is perceived by each as its historical homeland. In the eyes of each people, the other is a stranger, an intruder, and a threat to be expelled or at least subdued. The conflict has deteriorated into violent struggle and atrocities, and so to the original dispute and pain have been added further walls of fear, hatred, and trauma.
Is this a deterministic, dead-end process, or might it be possible, and indeed necessary, to think of a way out of the cycle of violence? Do questions of dignity through equality and mutual recognition have a role to play in such an extrication? Our aim is to stimulate discussion of the questions that arise when one attempts to imagine Israel/Palestine as a democratic space constituting a shared home for both peoples, grounded in equality and mutual respect.
Our working framework proceeds from the assumption that rethinking the political future of Jews and Palestinians requires engaging not only with the institutional end-state, but also with the conceptual, historical, and political conditions without which no real movement toward a shared home is possible. To this end, three complementary components are proposed. The first component addresses the question of mutual recognition, responsibility, and power relations: who recognizes whom, what is required to be recognized, how national identities, historical memories, and relations of domination shape the very possibility of recognition, and under what conditions recognition can contribute to equality and mutual respect rather than entrenching negation, dependence, or subordination. The second component addresses the question of institutions, and sovereignty: how to imagine and design a political framework that combines full civic equality with recognition of the bonds, identities, and collective aspirations of both peoples, and what institutional, territorial, and constitutional arrangements might enable a shared existence not premised on exclusivity or exclusion. The third component addresses the path toward the goal: what political, public, educational, and deliberative processes might enable a transition from an existing order of confrontation, inequality, and domination to a new framework of partnership, freedom, and mutual responsibility. The three components together are designed to enable an integrated discussion of questions of past and future, identity and institutions, vision and process, based on the understanding that a shared home is not only a possible constitutional solution but also a project of deep political, moral, and public transformation.
Below is a breakdown of the components with a number of sub-questions:

1. Mutual Recognition, Responsibility, and Power Relations
This component will examine the conditions of possibility for mutual recognition between Jews and Palestinians in the face of a past and present of violence, dispossession, fear, domination, and trauma. The point of departure is that it is insufficient to limit discussion to historical wrongs, responsibility, and transitional justice alone, without also examining what "mutual recognition" means in a situation where each party perceives its own identity, its bond to the land, and its historical claims in ways that may collide with those of the other. This component will therefore focus not only on whether mutual recognition is possible, but also on what kind of recognition might enable new relations of equality and respect, and what kind of recognition might instead entrench relations of negation, dependence, or subordination.
The discussion will focus on three intertwined aspects: identity, meaning, and power. At the level of identity, we will seek to examine how national identities are shaped in relation to the other, and which of their components rest on exclusivity, negation, or existential anxiety. At the level of meaning, we will ask who is called upon to recognize whom, and what is called upon to be recognized: existence, suffering, bond to homeland, responsibility for wrongs, collective rights, or the right to participate in shaping the shared future. At the level of power, we will address the question of how asymmetrical relations of domination, majority and minority, sovereignty and exclusion, shape the very conditions of recognition, its language, and its limits.
Possible sub-questions:
• How should "mutual recognition" be understood when each side fears that recognizing the other will undermine the very legitimacy of its own identity?
• Who recognizes whom, and from what political, institutional, and symbolic position is recognition granted or withheld?
• What precisely is the object of recognition: existence, suffering, history, bond to homeland, responsibility for wrongdoing, or a claim to political partnership?
• What is the difference between recognition that affirms existing identities and claims as they are, and recognition that opens a possibility for change and the reconstruction of relations?
• How can one think about responsibility, memory, and transitional justice without turning one party into the grantor of recognition and the other into its sole petitioner?
• Under what conditions might recognition contribute to equality, and under what conditions might it become a symbolic gesture that merely covers over existing power relations?
• What educational, linguistic, institutional, and political conditions are required for recognition to be not merely a declaration, but part of a genuine process of transforming relations between the parties?

2. A Shared Home: Regime, Institutions, and Sovereignty
This component will examine how a political framework for shared life between Jews and Palestinians can be imagined and designed on the basis of equality, freedom, security, and mutual respect. The point of departure is that discussion of a shared future cannot rest content with a binary choice between full separation and an undifferentiated unity. Instead, a wide range of institutional and political possibilities must be examined, on the assumption that territory, sovereignty, citizenship, and collective identity need not coincide in an exclusive and absolute fashion.
This component will focus on three dimensions: the institutional, the territorial, and the civic-national. In the institutional dimension, we will seek to examine what political arrangements can guarantee equal participation, fair representation, protection of rights, and legitimate decision-making mechanisms. In the territorial dimension, we will examine how the space between the river and the sea can be conceived not only in terms of partition or exclusive ownership, but also as a space of overlapping bonds, shared uses, graduated authorities, and multi-layered arrangements. In the civic-national dimension, we will address the question of how to combine full civic equality with recognition of the continuing existence of distinct identities, bonds, and collective aspirations.
Possible sub-questions:
• In what senses can sovereignty be flexible, relational, shared, or graduated, and in what domains does it require clear-cut resolution?
• How can a shared political space be designed that is not premised on territorial exclusivity, yet also does not ignore the national, religious, and historical bonds to place?
• How to envision a shared-home regime that guarantees full political and civic equality for all its inhabitants, without erasing the national affiliations of both peoples?
• Which institutional models merit examination: a single democratic state, a federation, a confederation, shared sovereignty in certain domains, or other multi-layered structures?
• How can a division of powers be designed among local, regional, national, and supranational levels of governance?
• How can a citizenship and immigration regime be designed that responds both to the principle of equality and to the respective historical and collective bonds of both peoples?
• How should representation, resource allocation, language, education, and public symbols be approached within a shared political framework?

3. The Path to the Goal: A Political, Public, and Educational Process of Transition
This component will examine not the end-state, but the path toward it. The point of departure is that a transition to a shared, just, and stable political order cannot rest on constitutional arrangement alone, nor on a single political decision. It requires a long, multidimensional transition process involving many actors, in which institutions, political consciousness, power relations, and modes of speaking about past, belonging, and future all change gradually.
To understand the path, one must focus on three aspects: the conditions for an effective process, the nature of the process in its deliberative dimensions, and the interface between deliberation itself and the public environment in which it is conducted. Accordingly, we will seek to determine what the possible stages of transition are, what preparatory steps are required for such a process, and what its principal risks and obstacles are. In the deliberative dimension, we will examine how frameworks for discussion, decision-making, and consultation can be created that enable both peoples to deliberate about their future — together and separately — under conditions of relative equality, security, and trust. In the pedagogical-public dimension, we will address the question of how political change can be accompanied by changes in language, education, culture, public memory, and political imagination.
Possible sub-questions:
• What political, social, and security conditions are required to begin a credible transition process — and not merely a theoretical discussion of a future solution?
• How can a deliberative process be designed in which both parties discuss their future in a manner that does not replicate existing power relations, resource disparities, and access gaps?
• What can be learned from mechanisms of direct democracy, such as citizens' assemblies, about trust-building processes between the parties?
• What role can education, culture, art, media, historiography, and public memory play in a process of political change?
• What changes in political language, curricula, public representations, and memorial institutions are required to enable the imagining of a shared future?
• Who are the social and political agents capable of carrying such a process: political leaderships, civil society, local communities, educators, religious institutions, experts, or international actors?
• How can progress in the process be measured: changes in public attitudes, institutional change, change in practices of domination, or changes in patterns of participation and trust?
• What are the principal risks of such a transition process, such as co-optation, lack of trust, violence, power asymmetries, or the hollowing out of the language of partnership, and how can they be addressed?