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Abstract
How to create a peacemaking change in the Israeli–Palestinian struggle? The consensus solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is a ‘two-state solution’, which means separation between two major identity groups. This paper points to the necessity to shift the emphasis in the peacemaking discussion. Instead of manufacturing solutions in a peacemaking laboratory, it would be better to focus on finding the social conditions that have the potential to create an effective peacemaking process. This paper suggests establishing a major Israeli–Palestinian public negotiating congress that has the potential to create a peacemaking revolution. The vision is based on the multi-party talks that had been conducted in Apartheid South Africa and Northern Ireland during the ‘troubles’ and the Minds of Peace Experiment – a small-scale Israeli–Palestinian public negotiating congress – that has been conducted in various locations around the world.
Notes
1. For example, visit http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/04/2011427152119845721.html and http://thejewishreporter.com/2011/06/20/fatah-hamas-impasse-puts-un-vote-in-jeopardy/.
2. See Ziad Abu-Amr, “Hamas: A Historical and Political Background,” Journal of Palestine Studies 22, no. 4 (1993): 5–19; and Ian J. Bickerton and Carla L. Klausner, A Concise History of the Arab–Israeli Conflict, 5th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2007), 223.
3. For example, in the 2007 Annapolis conference, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas committed to a ‘two state solution.’ See http://www.haaretz.com/news/israel-pa-agree-to-strive-for-deal-by-end-of-2008-1.234086.
4. Rob Johnson, A Region in Turmoil: South Asian Conflicts since 1947 (London: Reaktion Books, 2005), 42.
5. For example, see http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/06/fatah-hamas_unity_government_on_hold.html.
6. Sapir Handelman, “The Bangladesh Approach to the Palestinian–Israeli Struggle: A Desperate Strategy to Cope with a State of Emergency,” International Journal of Conflict Management 22, no. 1 (2011): 75–88.
7. For a historical overview of the evolution of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Palestinian territories, see Abu-Amr, “Hamas: A Historical and Political Background.”
8. A modern liberal pluralistic approach to human affairs emphasizes that every person has multiple identities, for example: a national identity, a religious identity, and a professional identity. For a further discussion on this version of pluralism and its political implications, see Joseph Agassi, Liberal Nationalism for Israel: Towards an Israeli National Identity (Jerusalem and New York: Gefen Pub. House, 1999).
9. Kelman called this transformation in the Middle East power struggle – the political trend where the Palestinians became a significant player in the confrontation between Israel and its neighbours– the Palestinization of the Arab–Israeli conflict. See Herbert Kelman, “Some Determinants of the Oslo Breakthrough,” International Negotiation 2, no. 2 (1997): 184–5.
10. See Abu-Amr, “Hamas: A Historical and Political Background,” 10–12, and Bickerton and Klausner, A Concise History of the Arab Israeli Conflict, 223.
11. Abu-Amr, “Hamas: A Historical and Political Background.”
12. The dynamic between East and West Pakistan was also influenced by the actions of a third party. The intervention of Indian troops (third party) in the Bengal conflict played a dominant role in the collapse of the united Pakistan and the creation of an independent Bangladesh.
13. Compare to Efraim Inbar, “Israel's Palestinian Challenge,” Israel Affairs 12, no. 4 (2006): 823–42; and Simcha F. Landau, “Settings, Factors and Phenomena of Conflict in the Israeli Society,” in Conflicts and Conflict Resolution in Middle Eastern Societies – Between Tradition and Modernity, ed. Hans J. Albrecht et al. (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 2006), 268.
14. See Yaacov Bar-Siman Tov, “Dialectic between Conflict Management and Conflict Resolution,” in The Israeli–Palestinian Conflict: From Conflict Resolution to Conflict Management, ed. Yaacov Bar-Siman Tov (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 9.
15. In general, Israeli public opinion is teetering between hope and despair, and right and left. For example, Yitzhak Rabin, the former leader of the Labor party, became the prime minister of Israel in 1992 on the belief that he was the only leader who could conclude an agreement with the Palestinians. See Hussein Agha et al., Track-II Diplomacy: Lessons from the Middle East (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 35. In contrast, the ongoing rocket attacks on Israeli towns from Gaza demonstrated for many Israelis, once again, that the language of force and power is inevitable in the Israeli–Palestinian struggle. The results were that the 2009 elections in Israel gave substantial power to the Israeli right-wing political parties. See Sapir Handelman, Conflict and Peacemaking in Israel–Palestine: Theory and Application (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), 96.
16. Inbar (“Israel's Palestinian Challenge”) labels the Palestinian authority as a failed state. However, the failure of the Palestinian authority to establish a decent modern state is not unique. The South African experience, as many other cases, demonstrates that the first attempts to make a democratic transition are likely to fail and the failures can bring catastrophic results. See, for example, Samuel Huntington, “How Countries Democratize,” Political Science Quarterly 106, no. 4 (1992): 597–8.
17. Ironically, Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, one of the advocates of the conflict-management approach, points out that Sharon's unilateral initiative can be viewed as conflict-management strategy. See Bar-Siman Tov, “Dialectic between Conflict Management and Conflict Resolution.”
18. Herbert Kelman, “Negotiation as Interactive Problem Solving,” International Negotiation: A Journal of Theory and Practice 1, no. 1 (1996): 99.
19. A similar complication occurred in Northern Ireland. On August 1994, the IRA had declared a ceasefire in expectation that inclusive negotiations would begin immediately. However, the British leadership refused to include in the negotiations the political parties associated with paramilitary groups. Eighteen months later, when no negotiations were in sight, the IRA renewed the violent struggle. See George Mitchell, Making Peace (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999).
20. Urie Bronfenbrenner, “The Mirror Image in Soviet–American Relations: A Social Psychologist's Report,” Journal of Social Issues 17 (1961): 45–56.
21. Compare to Herbert Kelman, “The Israeli–Palestinian Peace Process and its Vicissitudes: Insights from Attitude Theory,” American Psychologist 63, no. 4 (2007): 294–7.
22. See, for example, Bar-Siman Tov, “Dialectic between Conflict Management and Conflict Resolution.”
23. Of course, violence is a broad concept that has different meanings to different people. For example, Palestinians see the Israeli occupation as a violent reality, while Israelis regard it as a necessity for self-defence. In our peacemaking vision, the two people have to commit to principles of non-violent discussion. These principles are derived from negotiating compromises that the two sides agree upon. In the various rounds of the Minds of Peace Experiment – a small-scale Israeli–Palestinian public negotiating congress – the compromises were achieved in the preliminary agreement that the two delegations reached. A good example is the first two agreements, “Declaration of Principles” and “Confidence Building Measures,” that were achieved in the first round of the experiment (St. Louis, December 2008): http://mindofpeaceexperiment.blogspot.com/2009/02/round-one-agreements_21.html.
24. The philosophers Karl Popper and Joseph Agassi argue that public debate is the spirit of any pluralistic mechanism. See Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, vol. 2 (London: Routledge, 1945); and Joseph Agassi, Technology: Philosophical and Social Aspects (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1985).
25. Track II Diplomacy involves informal study, exploration, and negotiation between a wide circle of unofficial political elites. See, for example, Handelman, Conflict and Peacemaking in Israel–Palestine, 82–3 and Agha et al., Track-II Diplomacy, 3.
26. Agha et al., Track-II Diplomacy, 41.
27. The political elite model, as presented by Sapir Handelman, includes: track II diplomacy, secret diplomacy, and track I diplomacy. The Oslo accord progressed gradually through the various diplomatic channels of the political elite model. See Handelman, Conflict and Peacemaking in Israel–Palestine, 81–90.
28. For example, violence in almost any shape, form, and disguise appeared during the peace processes in Northern Ireland and South Africa. For a further discussion on the Northern Ireland case, see Mitchell, Making Peace, 117. For a further discussion on the South African case, see Marina Ottaway, South Africa: The Struggle for a New Order (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1993), 10–11.
29. The ongoing suicide attacks inside Israel contributed to the astonishing defeat of Shimon Peres, who is considered to be a peacemaking visionary leader, to Benjamin Netanyahu, who is associated with right-wing hardline policy, in the 1996 Israeli election. For a further discussion, see Sapir Handelman, Thought Manipulation: The Use and Abuse of Psychological Trickery (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2009), 93–9.
30. Kelman claims that the disaster of the Oslo accord was that the two leaders, Rabin and Arafat, did not trust each other. Each of them prepared a reserve option in case the process collapsed. See Kelman, “The Israeli–Palestinian Peace Process and its Vicissitudes,” 292.
31. See Handelman, Conflict and Peacemaking in Israel–Palestine, 111–12.
32. Compare to Mitchell, Making Peace, 186–8, who describes the reasons that led the people in Northern Ireland to endorse the Good Friday Agreement.
33. Shimon Peres, who is considered to be an Israeli visionary leader, failed in getting support for his vision of a “New Middle East.” The result was that he lost the 1996 Israeli elections to Benjamin Netanyahu, who is considered to be an advocate of a pragmatic hardline policy. See Handelman, Thought Manipulation, 83–99.
34. The establishment of the multi-party talks in Apartheid South Africa was very difficult. The people in the Apartheid government were convinced that democratic elections after the talks would lead to a substantial black majority. They preferred a constitutional convention composed of representatives from all existing political institutions. However, this kind of convention would never be able to reflect the diversity of the South African population (20 million blacks versus 5 million whites). The non-white parties saw in this proposal a cheap trick, a way to maintain a softer version of Apartheid. Only diplomatic contacts between leaders from both sides at the highest level could formulate a sophisticated compromise to the satisfaction of both sides. See Allister Sparks, Tomorrow is Another Country: The Inside Story of South Africa's Negotiated Revolution (Sandton, South Africa: Struik Book Distributors, 1994), 128–9.
35. See, for example, the frustration of Senator Mitchell, who led the peace process in Northern Ireland, in Mitchell, Making Peace, 126.
36. Sparks, Tomorrow is Another Country, 130.
37. See Jung Courtney and Ian Shapiro, “South Africa's Negotiated Transition: Democracy, Opposition, and the New Constitutional Order,” Politics and Society 23, no. 3 (1995): 269–308.
38. David McKittrick and David McVea, Making Sense of the Troubles: The Story of the Conflict in Northern Ireland (Chicago: New Amsterdam Books, 2002).
39. Mitchell, Making Peace, 117.
40. Mitchell, Making Peace, 184.
41. Mitchell, Making Peace
42. See Jung Courtney, Ellen Lust-Okar and Ian Shapiro, “Problems and Prospects for Democratic Settlements: South Africa as a Model for the Middle East and Northern Ireland?,” Politics and Society 33, no. 2 (2005): 302; and Paul Dixon, “Political Skills or Lying and Manipulation? The Choreography of the Northern Ireland Peace Process,” Political Studies 50, no. 3 (2002): 725–41.
43. Sparks, Tomorrow is Another Country, 156.
44. There is no free movement between Israel and the West Bank. Israelis cannot travel freely to the West Bank and vice versa. One of the few places that Israelis and Palestinians can meet without special permission from the authorities is Beit Jala (near Jerusalem). Indeed, this is where we conducted the MOPE in the Middle East.
45. Compare to Kelman (“Negotiation as Interactive Problem Solving,” 106), who claims that solutions which address the fears and needs of the opposing parties do justice to each one of them.
46. The informal engagements are very important, even critical. They create opportunities to get to know each other, to develop personal relationships, to explain the different positions better, to explore possibilities to advance the formal discussion, and to try to soften hardliners. For example, in the first round of the experiment (St. Louis, December 2008) the informal sessions, which were conducted in a Palestinian restaurant and a private house, helped to conclude three valuable agreements: “Declaration of Principles,” “Confidence Building Measures,” and “Agreement on Borders and Jerusalem.” For the agreements see http://mindofpeaceexperiment.blogspot.com/2009/02/round-one-agreements_21.html.
47. The rounds in the United States were conducted in different universities: University of Missouri-St. Louis (twice), Wayne State University, University of California-Irvine, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, University of California-Los Angeles, and Fontbonne University (St. Louis). The Canadian round was conducted in the University of Windsor. The Middle East rounds were conducted in the Everest hotel in Beit Jala (near Jerusalem). Beit Jala, which is located in the West Bank, is one of the few places that Palestinians from the West Bank and Israelis can meet without receiving special permission from the authorities.
50. Palestinians in the UCLA round claimed that it is relatively easy to reach a reconciliation agreement between Hamas and Fatah. We did not hear such a claim in the West Bank rounds, to say the very least.
51. The Minds of Peace Experiment on April 8–9 in Beit Jala left a strong impression that the Palestinians are fully aware of the political split in their society. It was astonishing to learn that Fatah and Hamas signed a reconciliation deal two weeks later on April 27. It seems that a strong motivation for unity is the upcoming United Nations discussion on Palestinian statehood. The questions are: Is there going to be a “real” unity? Can it hold?
It is clear that conflict is a unified force. Adversaries may join forces to fight a joint enemy. However, as soon as there is substantial progress towards a resolution of the struggle, tensions within each society appear and start playing a dominant role. For example, Apartheid in South Africa had united the non-white populations and made the struggle look like “a black-versus-white” one. However, the progression toward a new social order exposed the diversity within the non-white population and led to violent clashes between different factions in the “black” camp. The assumption in this article is that there is a deep division between Palestinian leadership. For a further discussion, see Handelman, Conflict and Peacemaking in Israel–Palestine, 68–70.
52. A possible explanation to this somewhat strange phenomenon can be found in Sapir Handelman, “The Minds of Peace Experiment: A Simulation of a Potential Palestinian–Israeli Public Assembly,” International Negotiation: A Journal of Theory and Practice 15 (2010): 523.
53. Anwar Sadat, the former president of Egypt who almost exterminated Israel in 1973, came to Jerusalem to speak peace in 1977. Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli prime minister who is considered to be a main architect of the settlement project, decided upon an unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza strip in 2005. For a further discussion upon these dramatic initiatives and their theoretical and practical implications, see Handelman, Conflict and Peacemaking in Israel–Palestine, 49–60.
54. The two delegations in the University of California, Irvine (UCI) round (October 2009) managed to reach a preliminary agreement on the suspension of the violent struggle. However, the agreement was not signed. In the first round in St. Louis (December 2008), not everyone signed the third agreement (“Agreement on Borders and Jerusalem”). For a description and analysis of the outcomes in the St. Louis round see Handelman, “The Minds of Peace Experiment,” 520–1.
55. To view the agreements, see http://mindofpeaceexperiment.blogspot.com/2009/02/round-one-agreements.html.
56. Compare to the concept of “security community,” which was proposed in Karl W. Deutsch et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957). According to Deutsch et al., the communication process in security community leads to a high level of social integration where war is not even imaginable.
57. Compare to the concept of “reflective equilibrium” as a necessary condition for stability and acceptability, as presented in John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971).
58. Malcolm Kerr, The Arab Cold War, 1958–1964: A Study of Ideology in Politics (London: Chatham House Series, Oxford University Press, 1965).
59. It is not in doubt that there are major problems which have to be addressed and solved by experts. However, we should bear in mind the limitations of social experts and use their expertise wisely. For a critical discussion on the appropriate use of social experts in our struggle to build a well-functioning society see Friedrich A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1960).