Media, political and scholarly analyses of the devastation wrought upon Gaza since October 7th, 2023, routinely invoke three notions: that Arab regimes vigorously oppose Israel’s use of violence, that the Israeli government’s choices are aimed at eliminating armed groups and/or armed resistance itself from Gaza, and that the only way to achieve peace is by reviving the peace process towards a ‘two-state solution’. None of these notions stands scrutiny. Arab regimes have done little more than perform dissent: although rhetorical opposition is tempting to bolster their limited domestic legitimacy, taking effective action would reverse the mass demobilisation their strategy of rule is predicated upon. Conversely, Israel’s mass mobilisation around an increasingly maximalist and supremacist far right centre of political gravity is unchecked by either internal drivers or external constraints to make the substantive compromises required for any peace processes to address structural causes of conflict. Nor can the current form of peace processes towards a ‘two-state solution’ reasonably be expected to succeed. Finally, since at least 1978, peace processes display similar structures and patterns of failure linked precisely to the constraints upon Middle Eastern regimes including Israel itself and without incentives towards the kind of substantive compromise required to achieve positive peace, the pursuit of negative peace alone becomes palliative. The ‘tactical’ unwillingness of political actors to pursue positive peace has reinforced structural disincentives to do so while aggravating the conflict’s root causes. The costs of these cycles is the increasing destabilization and insecurity of both domestic and regional politics in the Middle East, the Mediterranean and Europe. While the proximal cause of the war on Gaza may have been the increasing isolation of the Palestinian issue viz. the Arab-Israeli ‘normalisation’ and the Abraham Accords, its structural causes are found in Palestine/Israel’s ongoing (anti)colonial politics, inextricably both local and international.
Israel, Gaza and the Politics of Palliative Peace: Colonialism, (de)mobilization and why the Two-State Solution is made to fail
Teti, Giuseppe Andrea
2024-01-01
Abstract
Media, political and scholarly analyses of the devastation wrought upon Gaza since October 7th, 2023, routinely invoke three notions: that Arab regimes vigorously oppose Israel’s use of violence, that the Israeli government’s choices are aimed at eliminating armed groups and/or armed resistance itself from Gaza, and that the only way to achieve peace is by reviving the peace process towards a ‘two-state solution’. None of these notions stands scrutiny. Arab regimes have done little more than perform dissent: although rhetorical opposition is tempting to bolster their limited domestic legitimacy, taking effective action would reverse the mass demobilisation their strategy of rule is predicated upon. Conversely, Israel’s mass mobilisation around an increasingly maximalist and supremacist far right centre of political gravity is unchecked by either internal drivers or external constraints to make the substantive compromises required for any peace processes to address structural causes of conflict. Nor can the current form of peace processes towards a ‘two-state solution’ reasonably be expected to succeed. Finally, since at least 1978, peace processes display similar structures and patterns of failure linked precisely to the constraints upon Middle Eastern regimes including Israel itself and without incentives towards the kind of substantive compromise required to achieve positive peace, the pursuit of negative peace alone becomes palliative. The ‘tactical’ unwillingness of political actors to pursue positive peace has reinforced structural disincentives to do so while aggravating the conflict’s root causes. The costs of these cycles is the increasing destabilization and insecurity of both domestic and regional politics in the Middle East, the Mediterranean and Europe. While the proximal cause of the war on Gaza may have been the increasing isolation of the Palestinian issue viz. the Arab-Israeli ‘normalisation’ and the Abraham Accords, its structural causes are found in Palestine/Israel’s ongoing (anti)colonial politics, inextricably both local and international.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
