For more than 70 years, Israel and the Arab states have been able to mobilize the masses for war, but neither side has been able to rally them for peace.
The relationship between Israel and Egypt and Jordan – the only two Arab nations to sign official peace treaties with the Jewish state – can best be described as "a peace between governments" more than peace among nations. This type of peace rests on only a few elements, namely security and intelligence-gathering collaboration.
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In the near-complete absence of other elements to anchor such peace, be they political, cultural, economic, or media-based, a random visitor to the region may conclude that hostilities are still very much at play and that the establishment of formal peace treaties has not achieved the goal of bringing the Arab peoples closer to Israel.
The traditional explanation to the question of why the attempt to normalize relations between Israel and these two Arab nations has failed touches on the prolonged conflict between Israel and the rest of the Arab world, the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and the lack of solutions to the rampant anti-Israel incitement in Palestinian media and textbooks.
But there are also several social and cultural reasons preventing such normalization, which usually go unaddressed in the current discourse.
The first reason for the lack of normalization lies in the differences between Israel and the Arab countries with regard to their social composition.
Israeli society can be described as one built from the bottom up, as civil society has the ability to evolve and effect change through grassroots organizations. Israeli society enjoys political and academic freedom, free access to information and free press. In Israeli society, the elected powers (e.g. the government) are more dominant than their unelected counterparts (the military), and they have at their disposal enforcement mechanisms.
Arab society, on the other hand, is a top-down society, and its changes are made from the top via the governing mechanisms. Arab civil society is a closed one and, for the most part, its members are unable to counter the regime. They have only limited freedoms and are even more limited in their ability to criticize their government.
These characteristics make it difficult to establish mutual and equal relations between these two types of society, and the exchange of information becomes a very difficult task.
The second reason has to do with the social and economic structure in Arab countries, that are very different from those practiced in Israel. The startup nation finds it challenging to relate to societies that are still reliant mostly on traditional industries and agriculture.
This makes it harder for Israeli entrepreneurs, who have embedded technological innovations across all industries, to foster business relations with their Arab counterparts.
In this respect, Israel understandably opts to invest more time is fostering collaborations with India, China, and South America.
The third reason is the attempt by Cairo and Amman to monopolize the normalization with Israel and limit any mutual ties to the government echelon. They actively seek to prevent civil society and private elements from cultivating ties with Israeli colleagues. This stems from their desire not to disclose the scope of security collaboration and mutual inserts between them and Israel.
Moreover, Arab governments have no desire to have their citizens exposed to the successful Israeli models in the fields of education, healthcare, agriculture, and the economy. For Arab leaders, Israel is not just a security or political challenge, it is also a cultural one; and even more so when you juxtapose Israel's successful economic model with its failed Arab counterpart.
To truly normalize relations between Israel and the Arab nations, the latter has no choice but to pursue reasonable economic, social, and democratic development in a way that would allow them to close the gap vis-à-vis Israel and allow for the practical progression from peace between the brave to peace between equals.
