As someone with a background in foreign affairs and English literature, I realized recently that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the Hamlet of territorial disputes.
While Hamlet is often considered the exemplar of Shakespeare’s corpus, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often regarded as the exemplar of land disputes. Like Hamlet, the conflict has garnered much attention over the decades and has been discussed from every possible angle.
Besides garnering great measures of notoriety within their spheres, both Hamlet and the Israel conflict have similar thematic material and raise difficult questions. Issues of birthright, justice, vengeance, victimhood, and even collateral damage play out in Shakespeare’s masterpiece and animate the volatile Israeli-Palestinian relationship. Put the famous play and infamous conflict in conversation with one another, and it’s a dialogue made in heaven (or, more likely, hell).
If you’re not familiar with Hamlet’s plot, the play centers on Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, and his quest to draw a confession from his uncle, Claudius, who murdered Hamlet’s father, took the throne, and married Hamlet’s mother (the queen). Hamlet learns of his uncle’s treachery from his father’s ghost, who asks him to avenge the murder.
Inspired by his father’s ghost, Hamlet seeks to avenge his father. His quest for revenge and protecting his lineage consumes him and, eventually, all of Denmark. It sets the stage for one of the most complex and evocative plays ever written.
Preserving heritage, then, plays a strong role in Hamlet. So, too, disputes over sovereignty and the “right to the throne” (i.e., land) pervade all matters of Israeli-Palestinian relations. Fundamentally, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a land dispute—a land dispute that involves strong ancestral ties and in which the heritage and collective consciousness of a homeland and a people come under threat.
Much like Hamlet feels he must avenge his father and restore his kingdom, Israeli national consciousness is animated by (1) a deep sense of ancestral ties to the Holy Land and (2) a conviction that these ties must be restored and maintained after the long Jewish exile.
And just as Hamlet finds it fundamentally impossible to abide his treacherous uncle’s usurpation of power, Israel likewise cannot abide threats to its homeland and must defend and avenge all threats to Jewish existence. Most recently, the threat comes from Hamas. And if there’s anything that will incite a man, or a people, to violence, it would be threats to home and heritage. As Hamlet puts it, “My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth!”
And blood indeed arrives, though not in the way that Hamlet or Israel might have planned. Primal and rudimentary as the instinct to protect homeland may be, the undertaking raises complex ethical dilemmas and moral ambiguities. In Hamlet, Hamlet’s desire for vengeance results in the death of Ophelia and, later, the valiant Leartes. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the defense of one’s homeland has incited fights in Gaza after the October 7 massacre.
The moral dilemma raised by the destruction following Hamlet’s quest begets deeper questions regarding the nature of retributive justice, vengeance, and how carnage can or cannot be avoided. Although we sympathize with Hamlet and his quest to reveal his uncle’s treachery, we also question whether Hamlet has gone too far, especially when Ophelia dies. Is Ophelia’s death worth the king’s confession?
The destruction in Gaza prompts a similar moral predicament. When are justice and self-preservation satiated? When every Hamas terrorist has been killed and every hostage (or the corpse thereof) returned? And must this be done at the expense of every Gazan civilian?
To complicate things even more, we must ask: What would happen if Hamlet had ceased his pursuit and allowed the despot Claudius to remain on the throne? If Israel were to simply lay down its weapons, what would be the long-term repercussions of Hamas remaining in the region?
Another similarity between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Hamlet is one of tragic irony. Hamlet is so consumed with redressing his father’s murder that he accidentally murders Polonius, inciting the young Laertes (Polonius’ son) to avenge his own father by attempting, in turn, to murder Hamlet. Hamlet thus dooms Laertes to the same victimhood which drives his own actions.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict shares a similar irony. Israel, whose ancestral homeland and nationhood was only restored after horrific persecution and genocide, now hears similar grievances levied back at them from the Palestinian cause.
As a final point, it’s worth noting that, at the end of Hamlet, Denmark is invaded by a foreign power, Fortinbras of Norway. Shakespeare knew well that national turmoil begets more turmoil, and disputes concerning sovereignty and national existence invite foreign intervention and manipulation. If the events of the conflict in the Middle East unfold anything like they do in Hamlet—and as we’ve seen, they certainly have similar ingredients—we have not seen the last of the carnage (cue the bloody fencing match finale to Shakespeare’s play).
“To be or not to be” takes on a chilling application in the conflict over the Holy Land, especially if we consider that such matters evoke a primal instinct to protect home and heritage, as they do in Hamlet. While the similarities between Hamlet and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict provide little optimism concerning the current situation facing Israel, the analogy offers these two useful takeaways.
First, the similarities between Hamlet and the conflict are a good reminder of the timeless and penetrating quality of good literature, like Shakespeare.
Second, Hamlet’s compelling narrative and tragic irony remind us that disputes over birthright and ancestral land are ferocious and deeply rooted in human nature. They unfold in complex webs of bloody actions and reactions that pose difficult ethical conundrums requiring the protagonist (or, perhaps, the antihero) to act in impossible circumstances.
So the next time someone trivializes the conflict by parroting a ceasefire slogan or declaring how to stop the bloodshed in the region, an apt (but no doubt surprising) response would be: “Interesting. Have you ever read Hamlet?”
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The views/statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed in this article are strictly the author’s own and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Government.
Image credit: public domain
