Is peace in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip possible?
Slavoj Žižek once told a joke that Palestinians and Israelis could only finally find peace, if a meteor hits Earth and wipes out the human race, but then they would not, because they would still be fighting in Hell, and in the Afterlife. Interestingly, researcher Avi Shilon commented that Israelis and Palestinians “cling to their particularistic claims to the land until the very moment they ascend to heaven.”[i] This response reveals how entrenched the imbroglio in Palestine is. In this age of renewed war in Gaza, peace still appears to be distant. Naturally, we ask: Is peace possible?
A meaningful response to this prompt should base on past and current characteristic of Palestinian conflicts. First, as conventional wisdom would suggest, “Everything is possible”. Therefore, “possibility of peace” should only be discussed within a predictable timeframe; Second, even if a major unprecedented change in world order occurs, it may not hugely impact Palestine. The Palestinian conflict is resistant to changes: From the British Mandate, through the Cold War, and to the modern era, peace hasn’t come to Palestine.[ii] The author argues in this essay that, in foreseeable future, there’s a narrow chance to achieve peace in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
In this essay, East Jerusalem will be included as part of the West Bank, as the status of East Jerusalem is always a major issue for peacemaking; And, following the widely adopted two-state paradigm, “Palestine” was used to refer to “the West Bank and the Gaza Strip” for simplicity. Inevitably, a proper investigation into Palestine would involve Israel. Peace in Palestine should be achieved with a peace in Israeli-Palestinian conflict and domestic peace inside Palestine.
A consistent definition of peace must be settled in advance if any possibility of “peace” is to be discussed in depth. A fitting description would be the concept of “positive peace”, which “includes not only the absence of direct violence but also the absence of structural violence”.[iii] For here, “positive peace” was examined through both realist and idealist lens. In realist sense, peace hasn’t been achieved yet in the West Bank, for the systematical oppression of West Bank Arabs didn’t bring peace, but led to the First and the Second Intifada. In idealist sense, most people would agree that the oppressive system in the West Bank wasn’t morally correct and should be deemed as “peace”.
Having decided the criteria of what state of affairs is to be considered “peace”, what the result of such a settlement will come to needs to be addressed thoroughly. The possibilities posed before the international community are a one-state solution and a two-state one, the latter of which is conceivably much more achievable. Due to the fact that the state of Israel has a stable and vigorously functioning government body, whereas Palestine has none in the service of the Palestinian people, a one-state solution would most likely present itself as the transformation of an Israel solely for the Jews to a Israel with a multiethnic state body for a multiethnic society. But this situation would understandably result in the discrimination against the Arab population. Even Israeli hardliners opposing this label openly admit lack of Arab rights inside Israel.[iv] On the other hand, the ideal paradigm of a two-state solution also suffered from an exhibiting gallery of past failures. Yet it has more or less been adopted by both sides as the only realistically feasible solution in this conflict. In fact, it was so much of an ideal model that it ultimately turned the fight for existence to a fight for defining the borders of the Palestinian nation.[v] Therefore, the consensus for a two-state solution is one vital factor favoring peace, and shouldn’t simply be discarded only by observing failure to achieve two-state paradigm currently.
In the process of identifying factors, Kenneth Waltz’s “System – State – Individual” paradigm was followed.[vi] By examining individual factors, we may come to conclusion.
On the international scale, the presence of a mediator between the ever-conflicting views of Israelis and Palestinians would help bridge the gap between the two sides’ refusal to negotiation and significantly boost the peacemaking process. Unfortunately, no sovereign nation or international organization is adequate to be present as an effective mediator. The efforts of such overarching organizations such as the UN or the Arab League is only efficiently effective when the sentiment towards the goal of peacemaking is unanimous within the group, or else their efforts and promises fall short and only contributes to building the momentum for peace, but can provide no immediate results. The prospect of a Great Power acting as a mediating force in the region is also quite bleak, as ever since the beginning of the 20th century, multiple world powers have all tried to intervene in the situation in Palestine and failed to achieve a desirable outcome. The British Mandate imposed a “peace of empire” by colonial force, yet failed against agitated nationalist sentiments and the Cold War saw USA and USSR vying for power, often times escalating and exacerbating the conflicts rather than quell them. After the USSR’s collapse in 1991, America’s moment of global hegemony made her the ideal candidate for stepping in as a mediating force.
The Arab-Israeli conflict is, to a large extent, a war of narratives. The extent of this disparity in narratives can be best illustrated by the often conflicting views by different sources cited by this essay. The outside world didn’t help bridge the gap but only fuel misunderstandings between two sides. The opinions described across the globe provided the two sides – the Israelis and Palestinians evidences and support to deepen their bilateral misunderstandings. As we would discuss later, the misunderstanding was a major obstacle to peace. More directly, the high global attentions upon Israel and Palestine fueled them with more clashes. For instance, The JRA came to Palestine, to serve a purpose of aiding justice, but they only fueled the conflict through laying terrorist attacks upon innocent civilians.[vii] In summary, this war of narratives has long been stuck in a worsening deadlock[viii], and thereby a major obstacle for any attempts at peace.
The fundamental characteristic of the Middle East international system is anarchy. A vicious cycle could be explored: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict destabilized the Middle East, and the chaos in Middle East prolonged the conflict, in turn. Millions of refugees were exiled due to the conflict, and refugees triggered social problems in neighboring states. Palestinian refugees were crucial to outbreak of civil wars in Jordan and Lebanon. Refugees were armed, unemployed and separated from mainstream local society, therefore a hotbed for social unrest. Palestine has irreversibly damaged the Israeli-Arab relationship. In the past, four Arab-Israeli wars have broken out; Currently, the Israel-Hamas war has slowed normalization of relations between Arab states and Israel.[ix] The anarchical nature of the Middle East left their Palestinian ‘brothers’ in a stalemate, for Muslims would unite against an outright Israeli aggression, but their own infighting prevented them from furthering Palestinian interests against a united Israel; The instability of the Middle East rendered a ‘siege mentality’ for Israel, where Israelis saw themselves as a ‘hold of civilization’ in the mess of the Middle East. Such mentality contributed to Israeli isolation, which as previously shown would not bring peace. A meaningful development was a trend of decrease of importance of Israeli-Palestinian politics in the Middle East international system. This can be seen in the normalization of relationship between Arabs and Israelis.
The religious differences of the Israeli and Palestinian nations are unfavorable to peacemaking. Faith has been fundamental to Middle Eastern nationhood, including that of Israel and Palestine. In the drawing of borders in Jerusalem, a holy capital to both nations, pragmatic calculations for peace were usurped by religious divisions over the question of The Temple Mount. During the 2000 Second Camp David Summit, Clinton told Arafat that “You couldn’t have dreamt of this! (Palestinian sovereignty of the Haram) You missed an opportunity in ’47 when you opposed the partition . . . and now again!?” In response to Clinton’s critique as an outsider, Arafat responded “As I promised my people—We’ll liberate Jerusalem! If not now, perhaps in another thousand years.”[x] This would remain a major obstacle to a two-state solution in the decades to come. Arafat’s allusion to “another thousand years” revealed us that the Israelis and Palestinians both grew to believe “time is on our side” based on a religious worldview. This worldview rendered a contemporary peacemaking as a betrayal of ancestors and the nation. The obstacle of peacemaking would hardly change, for a worldview of a nation is hardly changeable.
The historical differences lead to an entrenched lack of understandings between Israelis and Palestinians. The history of fighting makes a significant number of politicians deemed each other as untrustworthy. As Shamir, a Likud leader described, “The sea is the same sea, the Arabs are the same Arabs”.[xi] The ideological disagreement between two sides was a major obstacle to peace. A counter-argument must be made, for recent years saw a growing bilateral understanding. The newer generation of historians started to provide the perspective of their opponents, especially the “New Historians” of Israel.[xii] Should this recognition grew, a major foundation for conciliation between two sides might be made.
The constant trend of favoring hawkish policies in political history of Israel and Palestine isn’t suitable for peace. In Israel, there is a gradual and steady turn to the political right. The support rate for the Israeli leftists has been in steady decline, from majority at foundation to current irrelevance. The hardliner rightist Likud party has dominated the later Israeli politics, but is falling out of favor against far-right hardliners. A pursue for eventual two-state peace has always been in the left’s agenda, while the right pursued domination over Palestinians. This could be attributed to a self-fulfilling prophecy: The Israeli right could always easily gain popularity through painting a negative image Palestine and then bringing it out of the Palestinians through their hawkish and oppressive policies. The Israeli left, with a central policy of normalizing Israeli relations with Palestine and Muslim states, fell into a gradual decline due to failure of peacemaking. The rise of the Likud was in the background of Israeli military successes, showing that the failure of current peacemaking would badly influence future peacemaking.[xiii] Similarly, the misery of generations of Palestinians has prompted revanchist militant groups dominating in Palestine. During the Cold War era, the major militant group was PLO among Palestinian diaspora; After the failed Oslo process, the major militant group was Hamas, an Islamist resistance movement in the self-governing Gaza Strip.
Leaders’ roles, during the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, were generally a secondary factor. To make peace in Palestine, fundamental changes must be adopted. A leader willing to implement such changes was therefore almost a necessity for any possible peace. But clearly, leaders must follow the domestic political agenda in general, because of strong political fanaticism. For instance, Rabin’s ambitious pursuit in the Oslo process was halted by his assassination. In the rightward political trend we discuss, it would be harder to find a political leader willing to take the risk, even a life risk, for peacemaking. The willingness of individual leaders, however, is random. Therefore, there is possibility for strongman figures to push for peace effectively, but the possibility is low at the moment.
Most factors, systemic, national and individual, were still acting against peacebuilding in Palestine in foreseeable future, though they may not remain so forever. Although the essay paints a grim picture, the author wants to stress that: Despite a dim chance of peace, our illogical and perhaps irrational belief in peace would be an advantage of achieving peace, transcending the confines of narrative control and the brutal realism of realpolitik. To raise possibility of peace, we can embrace diverse perspectives, and in doing so beginning to ease the deadlock of the rhetoric war, and by extension, the Israeli-Palestine conflict and every single person’s voice counts.
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[i] Shilon, The Decline of the Left Wing in Israel, 4.
[ii] Aly, Feldman, and Shikaki, Arabs and Israelis, 1257–93.
[iii] Fiala, “Pacifism.”
[iv] Dowty, The Israel/Palestine Reader, 437–43.
[v] Aly, Feldman, and Shikaki, Arabs and Israelis, 453–69.
[vi] Waltz, Man, the State, and War.
[vii] Kuriyama, “Terrorism at Tel Aviv Airport and a ‘New Left’ Group in Japan.”
[viii] Linfield, The Lions’ Den, 21.
[ix] Friedman and Krasana, “Between Swords of Iron and the Al Aqsa Deluge.”
[x] Shilon, The Decline of the Left Wing in Israel, 5.
[xi] Shilon, 8.
[xii] Aly, Feldman, and Shikaki, Arabs and Israelis, 1319–20.
[xiii] Rais, “The Downfall of the Labour Party in Israel.”