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Abstract by the authors: In this article, I revisit my 2007 piece on The Construction of EU Normative Power (NP) and the Middle East ‘conflict’ and bring in Manners' Arrival of NP in Planetary Politics' (NPA) frame to shed light on how the EU's southern neighbourhood and its social and political fragility becomes amplified by the ‘force multiplier’ of climate mitigation. For example, in 2018, Gaza sewage led to the closure of Israeli beaches and the shutdown of the desalination plant in Ashkelon, which supplies Israel with 15% of its drinking water. This is but one example of how Israel and Palestine are not only inter‐dependent but, perhaps more importantly, co‐dependent. This article therefore draws attention to the urgent need of thinking on the co‐constitution of all life on earth, particularly in a climate‐conflict scenario such as that of Israel and Palestine. Water scarcity, rising temperatures and electricity interruptions contribute to the region's instability. If policy‐makers from the region and beyond are to co‐ordinate policy interventions around water and food insecurity for instance, they cannot ignore intractable conflicts such as the Israeli–Palestinian issue and their ensuing implications for planetary politics. Such enduring ‘conflicts’ represent a microcosmic image of the planet as a whole. Along with the other contributions in this symposium, this piece invokes planetary politics as the space where we need – out of necessity – to think differently: Otherwise, others will be writing the script for us.
Abstract by the author: The paper traces the origin of the Middle East conflict and discusses the gradual evolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict from a historical perspective. The paper discusses the peace negotiations undertaken for the region during different periods and the contribution of the international community in reaching a compromise formula. The paper discusses the emergence and the role of Hamas and how it gained political legitimacy. The paper concludes with the views of Israel and India perspective.
Abstract by the authors: When the Abraham Accords were announced in 2020, some lauded these deals as a groundbreaking advancement in Israeli–Arab relations, whereas others saw them as backstabbing the Palestinians. The 2002 Arab Peace Initiative (API), largely ignored by Israel, offered normalized relations with Israel in exchange for withdrawal from the 1967 Occupied Territories, the establishment of a Palestinian state, and a resolution to the Palestinian refugee situation. However, the four Arab states that established relations with Israel under the aegis of the Abraham Accords did so despite Israel’s failure to fulfill API conditions. Given the dismay of many in the region regarding this move and the turnaround in decades of official policy toward Israel, this article investigates the rationale provided by the Arab states for making this diplomatic shift, drawing on quantitative and qualitative data. The study examines the messaging of Arab states and analyzes the economic, geostrategic, and sociocultural justifications in the official media outlets of the four states—the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan, including comparisons with US and UK press. Specifically, it seeks to understand the justifications Arab state elites provided for shifting their policies toward Israel despite the historical conditions set by the API and whether they acknowledge the concerns of Palestinians in their discussion of the Accords. Quantitative findings suggest that media coverage of cooperation varied across the Arab signatories. The coverage in the UAE and Bahrain tended to be more frequent, optimistic, and focused on general and economic cooperation with Israel. In comparison, there tended to be more varied media coverage of the Accords in Sudan and Morocco. Qualitatively, results show that overall economic justifications tended to be used more frequently, and Morocco used sociocultural explanations more than others. Further, the agreements were not presented as peace agreements, unlike how the Accords were discussed in the US and UK press.
Abstract by the author: This research explores the development of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) over the last decade as a proxy organization of the Iranian regime, or as a group that finds its way between Palestinian nationalism and support for the religious Islamic revolution of Iran. Most studies of Islamic organizations in Palestine focus on Hamas, the "Big Brother" of the PIJ. Hamas, which grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, began violent operations in 1987 during the First Intifada partially due to its competition with the PIJ. Although the role of the PIJ in Palestinian society has grown in its influence, disappointingly there are very few research studies that analyze this organization. Moreover, most of these works focus on the period before the al-Aqṣā Intifada and especially examine suicide operations and the group's motives. The main questions to be answered by this study are: What is the nature of the PIJ? Is it a religious movement with religious aims or Palestinian national one? This article analyzes these questions through an examination of the PIJ's activity vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic of Iran. This study's central argument is that the PIJ is a Palestinian religious national organization that sees Iran as a partner.
Abstract by the author: The broad contours of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are ever changing. However, one thing that remains constant is a strong commitment, especially by Israeli policymakers, to the "two-state solution," which advocates for the partition of the historic land of Palestine into two states, one Israeli and one Palestinian. This essay is a retrospective on the two-state solution and the lessons learned from years of scholarship on religion, reconciliation, and conflict transformation that illustrate the solution's pitfalls. It begins by analyzing the legacy of the original partition plan and how changes resulting from decades of conflict challenge its viability. It then synthesizes scholarship on religion, reconciliation, and the possibilities of collective identity in Palestine/Israel. The essay then articulates an alternative to partition, the "binational solution," as a way forward that better aligns with the findings of scholars. A final section concludes by discussing avenues for future research and debate.
Abstract by the author: This study seeks to understand what was behind the May 2021 violence of the Arab minority in Israel, particularly in mixed cities: was it national, religious or civic motives, or a combination of them? Historically, relations between Jews and non-Jews (mostly Muslims) in Israel circle around three axes: religious, national, and civic. While the fragile relations between the parties enjoy a quiet routine, a serious escalation is recorded from time-to-time, leading to a crisis between the parties. This was the case in May 2021, when an outbreak of severe Arab violence was recorded in mixed cities in Israel that resulted in three victims (two Jews, one Arab), dozens of injuries, and heavy damage to Jewish property. This qualitative research, based on interviews with Arab residents in mixed cities and media reports during the clashes and afterward, concludes that despite all three components having a significant contribution to May 2021 violent conflicts, civil affairs were the main reason for riots in mixed cities; however, the outbreak has a national and religious historical background.
Abstract by the author: Peace is usually studied by looking at nation-states. Recently, peace scholars have become interested in peace found in the everyday lives of ordinary people. Focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I argue that media scholars can contribute to this effort because they are well-equipped to capture fleeting manifestations of everyday peace. However, the problematic legacy of peace in Israel/Palestine necessitates a different conceptual framework. I highlight encounters in and through media between Israeli Jews and Palestinians and contend that they present opportunities for constructive dialogue. I demonstrate this point by analyzing the Israeli television show Arab Labor, focusing on its production process, and the plight of Jewish and Palestinian characters on the show. By fusing text and context, I suggest that media do not persuade people to believe in peace; instead, media encounters, both on and off the screen, function as cultural forums for discussing complex issues undergirding violent conflicts.
Abstract by the author: Conflict points around the world involve government forces fighting terrorist groups. In this type of warfare, there is a danger that counterterrorist efforts may backfire, providing ammunition for additional cycles of violence. We study this issue focusing on selective and indiscriminate house demolitions employed by Israel during the Second Intifada. We exploit the temporal and spatial variation of this policy to assess its impact on Palestinians’ political views. We find that the civilian population does not react to punitive house demolitions, a selective form of counterterrorism. On the contrary, Palestinians are more likely to adopt more radical political opinions in response to precautionary house demolitions, an indiscriminate form of counterterrorism. We also show that political radicalization induced by indiscriminate counterterrorism leads to an increase in future terror attacks. Overall, our analysis provides explicit empirical support to the mechanism behind the positive correlation between indiscriminate counterterrorism and future levels of violence.
Abstract by the author: Contrary to the commonly held misconception, Palestinian antisemitism is not a corollary of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict but the other way around: the perpetuation of the conflict is a direct result of the deeply ingrained Palestinian-Arab Jew-hatred and the attendant rejection of any form of Jewish statehood. From the onset of the conflict, a century ago to this day, Palestinian Arabs have been subjected to a sustained hate campaign of racial, religious and political incitement that has portrayed Jews (and Israelis) as the source of all evil, synonyms for iniquity, corruption and decadence, whose clear and present danger to human kind can only be removed through their complete annihilation. Small wonder that not a single Palestinian-Arab leader has ever recognised the millenarian Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel or evinced a true liking for the 'two-state solution' since it was first evoked in 1937
Abstract by the authors: •Distinguishing between genuine causality and Granger-causality to infer causality.•Cooperation coexists with violence in counter-insurgency.•Like violence, cooperation is mutually reciprocal and reinforcing between rivals.•Crucially, violence induces cooperation; as an olive-branch, which de-escalates.•But for cooperation, hostilities would be more violent and last longer. We provide theoretical foundations and empirical evidence for the complex interplay between violence and cooperation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Our simple dynamic sticks and carrots game lays the theoretical foundations for a vector autoregressions empirical investigation examining the dynamics of the actions taken by the two adversaries. Using daily violence and cooperation incidents during the Second Intifada and employing several causality metrics, we find evidence of asymmetric cycles of cooperation alongside cycles of violence; Both sides respond to violence (cooperation) by aggression (cooperating) where the Israeli responses are of higher magnitude than their counterpart. We find that both sides cooperate more after their rival's and own violence. Most importantly, cooperation has a causal effect on reducing violence; both sides, especially Israelis, are less aggressive after cooperating and following cooperation by the other side. If not for cooperation the Second Intifada would have been more violent and might have lasted longer.
Abstract by the author: The Israeli Supreme Court recently delivered a judgment regarding a trade dispute between a Palestinian importer and Israeli trade authorities. The court relied on a trade agreement between the State of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) (the ‘Paris Protocol’) of 1994 and concluded in favour of the Israeli authorities, based on a formal reading of the agreement. After analysing the judgment and concluding that its ruling is correct according to the prevailing law and trade agreement, this article suggests that the judgment underscores the fact that the Customs Union model used to regulate contemporary trade relations between the parties is inadequate. It further argues that a Free Trade Agreement would be a better model, which would allow the Palestinian Authority (the ‘PA’) to take responsibility for its trade policy, design a trade policy that would fit its needs, and promote more equal, reciprocal relations between the parties. Along with other democratic and governance reforms within the Palestinian Authority, such a model could reduce its economic dependence on Israel, improve diversification, support economic development, and reduce the concern for fiscal leakage connected to the current trade agreement. The article also calls for strong anti-corruption measures to be implemented within the Palestinian Authority to achieve these goals. Overall, the article highlights the need for a new trade agreement that promotes economic growth and development for both parties.
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