演講：Peacebuilding: the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process in Light of the Palestine Papers（29th Nov, 2011）

By Emile Badarin

At the next meeting of the Palestine Studies Group, guest speaker Emile Badarin questions the dominant liberal-realist discourse used to describe the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process. Through an analysis of the Palestine Papers, he argues that it is time to deconstruct a dominant narrative that is contingent upon concepts such as two states, democratisation, security and the market, instead seeking out other alternatives such as the discourse of reconciliation, tolerance and a rethinking of identities. Through this argument, he proposes that it is time to listen to the silenced discourse as much as we listen to the spoken.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the liberalist-realist discursive system of peace and peacebuilding theorisation. I take the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process (IP-PP) as the empirical case for analysis. I approach the IP-PP in the light of the recently leaked negotiation documents (the Palestine Papers) between the Israel and Palestinian Authority. Examining the system that produces the social realities of “peace” and its making is particularly important in order to discern how social reality of peace comes into being. This helps to highlight excluded, omitted and overlooked choices.

I will examine the main comfortable assumptions regarding peace and peacemaking in general and in the IP-PP in particular. I do not aim to provide an account for peace or peacebuilding, but to follow the traces of the orthodox (realist-liberalist) peacebuilding discourse in order to understand their effect on the conflict they are supposed to resolve and the political-social transformation and exclusion. My research question centres on the orthodox peacebuilding theory and practice. The aim is to understand the contingent conditions that constitute the meaning of peace, peacebuilding and IP-PP as we find them today. 

This may enlighten alternative visions to reshape the language which speaks of peace. My approach to answer the research questions benefits from poststructuralism and different approaches to discourse analysis. In analysing the Palestine Papers I focus on specific linguistic signs relevant to the research puzzle which contribute to reveal the entailments of these signs. 

I have two arguments: general and specific. In general, I argue that peace and peacebuilding in the contemporary political discourse are an interpretation, contingent and contested ideas co-opt the realist-liberalist representations. This process of interpretation draws on predominant realist-liberalist terminologies and metaphors. Therefore, it is commonly represented by two modes: juxtaposing peace with un-peace, war and violence, and linking peace with certain liberal ideas (e.g., democracy, freedom, capitalism).

The second argument is about the Israel-Palestine peacebuilding specifically. I argue that this process is authored according to the realist-liberalist conceptions of conflict resolution, namely two states and democratisation. Therefore, the process is predominantly articulated in security and market language which helped obscure other alternatives and alienated the discourse of reconciliation, tolerance, and re-thinking identities. It also helped to reconstruct the land spatially and demographically in a way that made peace a remote possibility.

In conclusion, peace and peacemaking as expressed in realism-liberalism is ontologically dependent on the existence of authorities (states) and epistemologically is framed by operations of power and authority of a limited number of (often) rational men who are authorised to speak. Therefore, perhaps it is time to listen to the silenced discourse as much as we listen to the spoken, to envision a new and better future in Israel-Palestine.