Negotiations in Heterogeneous Societies: Ratifying a Peace Agreement in Israel

In societies characterized by profoundly disparate worldviews that seem to collide in ways that prevent sufficient consensus for policymaking, leaders and negotiators oftentimes need to build an internal agreement that is marked by disunity and diversity. By studying Israel's ratification of the Israeli–Jordanian peace treaty, this article explores the challenges heterogeneous societies face in incorporating various worldviews when negotiating international peace agreements, particularly where religious and/or non‐liberal worldviews are at play.

We first explain the need for such an inclusive approach, given the faults of exclusively liberal peacemaking. We then present and analyze elements of the internal Israeli Knesset debate regarding the ratification of the Israel–Jordan peace treaty as a window into the dilemmas posed by common collisions: between non‐liberal worldviews and international rights‐based agreements, and between religious worldviews and interest‐based diplomacy.¹ We then offer lessons drawn from the case study, and we conclude with insights regarding the application of these lessons to other cases.

Many leaders and negotiators have failed to consider non‐liberal worldviews, operating within a paradigm that can be called “liberal peacemaking” (Dalsheim 2014; Zalzberg 2019). They have assumed that liberal notions and rights‐based concepts dominate—or should dominate—the practice of peacemaking and have premised their work on a correlation between the advancement of individual rights and the promotion of peace. However, many non‐liberal groups perceive liberalism as a threat to national, religious, and cultural attachments because it advances the primacy of individual autonomy over collective values and rules. Seeing that peacemaking sought to advance liberalization of societies, such groups came to oppose peace. Dalsheim (2014) perceptively argues that by premising peacemaking on liberal thinking, peacemakers set themselves up for failure by effectively creating so‐called spoiler groups that work to thwart all peacemaking because of its liberalizing nature.

Lines of research that frame the challenge as the inclusion of religion in peacemaking tend to assume that peacemaking is intrinsically secular. This oftentimes leads to reductively casting religion as a problem or religious groups as irredeemably fundamentalist, extreme, and irrational (Almond, Appelby, and Sivan 2002). In the same vein, literature advocating peacemaking based on religious values (Gopin 2002; Melchior 2015; Refaeli 2020) tends to underestimate substantive and experiential secular fears about exclusively religious frameworks, thus failing to offer a conceptual basis for including secular worldviews.² Seeking a broader, nonjudgmental conceptualization of the challenge, we follow those who frame the matter as an advancement of peacemaking across worldviews, such that an agreement would cohere simultaneously with several disparate perspectives that might otherwise seem incommensurable (Docherty 2001; Seul 2020). Worldviews can differ from each other in dramatic ways, encompassing different values and disparate hierarchies between values; holding certain values as nonnegotiable; employing different terminologies; and drawing on varied sources of authority. They may be oriented to the future or to the past, and may be anchored in unrelated, dissimilar systems of law.

Indeed, from a negotiations perspective, worldview differences can stand at the core of absolute rigidities. Oftentimes, people cannot support a negotiated compromise—even if they deem it advantageous from an interest‐based perspective—if it does not cohere with their worldview. We posit that despite profound differences, deliberate efforts can often produce agreements and arrangements that concurrently cohere with several seemingly colliding worldviews.

This approach stands in contrast with that of mainstream scholarly literature on conflict resolution. Coercive, power‐based approaches (e.g., Zartman 1989) as well as cooperative, negotiation‐centered approaches that aim primarily to elicit empathy and respect for the adversary (Blake, Browne, and Sime 2018) share a tendency to drive all conflict parties to embrace a unified vision and identical justifications for such vision. When conflict parties try to coerce adversaries to accept their own normative premises, purportedly for the sake of reconciling, and when third‐party mediators attempt to draw all conflict parties toward a seemingly shared worldview in order to carve out a compromise, success hinges on whether uniform peacemaking can be anchored in a shared hegemonic rationale. In the absence of a shared hegemonic rationale, such approaches are bound to flounder.

If a society is in fact characterized by one hegemonic worldview, a single “victory speech” (Ury 1993) for each side crafted by its respective negotiator might suffice to justify the parties' actions. However, in heterogeneous societies—i.e., those defined by the lack of a shared hegemonic worldview and unified value judgments—negotiators should try to craft an agreement that lends itself to several concurrent so‐called victory speeches, each within the logic of the main worldviews held by the conflicting parties. This way they can reduce the risk of creating an agreement that is intrinsically unacceptable to certain constituencies (Zalzberg 2019).

Negotiating across worldviews within heterogeneous societies is especially challenging in matters involving foreign policy. While in other areas of policymaking diverse positions might be addressed though differential policies, for example by supporting several educational currents in parallel, such leeway is rarely possible in matters of diplomacy and foreign affairs, in which each country is expected to present a united front and speak in a monolithic voice. The difficulty—and the reward from overcoming it—intensifies with the involvement of illiberal and/or religiously motivated groups, because the customary discourse of the international order is legalistic, rights‐based, and employs theologically neutral reasoning. The case study presented here grapples with this double challenge: the process by which a heterogeneous society containing non‐liberal and/or religious groups decides on a matter of foreign policy.

Importantly, there is nothing intrinsically challenging about non‐liberal or religious worldviews. It is only in the context of a public discourse governed by secularized and liberal thinking that adherents of such worldviews find themselves in a state of constant opposition, compelled to translate their motivations into the alien conceptual glossary of an incommensurable worldview. In a society where the “default” differs—where religious discourse dominates public discourse—such a challenge might fall to secular and liberal thinkers.

The authors are mediators and conveners of dialogues, working on the seam between political leaders, diplomats, religious authorities, and cultural elites. In our political mediation work we repeatedly have encountered a need for conducting domestic conversations on peacemaking before, during, and after international negotiations, during which collisions between worldviews are analyzed and addressed directly and in a participatory manner.

We chose to examine the Israel–Jordan case study, rather than Israeli‐Palestinian conflict transformation work in which we currently are involved, because it offers three pedagogic advantages. First, it is a case in which the domestic controversy was primarily about the symbolic framing of the agreement rather than the material transaction itself. This helps demonstrate the importance of adequately framing agreements across worldviews even under conditions of apparent consensus over interests. Second, our case study dates back to the heyday of liberal peacemaking in the 1990s, during which religious and non‐liberal actors were forced to explicitly articulate their needs and concerns. Third, for Middle Eastern readers, it is emotionally and ideologically easier to study the Israeli–Jordanian peace treaty dispassionately than, for example, highly controversial Israeli–Palestinian agreements.

In this article we thus explore a road‐not‐taken in the Arab–Israeli peacemaking context in general, and in Israel's ratification of its peace treaty with Jordan in particular. Analysis of that historic moment provides lessons and insights pertinent to the Arab–Israeli conflict and attempts to resolve it, as well as to the broader challenge of advancing a negotiated agreement between heterogeneous societies and the general practice of policymaking in light of persistent, colliding worldviews.

From 1948 until the ratification of their peace treaty in 1994, Israel and Jordan were in a formal state of war. Relations were characterized both by intermittent fighting and by secret cooperation between wars. During the Arab–Israeli War of 1948, Jordan took control over the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including its Old City, subsequently losing control over these areas in the Arab–Israeli War of 1967. Jordan's participation in the Arab–Israeli War of 1973 was more limited than in the prior two wars. In 1988 Jordan relinquished its claim to the West Bank and East Jerusalem but Jordan's ruling Hashemite dynasty maintained its claim for custodianship of Jerusalem's Muslim and Christian holy sites, including, most importantly, the compound referred to as the al‐Aqsa Mosque in Muslim tradition and as the Temple Mount in Jewish tradition (Susser 2011).

Israel and Jordan negotiated a peace treaty in 1994, which was signed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein. The treaty settled minor territorial and water disputes and provided a basis for cooperation in many areas, including security, trade, and tourism. Article 9 of the treaty established that “Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem. When negotiations on the permanent status will take place, Israel will give high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines.” Jordanian officials have described this article as expressing Israeli recognition of the so‐called Status Quo arrangement at the al‐Aqsa Mosque/Temple Mount, a set of informal understandings that establish, among other principles, the administration of the site by Jordan's Islamic Waqf and a ban on non‐Muslim prayer at the site, an issue that remains a bone of contention to this day.³

Israel's defense establishment consistently deemed the treaty a success—Israel and Jordan have not engaged in armed fighting since its signing, Jordan has been highly effective in keeping Israel's longest boundary calm, and Israeli–Jordanian defense and intelligence cooperation regarding challenges elsewhere across the Middle East repeatedly proved valuable. The agreement did not give rise to significant economic, social, or cultural relations between the two societies, primarily due to Jordanian opposition to so‐called normalization of relations with Israel as long as the Israeli–Palestinian conflict remains unresolved.

The 1994 peace agreement with Jordan was approved with broad support from the Knesset (Israel's parliament), with 105 out of 120 Knesset Members voting for its ratification. Only six Knesset Members opposed the agreement, three abstained from the vote, and six were absent from the vote for different reasons. Despite the apparent consensus, recent years have seen growing Israeli criticism of the agreement—particularly among the religious Right—indications of which were perceptible during the Knesset discussions preceding the ratification vote.

Let us examine the position of MK Rabbi Avraham Ravitz, the leader of the ultra‐orthodox party United Torah Judaism, who concisely expressed the main religious challenges facing peace agreements, given the deeply heterogeneous character of Israeli society. When the draft treaty between Israel and Jordan was brought up for ratification at the Knesset on the 25th of October 1994, Ravitz presented the following concluding proposal:⁴

United Torah Judaism Concluding Proposal

1. The Knesset supports the treaty between the State of Israel and Jordan, as presented to us by the government.

2. The Knesset resolves to strengthen Jewish identity in education and culture systems, aimed to deepen Jewish heritage, in order to preserve our distinct Jewish uniqueness in the era of peace between nations.

3. The Knesset establishes that the treaty is a diplomatic agreement between peoples, which should be honored, but which does not negate our divinely promised right, as appearing in the Tanach [Hebrew Bible] and told by the prophets, over the Land of Israel, the Temple Mount, the place of the Temple and the Holy of Holies. (Knesset Protocol 1994)

What points did Ravitz seek to make through these clarifications? If they were accepted, what new directions might have opened up regarding Israeli–Arab peace and the intra‐Israeli dynamic regarding it? What new conversations could have taken place among the various parts of Israeli society?

Ravitz's proposal touched on the two most important challenges that holders of religious worldviews tend to associate with peace within a liberal international order. First, the word of God is more important than the government's contractual commitments. Second, peace, in the sense of accepting the other and intensifying a relationship with the other, potentially threatens a community's particular culture and identity. A decision maker seriously addressing the reservations that Ravitz raised must confront two basic issues: the place of religious reasoning in diplomatic agreements and the impact of an agreement on the character of a society.⁵

Ravitz's concluding proposal clarifies his view that it is important for all/most Israeli Jews to make explicit their attachment to all parts of the Land of Israel and to declare that the divine promise stands.⁶ Seeking to ensure that the agreement would not be a betrayal of the Jewish calling, he sought to clarify, within the bounds of an intra‐Israeli conversation, that the agreement is “mere diplomacy.” Put differently, according to Ravitz there is hierarchy: the contractual commitment is indeed binding, but it does not negate the Truth. For Ravitz, if Israel's elected government agrees to concede parts of the Land of Israel, a dramatic step that ostensibly alters reality through the democratic realization of national sovereignty, then it ought to publicly announce that Jews as a people and the state institutions of Israel are not the utmost source of authority, and that reality unfolds primarily according to a divine plan.

How could a secular prime minster, or indeed a member of parliament, respond to Ravitz's proposal?

One option would be to reject Ravitz's proposal, arguing that it is important not only to support the peace treaty, but to agree on the justification for such support. According to this perspective, some justifications are more correct than others. Those who reject the proposal might argue that it is wrong to cite religious motivations to justify the ratification of a peace treaty and there is no place for religion in diplomatic discourse. Many Israeli advocates of peacemaking hold such beliefs, either out of fear that religion will be used to justify actions on the Arab side, or that condoning faith‐based reasoning to justify diplomatic agreements would strengthen the standing of religion within the State of Israel in other fields, and in ways detrimental to secular constituencies.

A second option would be to dismiss Ravitz's proposal as declarative and intended only for internal consumption among his ultra‐Orthodox constituency, to which consent from other constituencies and their representatives is neither sought nor necessary. According to this position, Ravitz's concluding proposal is a step Ravitz has to take before his voters, and the justifications he expresses and caveats he identifies have no impact on the treaty itself or on the position of state institutions toward it.

A third option would be to suggest an alternative secularized phrasing of the concluding proposal, translating Ravitz's motivations into language acceptable to secular leaders. The prime minister or a Knesset member could suggest a different concluding proposal, one that declares that the Jewish people's cultural and historical attachment to the Land of Israel is eternally preserved. Such a proposal would confirm that the entirety of the Land of Israel is and will remain the homeland of the Jewish people, notwithstanding the agreement's recognition that parts of the land will come under the rule of another state.

Some would be pleased with such a “translation,” settling for recognition that the Jewish people's historical attachment to the land—rather than the preeminence of the divine promise—takes precedence over any legal agreement. Others, among them likely Ravitz himself, who intentionally chose to phrase his concluding resolution with religious terminology, would have found such a step insufficient. While it might seem obvious that explicit rejection could prove most perilous in terms of the sense of exclusion of the party raising the reservations, it could be that a well‐intentioned effort to translate motivations into another worldview would be deemed more offensive than straightforward rejection. Translation could prove highly offensive if it seems to imply a sense that the hegemonic worldview is superior or if the very essence of the reservation gets lost in translation.

A fourth option would be to accept Ravitz's proposal verbatim, if only for a utilitarian purpose—to expand and deepen support for the agreement.

Ravitz's concluding proposal makes clear how important it is to him that peace not “normalize” Israeli society. He expressed fear of cultural assimilation within a global cultural and economic system, as well as angst that assimilation with Arab neighbors would increase as psychological barriers recede (Hazony 2018; Deneen 2019).

Ravitz's basic intuition is that the center of gravity of peace does not lie in relations with the other side to the conflict. Peace is a transformative move that shapes Israeli society itself, providing an opportunity for a conversation about the society's character and calling. A secular public seeking religious partners must provide a serious answer to this challenge in order to enable religious support for a peace agreement. Moreover, according to Ravitz, peace deepens a need to conduct an internal conversation among secular and religious Israelis regarding the concerns from cultural assimilation that are embedded within the yearned peace. Opening up to Europe and the Middle East, which many secular Israelis approve of and desire, has an identity‐related cost that must be acknowledged.

In conversations among Israelis regarding a future Israeli–Arab agreement—be it with Palestinians, Syria, or Lebanon—an argument occasionally comes up that does not appear explicitly in Ravitz's statement but is based on a similar concern. According to this argument, retreat from the religious objective in one area—the domain of geographical borders and territorial sovereignty—should be substantially compensated by progress on other religious fronts and areas—“one step backward, two steps forward.” Put differently, so that an agreement would not seem opposed to faith, the argument goes, it should provide greater progress than regression, so that the overall change could be characterized as a religious achievement within the bounds of the pertinent religious worldview.⁷

In the Arab–Israeli peacemaking context, such an approach requires steps attesting that the entire Jewish people is deeply anchored in its tradition and that a territorial or sovereignal regression is done for the purpose of greater future progress. Such steps could be rhetorical and symbolic or might manifest themselves in policy implementation—such as increasing Jewish education in secular public schools or tightening state application and enforcement of religious law in the domain of personal status or the Shabbat laws. These are all highly conflicted matters in Israel's “religion and state” debate. A nuanced secular–religious conversation would be required in advance of negotiations in order to identify whether and how intra‐Israeli agreement over such steps could be reached across worldviews.⁸

How could a secular prime minister or Knesset member react to the argument regarding the interplay between a peace agreement and society's character? One alternative would be to persist with an alternative hierarchy, according to which a secular character might be deemed more important than securing broad support for a peace agreement, and consequently firmly reject the claim.

A second alternative would be to express acknowledgment of the identity‐related cost of an agreement at the symbolic level. Precisely in light of the opening to the world that occurs in tandem with a peace agreement, Israel could, for instance, strengthen the status it grants to the distinct Hebrew calendar. During the Knesset ratification discussion regarding the treaty with Jordan, MK Masha Lubelsky, of the secular Labor Party, emphasized the importance of maintaining distinctiveness—“our spiritual and moral quality… precisely under conditions of normalization” (Knesset Protocol 1994). Lubelsky also made sure to explain that she said these things because it is clear for her that when she makes such utterances they are heard differently in secular ears than when similar concerns are voiced by Ravitz (Knesset Protocol 1994).

A third alternative would be to see in steps deepening the commitment to Jewish tradition a “bitter pill” one must swallow in order to get better. Namely, it is necessary to take part in a kind of barter that includes regression with respect to the character of society as a secular person might see it, in order to persuade possible adversaries to support an agreement, which would constitute a bitter pill for them as well. The famous saying wrongly attributed to MK Shulamit Aloni, who led the secular, leftist Meretz party, that for the sake of peace she would wear on her head a Shtreimel (a fur hat worn by ultra‐Orthodox Hassidic Jews on festive days) corresponds well with this logic.⁹

Ratifying the agreement with a concluding statement such as the one proposed by Ravitz would have strengthened ultra‐Orthodox support for the agreement, and possibly demonstrated a path for winning ultra‐Orthodox backing for other agreements that involve similar challenges. By welcoming religious motivations, it would be possible for ultra‐Orthodox educators and rabbis to teach that an agreement is religiously desirable and correct, and not just some hybrid of compromise and necessity, and the agreement would encounter less challenges to its validity as years went by.

The discussion described above pertains to the Israeli–Jordanian peace agreement. But these alternatives are relevant also with an eye to future Israeli–Arab and, specifically, Israeli–Palestinian peace agreements. They all would need to address the multiple justifications that exist in Israeli society. It might be that a new conversation of such a kind would pave roads that at present appear impossible.

The effort to expand support through profound treatment of religious motivations can be manifested also in the body of the agreement, not only in the justifications cited for supporting it. For example, in light of the tension between an absolute diplomatic concession over parts of the land in the context of a final status agreement and the eternal divine promise of the land to the Jewish people, perhaps an agreement that is not characterized as permanent and final, but rather as durable or as renewable over the long term, would win the support of broader publics. This is particularly true if it were made clear publicly that a central reason for such characterization is the tension with the divine promise.

The principle of expanding and deepening support by addressing plural justifications is not limited to religious justifications such as those Ravitz suggested. One could similarly think about a religious prime minister who works to expand and deepen secular support for a peace agreement by demonstrating attentiveness to deep secular motivations or by affirming them. In this light one could, for demonstrative pedagogic reasons, examine a scenario in which an agreement establishes a synagogue at the Temple Mount, and during its ratification the Knesset would express the primacy of international law over Jewish law, and justify this component of the agreement solely through the promotion of the freedom of worship.

Generally stated, the need to allow for multiple concurrent justifications is neither the sole purview nor the specific burden of the secular population. It lies on the shoulders of whomever is in power when their respective worldview is in danger of acquiring such hegemony over the public discourse that those adhering to it fail to acknowledge the very existence of other worldviews, and see their own worldview as a single, universal default.

After MK Ravitz's concluding proposal was rejected, he nevertheless voted in favor of the agreement together with the other members of his party. This choice allowed other Israeli leaders to ignore his suggestion to incorporate religious motivations in the ratification of an agreement. In other cases, such disregard is impossible. The leaders of other sizable constituencies would have conditioned their support on acceptance of their reservations, or even further than that—would not even present their reservations because they would rightly assume that the political discourse did not leave room for such motivations to be expressed. Instead, they would opt to focus exclusively on preventing the signing or execution of the agreement altogether. Disregarding the deep motivations of powerful conflict parties could be critical, even decisive, for determining a future of either coexistence or bloodshed (Dalsheim 2014).

The conduct at the ratification vote of then‐MK Hanan Porath, a prominent religious Zionist leader known for his key role in advancing Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, offers a window to such a scenario. He chose to abstain despite the support of his faction, the National Religious Party. He explained from the Knesset podium that the substantive reason for his abstaining pertained to the tension between the pursuit of peace, which Jewish tradition expects and demands, and his aversion to signing an agreement that includes concessions over parts of the land divinely promised to Jews that lie in the north of present‐day Jordan, and over the Temple Mount. Porath concluded his statement during the ratification vote by saying: “It was possible to reach this agreement [between Israel and Jordan], it was possible to write it in a manner which would have circumvented this issue. Because it was not circumvented, I cannot sign and would not be able to join the signing, even if I want to” (Knesset Protocol 1994).

Yitzhak Rabin, then prime minister, apparently did not know how to incorporate Porath's religious logic into peacemaking with Jordan. In Porath's judgment it was possible to craft the same agreement differently so that it would address religious concerns.¹⁰ This is not about Porath's rejection of a state of affairs that the agreement establishes or the reality it creates, but about its language and logic. If Prime Minister Rabin and King Hussein had dealt differently with the symbolic and motivational layers of the agreement, it might have garnered religious Zionist support even from ardent activists who found themselves reluctant to support it.¹¹

Israeli acceptance of the Israel–Jordan agreement may seem like a clear‐cut success story at first glance—the agreement was negotiated quickly, a huge Knesset majority supported it in the ratification vote, and it has remained in effect to this day under both left‐leaning and right‐leaning governments. However, a closer look reveals a more partial initial enthusiasm for the agreement and a gradual erosion in relations between the two countries over the years, not least as a result of activism by those who felt excluded from the agreement.

The agreement contained major concessions for right‐leaning Israelis, particularly religious Zionists, pertaining mostly to areas east of the Jordan River in present‐day Jordan and to the Temple Mount/al Aqsa Mosque Compound in Jerusalem, Judaism's holiest site and one of Islam's holiest. (As noted, the Hashemite rulers of Jordan claim custodianship over the al Aqsa Mosque Compound on behalf of all Muslims.) Indeed, as religious Zionists became increasingly powerful in Israeli politics in general and, with time, within the ruling Likud party in particular, large segments of the Israeli political elite came to oppose chief tenets of the agreement. Some twenty years after the agreement was signed, prominent religious Zionist MKs began to call publicly for replacing the Jordanian Waqf with Israel's Chief Rabbinate and for Israel's Religious Affairs Ministry to regulate prayer times for both Jews and Muslims at the site, in defiance of Jordanian claims that the site should be a place exclusively for Muslim prayer.¹² Similarly, leading religious Zionist leaders advocated for political solutions to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in which Palestinians achieve national rights and citizenship in Amman, challenging the very existence of Hashemite rule over Jordan (Alon 2007; Mintz 2009).

The impact on Jordanian political elites of Israeli policies that deprioritized Jordanian interests—for example, by placing increased curbs on Waqf maintenance projects at the al‐Aqsa Mosque—and of public statements from prominent Israeli religious leaders cannot be underestimated. These actions and words were understood as existential threats to Jordan's Hashemite character—as efforts to dethrone the Hashemite dynasty, deny its claimed custodianship of the al‐Aqsa Mosque, and transform Jordan into Palestine (“alternative homeland”). (See, e.g., “King says Jerusalem a red line” (2019)). The crumbling of Jordan–Israel relations—reaching an unprecedented crisis that King Abdullah described as “an all‐time low” and including the termination of a land‐lease arrangement that was part of the peace agreement—is to a large extent a result of this dynamic (Zalzberg 2020).

This historic episode suggests that even when leaders and negotiators believe they have sufficient political support to allow themselves to ignore the stomachaches and reservations of the opposition, they may be ignoring the full implications of the opposition's misgivings. These constituencies might grow stronger in the future and eventually challenge policies that neglected to address their worldview. Or indeed, leaders from such excluded constituencies may be well‐positioned to rally greater support precisely around the grievance of a treaty that disregards some of their deepest values.

One wonders whether engaging with Porath around his reservations—and in what ways—could have improved the agreement's durability, perhaps by addressing such reservations within the text and framing it as theologically necessary or desirable. What would have happened over the years on this road‐not‐taken? What if Porath had engaged prominent national‐religious rabbis with the agreement and secured their support for a version that reflected greater sensitivity to their needs and beliefs? Could a different framing of the issue, one that did not alter the treaty's implementation, make a considerable difference?

Porath's words from the Knesset podium indicating that he would have supported that very same agreement if it was written differently suggests that alternative framing might have had a dramatic impact on the treaty's influence and durability among religious Zionists. Introducing the religious motivational language into negotiations over the agreement would not only have included religious Zionist leaders in the process, but it could also have helped them to understand better the sensitivities of the worldview of the Jordanian signatories. With such knowledge, the religious Zionist leaders might have chosen to express their beliefs and wishes in a way that Jordanians would not view as offensive, or they even might have altered their wishes. For example, religious Zionist leaders have learned in discreet dialogues we have convened that Jordan's Waqf could permit Jewish prayer at the Temple Mount/Al‐Aqsa Mosque if the Waqf was granted full administration of the site. This learning led some to express a principled theological preference for Muslim acceptance of Jewish prayer under such conditions over the imposition of Jewish rule in order to allow for contested prayer, and to lament that present conditions of political mistrust do not allow for such a possibility (for details, see Ravitzky 2016).

Our analysis of the debate about peace with Jordan among Israeli leaders with different worldviews suggests the following lessons for peacemaking.

1. Allow for multiple concurrent justifications and reasons to support the peace agreement.

Rabin, the secularly motivated prime minister, included in the treaty only state interests and humanist and liberal values as justifications for the agreement. This increased Ravitz's need to refer directly to the divine when justifying support for the agreement. An agreement involving heterogeneous societies should be drafted in a way that lends itself to articulating different justifications for supporting it. Technically, this could mean excluding a normative preamble. Unlike the UN Charter and U.S. Constitution, which open with a “we the people(s)” clause asserting shared values, an agreement that coheres across worldviews could remain mostly silent regarding the justifications for the agreement, so that the conflict parties would be at liberty to present their disparate justifications in their respective victory speeches.¹³

• 2.

  Actively strive for holders of competing worldviews to formulate justifications that fit their own perspectives.

Ravitz and Porath apparently presented their views only after a treaty was initialed by both heads of state. Had Rabin conversed with them before or while negotiating with King Hussein, they could have been better positioned to devise ways to support the treaty. Better appreciation of the stakes and the actual room for maneuver might have encouraged them to develop new conceptualizations within their worldviews that would more easily lend themselves to supporting the agreement. At times such new conceptualizations are of decisive importance because they open up avenues that have been entirely rejected. In an optimal setting, it is not only Rabin who would engage with holders of competing worldviews within Israeli society, but King Hussein as well, while Rabin would actively encourage the inclusion of multiple Jordanian and Muslim justifications.

• 3.

  Design policy steps in ways that can be congruent with the pertinent worldviews.

Had Rabin conversed with Ravitz and Porath before or while negotiating with King Hussein, he too would have been better positioned to negotiate the content of the treaty in a way that did not clash with Ravitz and Porath's core values. Figuratively speaking, securing Porath's support probably would have required Rabin to shuttle between Porath and King Hussein to find mutually acceptable ways to draft the agreement. Such back and forth between the other party and the domestic constituency can lead the negotiating parties to alter the very content of the agreement, not only its framing.¹⁴

• 4.

  Enable Different Meaningful Places to Express Discomfort.

The case study reveals that negotiating a treaty in heterogeneous societies requires the design of a multi‐layered architecture for expressing support and discomfort. The ratification debate underlines an important dimension in the way adherents of different worldviews assign meaning to differing realms of political activity. Note that Ravitz cared about the text of the Knesset's ratification decision while Porath cared about the text of the actual agreement that the government—or indeed, the two governments—signed. The former cared about the internal Israeli conversation while the latter ascribed religious meaning to the dealings of the State of Israel and its institutions in the international domain.¹⁵

There are a variety of ways and arenas to express parties' motivations, reservations, and demurs regarding a diplomatic agreement, some domestic and some transnational. An inquiry into different worldviews should probe not only the content of the competing positions but also the circles in which the worldview holders seek to be heard and the intended scope of the principles they seek to advance. Seemingly opposed positions, which suggest full intractability, could thus at times be brought together around a single treaty or policy when conflict parties are focused on different arenas.

The case study highlights three ways in which reservations and discomfort about the peace treaty might find expression: first, within the text of the treaty itself; second, through a concluding statement expressing a domestic consensus as part of a ratification process; and third, within leaders' victory speeches. While Porath claimed to focus on the first layer and Ravitz seemed to focus on the second, Ravitz's decision to support the agreement even though his ratification proposal was rejected suggests he might have raised it as a “victory speech” that was aimed only at his own community.¹⁶ Indeed, Ury's term “victory speech” is inapt for our purposes, which include expressing discomfort. One can come to terms with a treaty through emotions other than a sentiment of joyous victory. Support for an agreement could also be voiced through a narrative that frames it as an inconsequential change, an unavoidable tragedy (be it divinely ordained or mundanely fated), or part of a morally complex compromise. During the ratification debate Ravitz articulated this by stating that the agreement should be signed not only in ink but also “with a teardrop,” lamenting the necessity of an agreement in which the State of Israel relinquished claims to parts of the biblical land of Israel, and the way that political necessity attests, in his view, that God desires that the Israeli people make such compromise because he deems them unworthy of more.

In sum, a leader designing policy and seeking to implement it in a heterogeneous society needs to engage in a dialectical process. On the one hand, a leader must cooperate with other leaders and with representatives of societal groups so that they find and define the place where the new policy fits within their worldviews. On the other hand, because worldviews and political theologies are not infinitely flexible, a leader must simultaneously design and articulate the policy itself in a manner that can cohere with the pertinent worldviews and echo within the different value systems. To the extent that this process does not generate full consent, negotiators should explore whether non‐victorious narratives such as expressions of discomfort can help secure support from reluctant constituencies.

Contemporary leaders and negotiators encounter two main challenges when faced with proposals for negotiating across worldviews in societies with non‐liberal religious constituencies: ascertaining the feasibility of such an effort and determining the degree to which its utility justifies the great complexity that it involves.

The call to negotiate agreements across worldviews may raise doubts about whether supposed monists (who profess a belief that there is a one and only truth) would participate in an agreement that can be read in several ways. Our experience as mediators suggests that conservative religious leaders often believe that their truths are in fact not universal. Rather, they often believe that their teachings are particularistic and should be shared by members of their faith, their people, or their community, rather than by everyone. Furthermore, where there is hope for further expansion of teaching to additional constituencies, conservative religious leaders with whom we have been working oftentimes have demonstrated—after encounters with holders of other worldviews—a readiness to wait until others embrace their truths. They tell themselves and their constituencies that this state of affairs is temporary provisional reality, existing only until others come to embrace their positions.¹⁷

Certainly, we also have worked with conservative religious leaders who rejected such engagement across worldviews, fearing this would legitimate other worldviews that they viewed as abominable. In this context it is worth pointing out that we also have been working with liberals who were unaware of their monism and adamantly insisted on crafting an exclusively liberal agreement. Indeed, with liberals and non‐liberals alike, our experience has been that one's readiness to engage across worldviews is often determined more by personal attitude and experiences than by stated ideological monism. The approach of negotiating agreements across worldviews is therefore not limited to ideological pluralists, but to stakeholders who acknowledge a need to inventively organize society's institutions and norms such that all groups would not be required to justify adherence to social rules with the same rationale. Differently put, negotiating across worldviews requires stakeholders who allow for “plural ways of life” (Gray 2000).

When considering the coherence of a negotiated agreement across worldviews, the ability to agree on a text (negotiability) and to ratify it (ratifiability) are not enough for discerning whether the agreement is sufficiently inclusive. The text should be viewed also through the lens of durability. Statistics demonstrate that it is hard to overstate the importance of this perspective. Without viewing an agreement through the lens of durability, a peace treaty is much more likely to be another lamentable statistic: nearly 50% of peace treaties collapse within five years of their signing (Westendorf 2015). While treaties unravel for a variety of reasons, some unrelated to worldviews, an agreement faces a formidable durability challenge if it excludes any of the main worldviews in a heterogeneous society that is a party to it. The exclusion creates an opening for leaders to mobilize their constituencies based on their deeply held, purportedly non‐negotiable values and the powerful sense that their communities have been ostracized. In the case of the Israel–Jordan treaty, such mobilization was based on the opposition's belief that elements of the treaty violate the religious‐Zionist attachment to the Land of Israel and the Temple Mount.

As we move away from the case of Israel and Jordan, we turn from the specific vocabulary of diplomatic peacemaking back to the approach of policymaking as conflict mediation. Many lessons from the case study highlight the influence of the following factors on the durability of a negotiated policy:

• how one rejects, ignores, translates, or accepts the objections, caveats, reservations, and rationales of stakeholders who hold competing worldviews;

• to what extent trade‐offs on seemingly irrelevant fronts can circumvent apparent deadlocks;

• which ideological barriers are insurmountable, and which can be overcome by reframing the bone of contention and formulating differently the proposed solutions;

• when is a consensus on narratives crucial, and when does maintaining disagreement open the door for securing wider acceptance of a policy; and

• for whom it is sufficient to leave room for internal expressions of doubt, and who needs to take an active role in shaping the policy and to feel ownership in the process of decision‐making.

These parameters have decisive impact on policy durability. It is precisely in order to address these issues and produce more durable policies that policymaking in heterogeneous societies must draw on conflict mediation practices.

There is a pressing need to develop and master such approaches. In the case of violent conflict, the choice to consider or disregard the deep motivations of potent conflict parties could be critical and decisive for determining whether the future is one of co‐existence or bloodshed. Indeed, in light of an increasingly socially heterogeneous world (Casanova 1994), worldview inclusivity is becoming absolutely necessary for achieving negotiability and ratifiability, not only durability. In cases of policymaking on domestic issues, disregard of conflict parties' motivations can cause democracies to deteriorate and backslide toward destructive, zero‐sum dynamics in which societal contradictions seem unbridgeable and the domestic conflict is perceived in existential terms—as a conflict with an enemy that must be destroyed—rather than a dispute with a legitimate adversary that must be overcome (Mouffe 1999) or an amical opponent whose differing view should be respected. As democratic societies are increasingly colored by heightened worldview differences (Coleman 2021), it seems that the need for new tools to elicit durable support from highly diverse societies was never greater.