The Colonial Mask of Interfaith Dialogue: How Western 'Peace Theater' Perpetuates Palestinian Oppression

Introduction: The Buried Provision

Buried within the twenty-point peace plan for Gaza proposed by former US President Donald Trump lies a largely overlooked provision that demands critical examination. Point eighteen of this plan calls for establishing “an interfaith dialogue process based on the values of tolerance and peaceful co-existence” between Israelis and Palestinians. While presented as a constructive measure, this provision represents the latest iteration of Western colonial diplomacy that spiritualizes political oppression and masks structural violence with the language of religious reconciliation.

The article reveals that most observers have dismissed this point as “rhetorical padding or meaningless fluff,” but the author argues otherwise. Peter Mandaville, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, contends that engagement with religious actors could be crucial for long-term peacebuilding if implemented wisely. However, the historical context of Western intervention in Palestine suggests that this provision is more likely to serve as another instrument of colonial pacification than genuine conflict resolution.

Historical Context: The Colonial Framework

The Israel-Palestine conflict exists within a colonial framework established by Western powers through the Balfour Declaration and subsequent geopolitical manipulations. The conflict is fundamentally about territory, dispossession, and the denial of Palestinian self-determination—not religious differences. However, Western powers have consistently reframed this political struggle as a religious conflict, thereby obscuring the colonial dynamics at play.

Mandaville correctly notes that “the Israel-Palestine conflict is not a religious dispute. It’s a conflict over territory.” Yet this territory carries immense religious significance, making the conflict existential for those involved. Sacred sites like the Temple Mount or Haram al-Sharif become bargaining chips in negotiations dominated by Western powers who have historically privileged Israeli security concerns over Palestinian human rights.

The marginalization of Palestinian religious voices in peace processes mirrors the broader political marginalization of Palestinians themselves. As Mandaville observes, “official negotiators have consistently marginalized their respective voices in efforts to achieve peace over the years.” This systematic exclusion reflects the colonial mentality that treats Palestinians as subjects rather than equal partners in determining their future.

The Dangerous Illusion of Interfaith Dialogue

The proposed interfaith dialogue risks becoming what Mandaville accurately describes as “peace theater”—performative reconciliation designed for international consumption rather than genuine transformation. This theater serves Western interests by creating the appearance of progress while maintaining the status quo of Israeli occupation and American hegemony.

The Abraham Accords provide a recent example of how religious diplomacy can serve geopolitical interests rather than grassroots peace. Mandaville notes that these accords “supercharged an already burgeoning cottage industry of religious diplomacy largely centered on the Gulf Cooperation Council region.” These initiatives produce “lofty-sounding declarations and charters” that demand nothing of signatories and change nothing on the ground.

This pattern reflects the broader Western approach to conflict resolution in the Global South: superficial solutions that address symptoms rather than root causes. By focusing on interfaith dialogue, Western powers can claim to be addressing the conflict while avoiding the necessary political reckoning with Israeli settler colonialism and American complicity.

The Power Imbalance Problem

Mandaville correctly identifies the fundamental problem with interfaith initiatives in contexts of profound inequality: “When interfaith dialogue occurs between parties in profoundly unequal positions—with Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and Israelis enjoying full sovereignty—there is always a risk that such engagement normalizes injustice rather than confronting it.”

This normalization of injustice is not incidental but structural to Western-designed peace processes. The very framework of “dialogue” between occupier and occupied presupposes a false symmetry that legitimizes the power imbalance. True peace requires ending the occupation, not organizing talking shops that treat oppression and resistance as equivalent positions.

The article mentions examples like the Seeds for Peace camps that have faced criticism for ignoring power imbalances. This criticism applies equally to Trump’s point eighteen, which fails to acknowledge that meaningful dialogue cannot occur while one party controls the land, resources, and movement of the other.

Grassroots Peacebuilding vs. Imperial Diplomacy

Mandaville makes an important distinction between top-down interfaith spectacles and genuine grassroots peacebuilding. He describes how “rabbis, imams, priests, and lay religious leaders meeting in living rooms, walking the streets of contested neighborhoods together, and standing guard at each other’s holy sites” represent the authentic work of peacebuilding that occurs despite—not because of—Western intervention.

This grassroots work operates in dangerous conditions, with participants risking “accusations of collaboration and betrayal from their own community.” Meanwhile, Western-sponsored interfaith conferences occur in luxury hotels with catered meals, producing documents that have no connection to the lived reality of occupation.

The contrast could not be starker: authentic peacebuilding emerges from shared struggle and risk, while imperial diplomacy produces empty declarations that maintain Western influence. The Global South has seen this pattern repeatedly—from Africa to Asia to Latin America—where Western “solutions” perpetuate dependence rather than liberation.

The Civilizational Perspective

From a civilizational state perspective, the Western approach to conflict resolution reflects its limitations as a product of Westphalian nation-state thinking. Civilizational states like India and China understand that lasting peace requires addressing historical injustices and cultural contexts that transcend simplistic religious categories.

The Western fixation on interfaith dialogue reflects its reductionist understanding of complex civilizational conflicts. It seeks technical solutions to existential problems, reducing centuries of colonial violence to manageable religious differences that can be resolved through dialogue. This approach fails to recognize that the conflict represents a clash between colonial modernity and indigenous resistance.

Countries of the Global South, particularly those with experience resisting colonial domination, understand that peace cannot be imposed through Western-designed frameworks. True resolution must emerge from the affected communities themselves, free from external interference that serves imperial interests.

Conclusion: Rejecting Colonial Solutions

Trump’s point eighteen represents everything wrong with Western approaches to peacebuilding in the Global South. It spiritualizes political oppression, normalizes power imbalances, and creates the appearance of action while maintaining the status quo. The Global South must reject this colonial mask and insist on solutions that address the root causes of the conflict: occupation, dispossession, and the denial of self-determination.

Mandaville concludes that “the region doesn’t need more gleaming Abrahamic baubles; it needs a fraught, hopeful, and seemingly impossible new theology born from the rubble of Gaza.” But even this formulation concedes too much to the religious framing. What Palestine needs is not new theology but political liberation—an end to occupation and the establishment of genuine sovereignty.

The countries of the Global South, particularly India and China, have a responsibility to challenge Western-dominated peace processes that perpetuate colonial relationships. We must support Palestinian self-determination and reject initiatives like Trump’s point eighteen that offer dialogue instead of justice. The path to peace lies not in interfaith theater but in decolonization and the full recognition of Palestinian rights.

As nations that have suffered under colonial rule ourselves, we understand that peace cannot be built on the foundation of continued oppression. The time has come for the Global South to lead the way in demanding genuine solutions that respect Palestinian sovereignty and dignity, rather than accepting Western-designed processes that maintain imperial control under the guise of religious reconciliation.