With perhaps just weeks to go before the United States unveils its framework accord that it hopes will prod Palestinians and Israelis toward a comprehensive negotiated resolution of their conflict, it seems that every dimension of this struggle is generating new ideas, trial balloons or fresh pressures on both sides, as the moment of truth approaches.

Israelis and Western Jews are increasingly debating what exactly the Israeli government means when it wants the Palestinians to formally accept and recognize Israel as “the homeland of the Jewish people”.

In other words, to what extent can Palestinians acknowledge Israel in a peace accord as “a Jewish state,” or “the homeland of the Jewish people,” a land where Jews have always lived as indigenous natives and not only as colonial settlers?

For it is in each other’s eyes that Palestinians and Israelis encounter the critical and reciprocal nexus of identity, land and historical trauma that demands acknowledgment, then equitable resolution, because it is what has always shaped their conflict with each other.