Wicked Problem Conversation: Israel/Palestine… WTF!

Historical context: This conversation was recorded in October 2023, in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the beginning of Israel’s military response in Gaza. It is preserved here as a record of an attempt to engage a deeply polarized conflict through dialogue, perspective-taking, and lived experience.

Some problems resist simple solutions.

They contain competing histories.

Competing narratives.

Competing moral claims.

Trauma.

Identity.

Power.

Fear.

And perspectives that can appear mutually exclusive.

These are sometimes called wicked problems.

The Israel–Palestine conflict is one of them.

In October 2023, as Israelis and Palestinians entered another devastating chapter of this long conflict, I invited a small group of people into a conversation.

Not because we expected to solve anything.

And not because we agreed.

We didn’t.

The question was more basic:

Can we remain in relationship while looking at a reality that pulls people rapidly into opposing camps?

A Conversation In A Highly Polarized Moment

The panel brought together people with very different relationships to the conflict:

Diane Musho Hamilton Roshi facilitated the conversation. Diane is a Zen teacher, professional mediator, Integral facilitator, and author whose work has long focused on conflict and difficult conversations.

Vince Fakhoury Horn joined us as a Palestinian-American Dharma teacher, co-founder of Buddhist Geeks, and Integral practitioner.

Tomer Duwek grew up in a West Bank settlement and served in the Israeli army during the First Intifada. He later became an artist, Zen practitioner, and student of Diane Musho Hamilton.

Theo Horesh brought his work in global affairs, collective trauma, and international conflict.

And I participated as an American-Israeli, Aikido and meditation teacher, and someone who had spent years working through Aikido Without Borders to create encounters between Israelis and Palestinians.

We came into the conversation carrying different histories, loyalties, experiences, and interpretations.

That was the point.

What Makes A Wicked Problem Wicked?

A wicked problem is not simply a difficult technical problem.

Technical problems may be complicated, but they can often be solved once enough expertise and information are applied.

A wicked problem behaves differently.

The people involved may not even agree on what the problem is.

Every proposed solution changes the situation.

History matters.

Identity matters.

Power matters.

Trauma matters.

And what appears obviously true from one position may appear dangerously incomplete from another.

This makes certainty very tempting.

If I can reduce the situation to one clear moral narrative, I no longer have to carry the tension of competing realities.

But the cost can be enormous.

The other person stops being a person.

They become a category.

A symbol.

An enemy.

Making Sense In A Polarized World

The intention of this conversation was not neutrality.

Neutrality can itself become a form of avoidance.

The intention was to create enough space that multiple perspectives could actually be spoken and heard.

That requires something different from agreement.

It requires the ability to distinguish:

understanding a perspective

from

endorsing a perspective.

I can attempt to understand the world as another person experiences it without abandoning my own moral judgment.

In fact, understanding may make moral judgment more intelligent.

But in a highly polarized environment, even listening can be interpreted as betrayal.

That makes dialogue increasingly difficult precisely when it is most needed.

Lived Experience Matters

One reason I wanted this particular group together was that the conversation was not purely theoretical.

People were speaking from family histories.

National identities.

Direct experience.

Military experience.

Palestinian experience.

Israeli experience.

Spiritual practice.

Conflict-resolution work.

These perspectives do not cancel one another out.

They exist simultaneously.

Any attempt to reduce the conflict to a single lens risks leaving out something essential.

That does not mean every interpretation is equally accurate.

It means reality is larger than any one person’s position inside it.

The Challenge Of Perspective-Taking

Integral practice places great value on the capacity to take multiple perspectives.

But this capacity becomes much harder when the subject is personal.

When people we identify with are threatened, harmed, or killed, perspective-taking can feel morally offensive.

Why should I understand the other side now?

Why should I make room for their suffering when my people are suffering?

These reactions are human.

And yet if conflict is going to become anything other than reciprocal dehumanization, someone eventually has to develop the capacity to see beyond a single perspective.

This is not the same as moral equivalence.

It is the recognition that human beings act from within histories, narratives, identities, fears, and meanings.

If we cannot see those structures, we understand very little about why conflicts perpetuate themselves.

Dialogue Is Not Resolution

Nothing was resolved in this conversation.

That matters.

We should not romanticize dialogue.

Conversation does not stop rockets.

It does not free hostages.

It does not protect civilians.

It does not solve political questions of borders, security, sovereignty, occupation, or national identity.

Dialogue has more modest ambitions.

It can interrupt certainty.

It can humanize someone we had reduced to a position.

It can expose the limits of our own perspective.

It can create enough relationship for disagreement to continue without immediate rupture.

Sometimes that is all it can do.

But that is not nothing.

Staying In The Room

One of the deeper practices inside a difficult conversation is simply learning to stay.

Stay when you disagree.

Stay when something activates you.

Stay when your identity feels challenged.

Stay curious long enough to understand what someone is actually saying rather than immediately replacing their words with the argument you expected them to make.

This does not mean tolerating abuse.

It does not mean withholding boundaries.

It means developing enough capacity that disagreement does not automatically become disconnection.

That is a practice I recognize both from conflict work and from Aikido.

The pressure is relational.

The question is whether we can remain present inside it.

A Small Experiment In Dialogue

I would not present this panel as a model solution for the Israel–Palestine conflict.

It was something much smaller.

A group of people entered a difficult conversation during an intensely volatile moment.

We brought different histories.

Different identities.

Different conclusions.

And we attempted to remain in dialogue.

For me, that is the reason to preserve it.

Not because the conversation settled the issue.

But because in a polarized world, the willingness to remain in contact with perspectives we do not share is itself becoming increasingly rare.