Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 22, No. Tamir, 3, 2005Rawls and the Temple Mount 289 Tamir, Rawls and the Temple Mount OWEN GOLDIN  What gives ethical and political validity to a state? This is to ask what a state is for and to provide a means to determine whether or not a constitution is just. In this paper I compare the account given by Tamir in Liberal Nationalism with that of Rawls, in order to clarify the decisive differences. Although both recognize the importance of particular associations and the moral imperative to be fair, Tamir places priority on the first and Rawls on the second. I explore their practical implications in regard to the ethical defensibility of Israel’s selfidentification as a Jewish state and to conflicting nationalistic territorial claims for the Temple Mount (Haram esh-Sharif ) in Jerusalem. I suggest that if Tamir is correct in her analysis of nationalism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a problem that is without the sort of solution that is sought by those who are both interested parties and rational agents of good will. What gives ethical and political validity to a state? To ask this is to ask what a state is for and to provide a means to determine whether or not a constitution is just. In this paper I compare the account given by Yael Tamir in Liberal Nationalism with that of John Rawls. I explore their practical implications in regard to the ethical defensibility of Israel’s self-identification as a Jewish state and conflicting nationalistic territorial claims for the Temple Mount (Haram esh-Sharif ) in the Old City of Jerusalem. I suggest that if Tamir is correct in her analysis of nationalism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a problem that is without the sort of solution that is sought by those who are both interested parties and rational agents of good will. I hope that I can be helped to see things otherwise. I In recent decades, there has been a move away from the view that justice demands impartiality. Many philosophers have argued that there are special bonds within a family or community that sometimes warrant or even require treating those with whom we have such bonds in a manner different from how we treat others. For example, feminist philosophers have built on Gilligan’s work [1] in arguing that an ethical theory less masculinist than those that dominate the Western tradition will not rely on rules demanding that all ethical subjects receive equal ethical consideration. Rather, emotional bonds and relations of care are thought to be the source of our most important ethical obligations [2]. Others, who have objected to basing ethical obligation on something as whimsical as feeling and inclination, argue against strict impartiality in ethics on the grounds that the identity of individuals is largely constituted by the society to which they belong, and that it follows that membership in such a society will for Applied Applied Philosophy, Philosophy, 2005, 2005 Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main © Society for Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 290 Owen Goldin carry with it special obligations [3]. This move has been seen in political philosophy. As nationalistic aspirations dominate world politics, some philosophers give new respect to nationalism. They argue that one’s nationality is often an important constituent of one’s identity, and that special ethical obligations are owed to members of the same nation [4]. Nonetheless the dangers of nationalism are familiar to all. A state that takes nationhood to be central to one’s identity may well violate the autonomy of its citizens. To say that partiality is not necessarily immoral opens the door to endorsing ethnic hatred and morally intolerable forms of oppression and discrimination. Accordingly, recent defenders of nationalism have been concerned to show that it can have good liberal credentials, and need not depart from what mainstream political thought takes to be ethically acceptable. In this paper I focus on one such philosopher, Yael Tamir. Tamir crafts her political philosophy in a manner designed to take the warlike and belligerent sting out of nationalism. In her view, nationalism is not only compatible with peace; peace itself requires the recognition and satisfaction of nationalistic demands. I accept Tamir’s account of how nationhood is prior to and foundational of political association. Yet it seems to me that Tamir is too optimistic concerning the future of the sort of world she describes. I maintain that once the centrality of nationhood to political association is granted, one must recognize that there may well be inevitable conflicts among nations that admit of no political solution which does not violate the integrity and character of the nations at issue. Tamir argues that traditional liberal political theory ignores the social and psychological fact that human beings often understand themselves and their life goals always in the context of belonging to one people as distinguished from others [5]. This is why the existence of a nation [6] does not have as its ultimate ground some theoretical construct or contract entered into in order to facilitate whatever goals people have as individuals. We are already embedded in social relations that we do not construct. Among these are nations, which Tamir defines as follows: “. . . [a] group is defined as a nation if it exhibits a sufficient number of shared, objective characteristics — such as language, history, or territory — and self-awareness of its distinctiveness.” [7] Because she holds that the attaining of the communal goals to which these nations are committed is partially constitutive of the good of those nations’ members, she believes that there follows from an individual’s right to self-determination a nation’s right to national self-determination and argues that for this reason it may be both legitimate and necessary for a state to have as a primary goal the pursuit and advancement of the interest of one particular nation [8]. Although she grants that great evil has been motivated by nationalistic causes, she argues that a nationalistic state need not lead to the abrogation of those rights and liberties which she, like other liberal political thinkers, takes to be central [9]. To take someone’s nationality as fundamental to who he or she is does not violate the individuality and autonomy of the individual, so important to liberal political theory. Such issues would arise only if one’s national association were taken as a given, foisted on the individual without his or her consent. Rather, nationalism involves respect for the individual, for the identification of the national interest with that of the individual is chosen by the individual [10]. However, a nationalistic state is thought to pose threats not only to the rights of its own citizens, but to those of another state as well. It is Tamir’s contention that this is not a necessary result of all nationalism. National interest may not have any direct relation to © Society for Applied Philosophy, 2005 Tamir, Rawls and the Temple Mount 291 the interests of the citizens of other states. But might there be varieties of national association that do in fact violate the rights of others, on account of the very character of this association? Tamir does not address this issue directly, but her thoughts on the matter can be determined by working through her account of the source of the legitimacy of statehood based on national association. She takes the existence of certain nations to be a fact and holds that nations have a right to self-determination and the wherewithal to pursue their communal good. Her account of “liberal nationalism” has received special attention because she has argued that this self-determination does not require statehood, and it is the nation-state that has been responsible for much of the violence and intolerance that has given nationalism a bad name. She is nonetheless clear that there may be circumstances in which statehood might be required for the exercise of the right of an autonomous national life [11]. This is why she is in principle supportive of authentic movements for national liberation, as, for example, the movement for Palestinian statehood [12]. But the line of ethical reasoning behind this right also serves to limit the exercise of this right [13]. It cannot be a legitimate national aspiration to engage in a programme that is explicitly intended to deny some other nation the right of self-determination. Nonetheless, Tamir would not think it morally problematic for one nation to pursue a goal that, as it happens, is also pursued by another nation. Two nations may compete for domination of the world textile trade. The primary national goal sought is prosperity, and there is no reason why both nations cannot be prosperous. It simply happens to be the case that each nation chooses a means to this end in regard to which it is not possible for both to be fully successful. We might say “may victory go to the proficient and efficient!” at least until such time as the poverty of the loser becomes unconscionable on independent moral grounds. The problems involved with competition in regard to national ends are more severe in a case in which each nation understands a certain end as essential to its flourishing, and the two ends are such that they cannot both be attained. Territorial claims might be of this sort. We have seen above that according to Tamir’s definition of a nation, a tie with certain land can enter into the constitution of a nation. Territorial wars are rarely motivated by mere expansionism; cultural association with territory is often central. Let us consider a particular kind of territorial conflict having nationalistic claims at its root. This is the case in which a territory is settled on by two peoples, each understanding itself as a nation with a right to assert state sovereignty over that land. This sort of case is most problematic for Tamir’s thought, for she tells us that the aim of her theory of liberal nationalism is to provide a secular philosophical foundation for Zionism compatible with liberal ideals [14]. Insofar as we have two legitimate nations, and insofar as their national goals are not of an intrinsically immoral nature, both peoples are legitimately entitled to pursue their national aspirations. If these can only be attained through separate states, then separate states are required. This may require partitioning. Partitioning is rarely a straightforward business. The prospect of partitioning raises two kinds of issues. First, there are unresolved problems within a single state that is the result of such a partition. Second, there are issues concerning the relation between both states. In regard to the first problem, Tamir points to the “Russian Doll phenomenon”: the geographic areas that result from a partitioning of nations will, to a lesser degree, involve the same kind of intermingling of populations that was found in the area © Society for Applied Philosophy, 2005 292 Owen Goldin originally partioned. The problem will be reproduced, not solved, by future partitions [15]. So it is inevitable that the result of partitions will be areas with both a majority and minority population. The majority nation will choose to incorporate itself as part of a state devoted to the interests of that majority. Tamir summarizes and points to the crucial problem: The political entity described here differs from the traditional entity in that it introduces culture as a crucial dimension of political life. Its unity rests not only on an overlapping consensus about certain values essential to its functioning, but also on a distinct cultural foundation. Membership in this entity will be more accessible to certain individuals, capable of identifying the political entity as their own, than to others. Consequently, even if governing institutions respect a wide range of rights and liberties and distribute goods and official positions fairly, members of minority groups will unavoidably feel alienated to some extent . . . The tension . . . cannot be resolved [16]. A sense of self-worth is fundamental to the welfare of any national group. A nationstate not only strives to attain certain national goals. It also publicizes these goals and celebrates their attainment. Such celebration is an intrinsic part of that nation’s flourishing. Guarantees of personal autonomy and official pronouncements concerning the value of minority cultures cannot counteract the dominant message concerning the higher value of the ruling culture and the lesser value of the others [17]. There are indeed cases in which subcultures successfully generate a self-perception as “a people apart,” and hence can thrive in spite of minority status. But these are exceptions, and it cannot be demanded of a minority that it develop such an ethos. Hence a nation that is a minority within a state devoted to the majority nation will be marginalized and cannot fully thrive. On Tamir’s analysis this is a problem that will persist, until such time as schemes of regional and international co-operation develop to ensure national self-determination while at the same time rendering unnecessary the nation-state, as we now know it [18]. It is in regard to this problem that the contrast with Rawlsian political theory is most stark. Let us begin with the political philosophy of A Theory of Justice. If we apply to the problem under consideration the theory that Rawls develops in this book, it turns out that it is necessarily unfair for a state to identify itself as devoted to pursuing national interests of only a part of its citizenry, no matter how well it succeeds in otherwise respecting and furthering the needs and aspirations of other citizens. This is because, on the Rawlsian scheme, a constitutional structure is just to the extent that it would be chosen by a rational prospective citizen behind the “veil of ignorance,” which conceals both what fortune and circumstance will bring in the way of one’s status in society and the particular talents, interests and goals one will happen to have. Behind the veil of ignorance, the prospective citizen of a community would be ignorant of whether his culture is dominant. Under normal circumstances, being a member of a cultural minority in a society that publicly and explicitly identifies itself as for the sake of furthering the goals of the majority culture is not conducive to the flourishing of that minority culture. This is so even if the dominant culture adopts as one of its goals the flourishing of the cultures of others. Consequently, in the original position, one would never assent to membership in to a society that has formed itself into a nationalistic state [19]. © Society for Applied Philosophy, 2005 Tamir, Rawls and the Temple Mount 293 But suppose that the choice in the original position is made in regard not to a specific nation-state, but to a regional or international scheme by which there may be resolved the second sort of problem, those between states. There are two related questions to ask here. First, what in such international scheme would an individual in the original position rationally assent to? The second issue concerns how things stand if we imagine the states themselves as rational agents, in a position analogous to the original position for individuals who decide into which co-operative schemes to enter. In The Law of Peoples [20] Rawls concerns himself with the second issue. (He does so in order to account for the justice of co-operative schemes with “decent” regimes that might fail the test of justice applied internally.) To simplify matters, let us be concerned with the issue of potential conflicts between nation-states whose workings are internally just. I here assume that, because the aspirations and deliberations of a state as a whole are derived from those of its citizens, and in a just state a foreign policy will not violate the rights of any citizens of that state, in the case of internally just nations, to solve the one issue is to solve the other. Now let us consider what Tamir envisages as the ideal resolution to the tension between the demands of fairness and those of national self-determination: a scheme that would preserve the identity of nations even as it dissolves the sovereignty of states. Other things being equal, there is no reason why such a scheme would not be acceptable to one in the original position. But notice why this is so: the political unit in question, to which the potential citizen implicitly acquiesces, is the whole international structure, and it is this which is set up in such a way as to maximize the opportunities for each citizen to attain one’s life plan. To be sure, Tamir continues to hold the essentialist thesis that association in national groups is necessary to human life [21]. But a Rawlsian standard of fairness is employed to ensure that nations keep themselves from violating universal standards of morality. Tamir’s working assumption is that this is logistically possible, that such a scheme would not violate the integrity of national life, which Tamir elsewhere urges is the basis of political association. Both political philosophers defend liberal ideals. Both envisage similar international structures to defend both national integrity and the demands of justice. Nonetheless, between the two accounts there is a difference that makes a difference. Tamir takes national association to be the basis of political association; intuitions concerning freedom, justice, and fairness then enter into her political philosophy from outside, and are employed to tweak her political theory to keep it from endorsing obviously unjust nationalistic schemes [22]. Rawls takes a contract ensuring justice as fairness to be constitutive of legitimate political association, and understands nationalistic association (the existence of what he would call separate “peoples”) as an empirical datum that most be taken account of in the application of the principles of justice to real world circumstances. Even though both theories would endorse similar kinds of arrangements as ideals, the differences in theoretical starting points has implications in how one goes about trying to reach that ideal. For along that path there will inevitably be conflicts between the demands of justice and those of national self-determination. For both Rawls and Tamir, how one resolves these conflicts in individual circumstances will be matters of prudential judgment, but it is to be expected that in general (if not in certain particular cases) each would give priority to the goal that each takes to be the theoretical foundation of human society. Thus from the Rawlsian perspective, one ought to first strive for a situation in which the demands of fairness are satisfied, and then © Society for Applied Philosophy, 2005 294 Owen Goldin nationalistic and other associative particular obligations will be respected as far as possible. From Tamir’s perspective, subject to certain general unspecified moral constraints the welfare of the nation and other particularistic associations ought to come first. Hence Tamir is resigned to a certain degree of unfairness in the standing of minority nations in areas governed by a majority nation for the sake of the welfare of the majority culture. Rawls would reject this as morally untenable, since he thinks that the primary goal of a political community ought to be fairness. Let us return to the second problem: that in which, following a partition, there are two nation-states, each of which is otherwise morally legitimate, and the two notions of self-identity that constitute them as nations are incompatible. An example would be the case in which two nations sharing a geographical area make incompatible territorial claims, and each takes its claim to be an unalterable constituent of its identity as a nation. I suggest that this is what we see in the conflict concerning Palestinian national self-determination. I lack the sociological expertise to prove this, but I do not think the following suggestions should be too controversial. Although there are deep divisions between secular and religious Jewish Israelis concerning what constitutes their nation, they do constitute a single nation, and understand themselves as such. The Jewish Israeli nation has within its core some religious elements that constitute its identity; among these are the tie to sacred places like the Temple Mount. More liberal forms of Judaism tend to be more inclined to understand ties to place and history as human creations, open to revision in the interest of peace and justice [23]. But willingness to relinquish claims of sovereignty over the Temple Mount has since 1967 been a fringe position in Israeli politics. The mainstream position is in accordance with that of traditional Judaism, according to which the issue of sovereignty over sites such as the Temple Mount does not admit of compromise [24]. Likewise, Haram esh-Sharif has been given such a central place in the Palestinian national struggle that any solution that does not give them sovereignty over it will constitute a very public failure of Palestinian national aspirations [25]. If we take Tamir’s perspective, we can say that national identities and their cultural foundations need to be respected as given. To be sure, Tamir emphasizes that national identities are not natural kinds; they are chosen, and can be recast. It is possible for people to create a new community. “Because there is no such thing as ‘culture’ in its authentic form, people can take it on themselves to alter the defining characteristics of their nation.” Tamir however says little on how exactly this occurs. This seems prudent, for foundational changes to national identity are rare. Historians are able to make few generalizations about where and when nations undergo fundamental change, and certainly no one is on sure ground predicting when they might occur. Nations maintain their defining characteristics through centuries, even when these characteristics are directly responsible for conflict and suffering. Although products of human will, an individual, even a leader, must take nations and the cultural characteristics that unite them to be a kind of given. Thus, even though national identities in principle are malleable, there are limits to the extent to which policymakers can shape or adapt them to take account of problems and exigencies. Here we seem to have reached such limits. Although I am unaware of Tamir’s own political views on this particular point, one subscribing to her liberal nationalism may well despair, confronted with an as yet insoluble problem. For, outside of certain radical forms, as those taken by say Hamas or Kahane Hai, neither the Zionist nor the Palestinian nationalistic aspiration is in itself immoral, given the “liberal” constraints that Tamir advocates. But conjoined they lead to conflict. © Society for Applied Philosophy, 2005 Tamir, Rawls and the Temple Mount 295 On the other hand, the problem is not as severe from a Rawlsian perspective. A just society would not admit any life plan which in principle makes it impossible for any other individual to achieve his or her otherwise legitimate life plan. It would be unjust for a society to have a constitution that at the very beginning guarantees to some individual a legitimate claim of ownership to the land that another has a particular interest in. No one would consent to this in the original position, for behind the veil of ignorance one does not know who he or she shall be. Likewise, from an international perspective, it would be rational for one behind the veil of ignorance to accept only a world order in which no absolute status is granted to any particularistic claim, such as the kind of nationalistic territorial dispute we are discussing. Hence, in Law of Peoples, Rawls writes, “No state has a right to war in the pursuit of its national, as opposed to its reasonable, interests.” [26] If Rawls’s analysis has the limitations that Tamir’s analysis suggests it does, that is, if community or nationhood is fundamentally constitutive of persons, then there will be times in which a Rawlsian solution to questions of justice would violate the nature of human communities. (This is a fortiori true of other universalistic ethical theories concerning how public policy is to be decided, like utilitarianism). Nationalism, even of the liberal variety, might justify continued conflict for the sake of national interests. To be sure, decent people and decent peoples will insist that such conflict will be waged within the parameters of some universal moral norms. At a time of war, failure here is to some extent inevitable, though it can be minimized. Much can be said concerning the extent to which the parties to the conflict over Palestinian selfdetermination have or have not been successful in this. But here my eye is not on this issue but on that concerning whether the conflict itself is, at bottom, irrational, and counter to the ends of political association. If Tamir’s core political philosophy is right, as I think it is, the answer is no. Unfortunately this means that continued conflict appears inevitable. It is conceivable that given sufficient mutual battering the nationalistic aspirations and modes of self-understanding of each nation might change, as presumably has happened for aboriginal peoples whose attachment to their land has been uprooted on account of famine or drought. But the cultural and religious constraints at work seem insuperable, at least for a very long time [27]. Most philosophical analyses of the Middle East conflict bracket cultural and religious issues as philosophically irrelevant [28]. This is not so. Religious differences are among the cultural differences that especially manifest themselves in nationalistic struggles that arise from the natural tendency of human beings to understanding themselves as members of particularistic associations [29]. Such associations are a necessary aspect of the human condition, and human well-being demands their respect and encouragement. This is so even though they may lead to conflicts, insoluble even when arising between antagonists characterized by thoughtfulness and good will. [30] Owen Goldin, Department of Philosophy, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI 532011881, USA. owen.goldin@marquette.edu NOTES [1] C. G (1982) In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press). © Society for Applied Philosophy, 2005 296 Owen Goldin [2] A prominent example is N. N (1984) Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley: University of California Press). [3] See for example C. H S (1986) Filial Mortality Journal of Philosophy 83, pp. 439– 456. [4] This is usually understood as involving an ethically permissible form of partiality, with primary demands of beneficence and cooperation being directed to fellow members of one’s community, and a background theory of universal norms serving to limit these special obligations. See J. M (1997) The limits of national partiality in R. M and J. M (ed.) The Morality of Nationalism. (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 107–38 and S. N (1997) Nationalism and the Limits of Global Humanism in M and M, pp. 176–187. The “moderate nationalists” of which Nathanson approves “acknowledge that except in special circumstances it is wrong to kill, injure, or otherwise cause serious injury to people who are not members of their group, even if doing so advances the interests of their own nation” (p. 184). (Nathanson does not say what these “special circumstances” are.) On the other hand, D. M (1995) On Nationality (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 53–8 argues that recognition of special obligations to members of one’s own community does not involve any ethical defence of partiality. It is a universal truth that certain obligations are owed to people with whom one stands in a certain relationship, and there is a moral demand to be impartial in the recognition and exercise of these obligations. This theoretical issue does not seem to have any bearing on the argument in this paper. All that is required is a recognition of a moral obligation to at times pursue communal interests, instead of equivalent or even greater interests of those outside the community. [5] Because “no individual can be context-free” any individual can achieve her good only as embedded in some social context. Hence “a national life allows individuals to experience a degree of self-fulfilment they cannot experience on their own.” Y. TAMIR (1993) Liberal Nationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 14, 84. Tamir works from a basically eudaimonistic perspective. The good life, for human beings, demands the sort of communal existence that a national life provides. [6] In this paper I follow Tamir’s usage in distinguishing between a nation, which is a community that recognizes itself as bound by unifying characteristics that distinguish it from others, and a state, a political entity characterized by an independent government. A state may or may not be the state of a nation. See Tamir, op. cit., pp. 58–66. [7] Ibid., p. 66. [8] Ibid., pp. 72–75. [9] “Liberals view the ability to choose as the most essential characteristic of the human agent.” Ibid, p. 21. [10] Ibid., pp. 25–32. As similar argument for the need to respect “collective rights” of ethnic or cultural groups is given in W. KYMLICKA (1989) Liberalism, Community, and Culture (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 150–51: “If we respect Indians as Indians, that is to say, as members of a distinct cultural community, then we must recognize the importance to them of their cultural heritage, and we must then recognize the legitimacy of claims made by them for the protection of that culture.” [11] “The right to national-self determination can be satisfied through a variety of political arangements the establishment of national institutions, the formation of autonomous communities, or the establishment of federal or confederal states able to ensure individuals the opportunity to participate in the national life of their community . . . It is therefore assumed that different nations will be able to implement their right to self-determination in varying degrees.” Tamir, op. cit., p. 75. The extent to which there can be such self-determination is apparently left a matter of prudence. Tamir’s careful qualifications concerning the extent to which national autonomy might need to be limited do not clarify the central question of the paper: might there not be cases in which two nations have their national life founded on goals that are such that they cannot both be attained? In such a case, are we not left with two alternatives: to void and nullify the national lives involved, or to live with conflict, overt or otherwise, as an unfortunate necessity? [12] Y. TAMIR (1999) The Right to National Self-determination, a Rejoinder in T. KAPITAN (ed.) Philosophical Perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Armonk, NY and London, M. E. Sharp), pp. 69– 70. [13] “While liberal nationalism suggests that individuals have a reason to be concerned with the welfare of their fellows before they are concerned with the interests of non-members, it places this argument within the framework of a universal theory.” Tamir (1993), pp. 22–32. [14] Ibid., p. ix. [15] Ibid., p. 158. © Society for Applied Philosophy, 2005 Tamir, Rawls and the Temple Mount 297 [16] Ibid., p. 163. [17] They may also turn out to be ineffectual against prejudicial practices implicitly endorsed by the state’s having been established with the primary goal of advancing the interests of the majority culture. Robert Ashmore has stressed to me that this is one of his central ethical objections to Zionism. When I counter that in principle a nationalistic state can co-exist with effective constitutional or legal guarantees of fairness and equal protection, he emphasizes that the empirical record calls this into question. A similar objection is made by M. FISK (1997) Zionism, Liberalism, and the State in Kapitan op. cit., pp. 309–30. Fisk, however, misunderstands the goal of Zionism. He takes it to be not the protection and advancement of Jewish culture, but the promotion of the interests of Jews, as individuals. As such, he takes Zionism to directly endorse morally objectionable prejudicial practices. [18] Tamir (1993), pp. 163–7, (1997) pp. 61–62, also Miller, op. cit., pp. 113–18. [19] A similar argument is to be found in M. MOORE (2001) The Ethics of Nationalism (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 31–35. Kymlicka, op. cit., pp. 164–66 suggests that a Rawlsian line of argument can be employed to support cultural membership as a “primary good” which a just society would guarantee. He explores the ways in which this good can be guaranteed for minority cultures in a society that implicitly supports the majority culture. He has less to say concerning whether a state that explicitly supports and celebrates the majority culture as such is problematic from a Rawlsian perspective. [20] J. RAWLS (1999a) The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, Ma., Harvard University Press). Rawls, too, recognizes that, in the world as it is now, distinctive associations and cultures will be constitutive of the life plans of individual citizens, for people work together and share final ends through being members of groups. “A well-ordered society, and indeed most societies, will presumably contain countless social unions of many different kinds . . . and these institutional forms are prized as good in themselves.” J. RAWLS (1999b) A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 462. [21] I thus take issue with R. BEINER, who, in the “Introduction” to R. BEINER (1999) Theorizing Nationalism (Albany, State University of New York Press), p. 8, writes “in Tamir’s statement of the liberal-nationalist case, the nationalist side of the equation is so watered down that the nationalism in her theory is barely detectable.” Tamir is quite clear that she rejects liberalism as an account of the theoretical foundations of a society. Nationalistic association may require frequent and copious watering down to keep it on an ethical path, but this cannot dissolve its place as the root of a political system. This makes a difference in matters of policy. [22] See, for example, D. POLISH (2001) Who Owns the Soul of Jerusalem? Reform Judaism, Summer 2001, also at http://www.uahc.org/rjmag/601dp.html, and the essays of MARC ELLIS, at http://www3.baylor.edu/ American_Jewish/director/lectures.htm. [23] J. GREENBERG (2001) Jewish law forbids giving up Temple Mount, say rabbis New York Times, Jan. 6, 2001. [24] The second intifada has the title of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, Al-Aqsa being the main mosque on Haram-eshSharif (the Temple Mount). Al-Aqsa is featured prominently on Palestinian nationalistic placards and posters. Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem is a key demand. See http://www.nad-plo.org/ permanent/jerusalem.html. The speeches of Palestinian Authority Chairman Arafat refer to the Palestinian day of victory as the day in which a Palestinian boy or girl raises the Palestinian flag over the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. See for example http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/not_in_website/ syndication/monitoring/media_reports/1353393.stm. [25] Tamir (1993) pp. 48–53. [26] RAWLS (1999a) p. 91. [27] Moore compares Jewish and Islamic claims to Jerusalem to those of medieval Christendom. The Christians learned to accept reality and realized that Christian culture could flourish without control of Jerusalem. Likewise, Moore suggests, inevitably Jews and Palestinians will settle for a deal concerning Jerusalem which respects emotional ties and splits the difference between the two sides. Access to holy sites will be guaranteed and a power-sharing arrangement will be put into place. (See Moore, op. cit., pp. 195–6.) This is good sense, but I fear that it directly violates the traditions that are behind the constitutive identities of both peoples. A glance at the Jewish liturgy shows how pervasive to traditional religious Judaism are the aspirations for the return of the Divine presence to Jerusalem, and how uniformly this is understood as conjoined with a restoration of Jewish sovereignty. I would not want to defend the claim that Islamic attachment to Haram esh-Sharif is any weaker. It should be remarked that Moore’s suggestion is in line with her general thesis that national identity is not dependent on any cultural constants or essential features. © Society for Applied Philosophy, 2005 298 Owen Goldin [28] See, for example T. KAPITAN, Historical Introduction to the Philosophical Issues in Kapitan, in Kapitan, op. cit., pp. 34–36; M. VOGEL, The Ethical Dimension of the Jewish-Arab Conflict in Kapitan, op. cit., pp. 256–7. [29] Cf. S. P. HUNTINGTON (1996) The Class of Civilizations: Remaking of World Order (New York, Simon and Schuster), p. 267: “In the course of the [fault line] war, multiple identities fade and the identity most meaningful in relation to the conflict comes to dominate. That identity almost always is dominated by religion.” [30] An earlier version of this paper was presented to the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, San Francisco CA, March 27, 2003. Thanks to Arun Iyer and Amy Whitworth for editorial help. I am especially indebted to Robert Ashmore for his comments on this earlier draft, and for the illuminating discussions to which they led. © Society for Applied Philosophy, 2005