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Beyond Liberal Peacemaking: Lessons from Israeli-Palestinian Diplomatic Peacemaking

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2019

Ofer Zalzberg*
Affiliation:
Trinity College Dublin

Abstract

This article briefly reviews the faults and merits of peacemaking efforts anchored in liberal ideologies. It further calls for a shift in strategy and outlines an approach that seeks transformation of conflicts through acknowledging the ways in which contrasting worldviews undergird and sustain the political conflict.

Type
Special Focus: From Tel Aviv to Jerusalem: An Embassy Move as the Crucible for Contested Histories
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America, Inc. 2019 

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Footnotes

1

Ofer Zalzberg is an Ussher PhD fellow at Trinity College Dublin. He is a Middle East Senior Analyst with the International Crisis Group and a Senior Advisor in the Herbert C. Kelman Institute for Interactive Conflict Transformation. He has been working since 2012 with prominent conservative, right-leaning religious authorities, Jewish and Muslim, toward the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He has been teaching at a religious-secular Beit Midrash regarding the interplay between Jewish tradition and modern sovereignty.

References

2 Sharansky, Natan, The Case For Democracy: The Power Of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny And Terror (New York: Public Affairs, 2004)Google Scholar.

3 Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salam is “an intentional community jointly established by Jewish and Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel. The village is located midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv-Jaffa.” More information is available at their website: https://wasns.org/.

4 Seeds of Peace was founded in 1993 by John Wallach, an author and journalist. With the help of Bobbie Gottschalk, its executive director, and Tim Wilson, a long-time camp director and educator, they ran a summer camp in Maine that brought together 46 Israeli, Palestinian, Egyptian, and American teenagers. President Clinton invited the campers to the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn. More information is available at their website: https://www.seedsofpeace.org/.

5 International Crisis Group, “Leap of Faith: Israel's National Religious and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Middle East and North Africa Report, no. 147 (November 21, 2013): 39Google Scholar.

6 Smart, Ninian, Worldviews: Crosscultural Explorations of Human Beliefs (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1983)Google Scholar.

7 Atran, Scott and Axelrod, Robert, “Reframing Sacred Values,” Negotiation Journal 24, no. 3 (July 2008): 221–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.