Jay Rothman: Re-engaging: A Letter to Fellow Peacebuilders
Newsletter #394 — October, 15 2025
Our colleague and friend Jay Rothman sent us this letter a few days ago, asking if we wanted to publish it. The answer was "of course." Jay makes a number of profound assertions here and asks a final question we all need to think about carefully. We welcome public answers here from anyone who would like to engage with Jay, us and our wider audience!
Dear Colleagues,
I'm back. After two years of relative silence about Israel’s post-10/7 war in Gaza, I'm ready to re-engage with the work we share.
Some have wondered where I've been. Others have judged my absence. Let me be direct about my practice: Before war, I work to prevent it. During war, I pause. After war, I return to help solidify foundations for peace.
This isn't retreat. It's recognition of our limits.
The Limits of Our Power
Forty years ago, on a panel chaired by Ambassador Samuel Lewis the founding President of USIP who had asked me to suggest how conflict resolution could prevent the then looming war in Iraq, I shared the bad news: the field of conflict resolution couldn't stop the Iraq war. It was too late because coercive power had already taken over. It was too early because the illogic of war had taken hold.
I couldn't pretend our field had more power than it did. That conviction has only deepened.
During active warfare, coercive power is the only currency that "works" in the conventional sense. The collaborative, emergent, trust-based processes we practice cannot compete with bombs and military strategy. Trying to insert ourselves into that space often does more harm than good—to the people caught in conflict and to our own credibility for when we're actually needed.
So I paused. Not from complicity. Not from lack of conviction. But from professional humility about what our tools can and cannot do.
The Uncomfortable Middle
Now we face Trump's Middle East deal. And once again, we find ourselves in that uncomfortable space we know so well—the liminal zone between binary certainties where we become both doorway and doormat.
I know the arguments against engagement:
- The process is flawed
- The broker is problematic
- The power asymmetries are unchanged
- We risk legitimizing future abuses
- Edward Said's critique of Oslo still echoes
I carry all of these concerns. I believe Israel’s conduct has constituted war crimes, and will need to be held accountable.
And it has been clear to me that Hamas is a vicious terrorist group and as such has no place at the table in the future.
Thus, I have no illusions about this deal’s perfections, especially given that two of the main interlocutors for now must be the current Israeli Government and Hamas’ leadership, with Trump continuing to stay engaged and to play his coercive power role.
But I also remember what happened thirty years ago.
Oslo's Ghost
I was there when Clinton staged that handshake between Rabin and Arafat. I saw both men smile at the children on stage. I felt the possibility in that moment.
Days later, I heard the famous Palestinian historian Edward Said at Swarthmore declare Oslo a betrayal and doomed to failure. The audience erupted. I left dejected, knowing he was both right and wrong—right about much of the substance, devastating in his absolutism and rejection.
Yes, Oslo was built on sand. But we could have reinforced those foundations through intentionality and mutual commitment. Instead, both sides began demolishing them immediately, each side's skepticism becoming self-fulfilling prophecy. Then Rabin's assassination blew everything apart.
We've been living in Oslo's failure ever since. What have we learned?
The Hospital That Canceled a Summit
October 17, 2023: Biden was flying to Jordan for an emergency summit with Arab leaders, ten days after October 7th. It was exactly the right moment—late enough to understand the gravity, early enough to prevent wider catastrophe.
The Al-Ahli Hospital explosion derailed everything. Israel was blamed immediately; subsequent investigations by Human Rights Watch, CNN, and US intelligence suggested the evidence pointed to a Palestinian rocket malfunction (though other investigations contested this and the matter remains disputed without a full independent inquiry). Nonetheless, the summit was immediately cancelled. That diplomatic window slammed shut.
I'm not relitigating what happened at that hospital. I'm asking us to notice what we do: how quickly we choose narrative over negotiation, how readily we sacrifice diplomatic openings to make moral points, how our own certainties become obstacles to the very outcomes we claim to want.
What We Actually Face
Colleagues, we don't get to choose between good and bad. We choose between terrible and less terrible. Between vicious cycles that guarantee more death and virtuous cycles that might—might—create space for something better.
The question isn't whether Trump's deal is pure. Nothing in this work is pure.
The question is whether this moment offers enough of an opening to warrant our engagement—our expertise, our methods, our hard-won understanding of how successive approximations can move toward peace when clean resolutions are impossible.
The Practitioner's Dilemma
I know the risks. Every time we engage with flawed processes, we face accusations of:
- Normalizing the abnormal
- Providing cover for bad actors
- Sacrificing principle for pragmatism
- Betraying those who suffer most
These aren't theoretical concerns. They're real ethical dilemmas that should trouble us.
But here's what also troubles me: practitioners who refuse to work in ambiguity. Activists who tear down every imperfect attempt. Critics who are always right because they deny complexity. The purity that costs nothing because it builds nothing.
We've seen where that leads. Oslo failed not just because of its flaws, but because absolutism from all sides made those flaws fatal.
An Invitation to Complexity
So I'm asking us to hold the complexity:
- Support peace without endorsing all methods
- Engage critically rather than refusing categorically
- Build on sand while acknowledging it's sand
- Choose approximation over paralysis
If those of us who actually know how to do this work could unite behind one principle—that peace is possible and deserves our professional engagement—we might build something that endures. Not because the process is perfect. But because we know how to navigate imperfection toward better outcomes.
We know how to:
- Surface underlying resonances beneath opposing positions
- Build trust where mistrust reigns
- Create third spaces where new possibilities emerge
- Transform zero-sum into integrative options
- Support parties in finding their own way forward
These skills matter. Maybe especially with flawed processes and problematic brokers. Maybe that's exactly when methodology matters most.
Why I'm Re-engaging
The war phase is ending. The foundations for peace—however fragile—need building. This is when we're needed.
Not to bless what's wrong. Not to pretend things are better than they are. But to do what we actually know how to do: create containers where people can move from antagonism to resonance, from positions to underlying needs, from binary opposition to creative integration.
The children on that White House stage thirty years ago deserved a chance. The children of Gaza and Israel today deserve no less—whoever delivers it, however imperfectly.
I'm back because this is the work. Not just when it's easy or pure or led by people we like. But when it's hard and messy and requires us to occupy that uncomfortable middle ground we've trained for.
The Question for Us
We face a choice familiar to every practitioner: Do we engage with what's actually on offer, or do we wait for conditions that may never come?
I'm not asking for endorsement. I'm asking for engagement—critical, professional, methodologically rigorous engagement with the actual possibilities before us.
Because virtuous cycles have to start somewhere. And if not us, who? If not now, when?
I hope most of you will join me in this uncomfortable, necessary space.
With respect for those who choose differently,
Jay Rothman, Ph.D.
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