Peace As Process

One message of Peace Process is that the United States has had, and will continue to have, a crucial role in helping Israel and her Arab neighbors reach peace. If American presidents play their role with skill, they can make a lasting contribution. But just as likely, they may misread the realities of the Middle East and add to the impasse by their own errors.

This book offers a comparative survey of 18 contemporary peace processes conducted by leading international scholars. There is no standard model of peace processes and all will vary according to the context, type of conflict, timing, national and global economic climate, and factors like natural disasters. Therefore, making comparisons between peace processes is difficult, but it is beneficial – indeed, imperative – and is the principal motivation behind this volume. What works in one context may not work in another, but it can be modified and adapted to fit another context. The book is structured to maximise comparison between processes, and the case studies chosen are topical and span the major regions of the world. The concluding chapter systematically compares the case studies around 11 variables that cover the conflict context, peace process procedures, the responsiveness of the peace process to demands, and levels of participation and inclusion. Each peace process is then given a numeric score according to each of these variables, and the book thereby reaches judgements on whether each case can be termed a ‘success’ or a ‘failure’. This book will be essential reading for students of peace studies, conflict resolution, war and conflict studies, security studies, and IR.

Peace processes are mostly very fragile. This engagingly written book takes a bold new approach to the topic by beginning from the premise that sociology can identify those factors that help to stabilize them. The book draws a distinction between the political and social dimensions of peace processes, arguing that each is dependent on the other. Consideration of the social peace process, neglected in conventional treatments of the subject, is made central to this volume. While complementing current approaches that emphasize institutional reform in politics, law and economics, it pays due attention to sociological factors such as gender, civil society, religion, the deconstruction of violent masculinities, restorative justice, emotions, hope, forgiveness, truth recovery, social memory and public victimhood. These important themes are fully illustrated with examples and in-depth case studies from across the globe. The book locates itself within the growing debate about the positive impact of global civil society on peace and identifies the new forms of peace work engendered by globalization. It will be essential reading for students and scholars of peace studies in politics, international relations and sociology departments.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2015 The term 'peace process' is now widely used to describe attempts to manage and resolve conflict. As the nature of conflict has changed, so the range of available tools for producing peace has grown. Alongside a plethora of political actions, there is now a greater international awareness of how peace can be brokered and policed. As a result, peace processes now extend well beyond the actuality of ceasefires and an absence of war to cover legacy issues of victims, truth and reconciliation. This book expertly examines the practical application of solutions to conflict. The first part analyses various political means of conflict management, including consociational power-sharing, partition, federalism and devolution. The second explores the extent to which these political formulas have been applied - or ignored - in a wide range of conflicts including Bosnia-Herzegovina, Northern Ireland, Israel-Palestine, Lebanon, the Basque Region and Sri Lanka. Comparative Peace Processes combines optimism with a realist approach to conflict management, acknowledging that the propensity of dominant states to engage in political experimentation is conditioned by the state of conflict. It will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in general theories of political possibilities in peace processes and the practical deployment of political ideas in conflict zones.

Soon after the Oslo accords were signed in September 1993 by Israel and Palestinian Liberation Organization, Edward Said predicted that they could not lead to real peace. In these essays, most written for Arab and European newspapers, Said uncovers the political mechanism that advertises reconciliation in the Middle East while keeping peace out of the picture. Said argues that the imbalance in power that forces Palestinians and Arab states to accept the concessions of the United States and Israel prohibits real negotiations and promotes the second-class treatment of Palestinians. He documents what has really gone on in the occupied territories since the signing. He reports worsening conditions for the Palestinians critiques Yasir Arafat's self-interested and oppressive leadership, denounces Israel's refusal to recognize Palestine's past, and—in essays new to this edition—addresses the resulting unrest. In this unflinching cry for civic justice and self-determination, Said promotes not a political agenda but a transcendent alternative: the peaceful coexistence of Arabs and Jews enjoying equal rights and shared citizenship.

Afif Safieh served as Palestinian General Delegate in London, Washington and Moscow from 1990 to 2009. During this time, he met and interacted with the leading figures of our times: from Yasser Arafat, John Major and Tony Blair; to Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush and Pope John Paul II. The Peace Process: From Breakthrough to Breakdown brings together Afif Safieh's articles, lectures and interviews from 1981, when he was a staff member in Yasser Arafat's Beirut office, to 2005, at the end of his mission in London, revealing the political and intellectual journey of one of Palestine's most skilled and distinguished diplomats. His writings, which centre on the Palestinian struggle for independence, are a testament to his vision and humanity and provide a unique map of Palestinian diplomacy over the last three decades.

Many of the deep-rooted human conflicts that seize our attention today are not ready for formal mediation and negotiation. People do not negotiate about identity, fear, historic grievance, and injustice. Sustained dialogue provides a space where citizens outside government can change their conflictual relationships. Governments can negotiate binding agreements and enforce and implement them, but only citizens can change human relationships. Governments have long had their tools of diplomacy - mediation, negotiation, force, and allocation of resources. Harold H. Saunders' A Public Peace Process provides citizens outside government with their own instrument for transforming conflict. Saunders outlines a systematic approach for citizens to use in reducing racial, ethnic, and other deep-rooted tensions in their countries, communities, and organizations.

The Good Friday Agreement resulted in the cessation of paramilitary violence in Northern Ireland. However, prejudice and animosity between Protestants and Catholics remains. The Real Peace Process draws on extensive fieldwork in Protestant and Catholic churches across Ireland to analyse how Christian worship can become caught up in sectarianism. The book examines the need for a peace process that changes hearts and minds and not merely civic structures of their inhabitants. Aspects of everyday worship – ranging from the spatial and symbolic to the verbal, musical and interpersonal – are explored as the means by which sectarianism can be challenged and transformed.