When less was more: external assistance and the political settlement in Somaliland

The internationally unrecognized ‘Republic of Somaliland’ presents a case in which the domestic drivers of peace and development may be examined when aid and other forms of international intervention are not significant variables. The relative autonomy of its peace process offers an alternative perspective on post‐conflict transitions to that offered in the majority of the literature, which instead problematizes either the perverse outcomes or unintended consequences of international interventions in conflict‐affected areas. The purpose of this article is not to establish the salience of Somaliland's relative isolation in its ability to achieve peace and relative political order, as this is already documented in the literature. Rather, it explores the ways in which that isolation fostered mutual dependence between powerful political and economic actors for their survival and prosperity. It uses a political settlements framework to probe the implications of this dependence for western statebuilding interventions in post‐conflict situations. The findings present a challenge to orthodox assumptions about how states transition out of conflict, particularly that: greater vertical inclusivity necessarily strengthens a political settlement; effective Weberian institutions are a prerequisite of an enduring peace; and that external assistance is usually necessary to end large‐scale violence in developing states or to prevent a recurrence of the conflict.     

Peace with Hamas? The Transforming Potential of Political Participation

One of the unresolved dilemmas in the Israeli–Palestinian peace process is whether peace is possible without, or feasible with, Hamas. This article seeks to explain why Israeli policies have thus far failed and why inclusion of Hamas in the peace process is more likely to produce a lasting peace. Using data drawn from interviews, fieldwork and surveys, and theoretical perspectives from peace, terrorism and social movement studies, the article analyses the evolution Hamas has undergone since its inception and how changes in its leadership, onstituency and political culture have affected the movement's attitudes towards peace and compromise.     

Dynamics and patterns of the shrinking of Arab lands in Palestine

This paper seeks to sketch a number of geographical patterns pertaining to the ongoing process of confiscation of Palestinian-Arab land in Israel and the 1967 occupied territories. It points out a geographical pattern and process of “enclaving” and “exclaving”, a form of spatial apartheid and exclusionary zoning which was adopted during the pre-state period of Jewish settlement and has continued down to the present day. The centrality of land possession and its transfer to Jewish national and state ownership is shared by almost all political classes in Israel. Even during key points in peace negotiations over the past several years, land confiscation never ceased nor was interrupted. The present paper employs the term “shrinking” to underscore that land confiscation is a continuous process in Palestine/Israel. This of course has both political and social ramifications for the type of state Israel seeks to be, declaring its desire to live in peace and harmony with its own Palestinian citizens and Palestinians elsewhere once a peace deal has been reached. Seen from the perspective of land, its control and use, this paper argues that there is no other alternative in achieving peaceful resolution between Jews in Israel and Palestinians except a return to square one: redefining a new geography for Palestinian villages and towns in Israel and for those many hundreds of villages which were demolished and have since been obliterated.     

Powerful State,Powerless Mediator: The United States and the Peace Efforts of the Palestine Conciliation Commission, 1949–51

The Arab–Israeli War of 1948 produced complex questions that needed to be solved to obtain peace. Whereas the Arab states suffered humiliating defeats, Israel was the undisputed winner, expanding and solidifying its power. For the Palestinians, the outcome was catastrophic. Between 600,000 and 760,000 Palestinians fled, becoming refugees on the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and in surrounding Arab states. Palestinian society collapsed and Palestine became divided between Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, leaving the borders undecided. The Palestinians’ dreams of statehood were crushed. After the war, Israel used diplomacy to achieve its goals, defending the post-war status quo to preserve its expanded territory and resisting the return of Palestinian refugees. Through its membership in the Palestine Conciliation Commission (PCC), established by the United Nations (UN) in 1948 to solve these problems, the United States was deeply involved in the negotiations. The United States became the informal, yet undisputed leader of the PCC, thus, it would seem, empowering it with the muscles of a superpower. After three years of struggling for peace the PCC had toadmit failure. Knowledge about these negotiations gives important insights into how mediators approached the conflict and shows that power asymmetry may explain why the belligerents could not obtain peace.     

From Civil War to ‘Civil Society’: Has the End of the Cold War Brought Peace to Central America?

Revisiting one arena of the Cold War—Central America—which dominated international headlines in the 1980s, this article explores its legacy on the region. It asks whether the ending of the Cold War and the peace accords which concluded the internal wars of Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala in 1990, 1992 and 1996, respectively, have brought sustainable peace, development and democracy. In particular, it explores the changing agenda of international financial and development agencies which have supported the postwar reconstruction of the region. The experiences of Nicaragua and El Salvador have shown that failure to coordinate the efforts at economic adjustment with those of peace-building compromised the possibilities of development and democratization, particularly for the poorest sectors of the population. Conservative elites who emerged intact from the war were able to consolidate their economic power, and resist and limit political reform, while handing responsibility for the poor and the former war zones to international agencies. The latter have shifted their agenda in the Guatemalan peace process, incorporating a strategy of 'civil society strengthening' in order to build capacity within society to create more accountable and democratic states.
The conclusion of the article explores the ambiguities of this strategy. On the positive side it legitimizes and protects the newly won but fragile freedoms of speech and association in the region; on the negative side, it risks turning a historical social and political dynamic into externally funded 'projects' with limited sustainability, whose outcome many international agencies tend to assume they can shape to their own expectations.     

Aid Conditionality as a Tool for Peacebuilding: Opportunities and Constraints

Over the past decade, aid donors have pledged billions of dollars to support peacebuilding efforts in collapsed states and war–torn societies. Peace conditionality — the use of formal performance criteria and informal policy dialogue to encourage the implementation of peace accords and the consolidation of peace — could make aid a more effective tool for building peace. In Bosnia, for example, donors have attempted to link aid to the protection of human rights, co–operation with the international war crimes tribunal, and the right of people displaced by ‘ethnic cleansing’ to return to their homes. Yet the conventional practices and priorities of aid donors pose constraints to the exercise of peace conditionality. This article examines several of these constraints, including the reluctance of donors (particularly the international financial institutions) to acknowledge responsibility for the political repercussions of aid; the competing foreign–policy objectives of donor governments; the humanitarian imperative to aid people whose lives are at risk; and the incentive structures and institutional cultures of donor agencies.     

Contested migration and settler politics in Cyprus

Immigration and settler literatures provide contrasting approaches to the evaluation of conflict between ‘newcomers’ and ‘indigenous’ groups. On the one hand, immigration studies emphasize that newcomers, particularly migrants, almost never fight civil wars; on the other hand, studies on settlers in contested territories expect inherently unstable relations between settlers and native populations affected by colonization projects. While each provides strong evidence to support its argument, neither literature has adequately accounted for hybrid cases where the settler and migrant categories have become almost indistinguishable. The article focuses on Cyprus as a paradigmatic such case. Specifically, it looks at populations transferred from Turkey to the northern part of the island after 1974 described either as settlers or immigrants by rival accounts in the Cypriot conflict. While colonization constitutes a violation of international conventions and a major obstacle to peace, settlers in such places as Cyprus, Tibet or Western Sahara often meet the profile of migrant populations more interested in daily survival issues than in territorial politics. In contrast to other historical or contemporary cases of settler colonialism such as Algeria (France) or West Bank and Gaza (Israel), what is particularly puzzling in Cyprus and elsewhere is the absence of mobilization and politicization among settlers despite perceived discrimination and fear of relocation following a negotiated peace agreement. Addressing this puzzle is essential to bridging the gaps between immigration and settler literatures and in mediating the tensions between conflicting claims over space, land and the political geography of peace settlements in deeply divided societies.     

The Basis of China's Pro‐Palestine Stance and the Current Status of its Implementation

This article is built upon the author's previous attempt to review Sino–Israel relations from the Chinese perspective, where it is argued that the relationship is at a crossroads because China is increasingly more proactively involved in the international arena, which will inevitably lead to a more assertive role in trying to facilitate a solution to the Israel–Palestinian conflicts. The author also affirmed that China is more supportive of the Palestinians. In this article, the author will further analyze China's pro‐Palestine stance, give empirical evidence of this preference by Chinese intelligentsia, and provide insight into the decision‐making mechanisms of the Chinese government in terms of its diplomatic policies. The author also wants to demonstrate that, despite the evident pro‐Palestine tendency of Chinese scholars and consequently the government, little has been done to implement this preference. The Israelis still have a sizable time window to achieve a fair and just peace agreement with the Palestinians. In the long run, China's pro‐Palestine inclination will work more and more against Israel, in contrast to the strong pro‐Israel inclination of the United States.     

A View from Palestine: An interview with Three Senior Delegates

[On March 5, 1992, three Palestinian delegates to the peace talks in Washington, D.C., spoke at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee: Dr. Samir Saleh Abdullah, professor of economics at An-Najah University; Dr. Jaba Fada, lecturer in English and education at the Islamic University of Gaza and school supervisor for United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA); and Sharhabeel Y. al-Zaeem, attorney and legal adviser for UNRWA in Gaza, head of the defense committee which defends Palestinian detainees in the Israeli military courts in the Gaza Strip, and a consultant on the delegation. Afterwards, they were interviewed by Dr. Mohammed M. Aman, editor of DOMES.]     

The chance for change in the Arab world: Egypt's uprising

As the largest Arab country, Egypt has always played a crucial role in the politics of the Arab world; however, the internal political dynamics of Egypt have until the January 2011 uprising hardly attracted a glance from international observers. This article gives an overview of the political arena and the various political forces at play in post‐Mubarak Egypt. With many unpredictable variables currently at play in Egyptian politics, the result of the elections scheduled for November 2011 will likely surprise many, both within the country and beyond. The article also looks at what impact the political changes in Egypt may have had on the relationship between Egypt and Israel. There have been increasingly frequent demands within Egypt to revise the Camp David accords—but not at the expense of war with Israel. While Israel is unlikely to accept any calls to revise the peace treaty, Arab public opinion has become newly relevant for policy‐makers and Israel will have to make corresponding adjustments to its regional security strategy.     

South Sudan: a volatile dynamic of accountability and peace

Since the warring parties to South Sudan's civil war (2013–15) signed a peace agreement in August 2015, South Sudan has endured a series of setbacks and clashes that have threatened the fragile peace process. This article examines many key factors affecting the peace process, including rampant corruption, military factionalism, gross human rights abuses and ineffective foreign intervention/pressure. It shows that the past and present failure to structure accountability at the institutional level drives the instability and distrust that has limited the political dialogue and consensus needed to implement the peace deal. To frame this issue of accountability, the article distinguishes between core (essential) and peripheral (self‐serving) objectives of promoting accountability. In doing so, it seeks to devise and apply the logic of this dynamic of accountability and to explain the unexpected outcomes of South Sudan's conflict. It argues that, rather than transforming the conditions and hostile relations of South Sudan's situation, international demands for accountability continue to fuel the volatile tensions between international authorities and the various factions inside the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). The central conclusion the article draws is that instead of signifying the official beginning of the end of the conflict, the peace agreement has wedged itself between the core and peripheral objectives of accountability, thereby setting the stage for further stalemate and increasing distrust among domestic and international authorities.     

National narratives and the Oslo peace process: How peacebuilding paradigms address conflicts over history

National narratives are an essential part of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Little is said, however, on how the Oslo Peace Process sought to address these narratives. Conventional wisdom argues that the peace process initiated in the 1990s largely ignored the matter. This article challenges this view, arguing instead that the peace process was and continues to be actively engaged in solving the narrative wars that divide Israelis and Palestinians. To shed light on these solutions, this article looks beyond the agreements of the Oslo Peace Process and focuses on the peacebuilding paradigms that informed it, more specifically, the national partition and the liberal peace paradigms. These prescribe two solutions to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict over history: narrative partition and evasion. In their implementation, the article concludes, these solutions imposed greater identity costs on the Palestinian narrative than on the Israeli one.     

Political tourism in the Israeli‐Palestinian space (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

With the violent clashes that took place in May 2010 during the attempt by the Free Gaza movement flotilla to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip, the remarkable strength of pro‐Palestinian networks became globally apparent. Drawing on an ethnography of political activism in the Israeli‐Palestinian space, we suggest that the striking visibility of these networks does not exclusively derive from the prominence of the Israeli‐Palestinian conflicts, but is also a consequence of the activists’ ability to produce innovative forms of sociality. However, some of the approaches taken can exist in problematic relation to the experiences of people who live with the conflict. In this context, the issue is not so much the precise relationships between indigenous ‘truths’ in Palestine and their foreign representations, but the way in which encounters redefine the conflicts that activist networks seek to represent.     

Jihad,competing norms and the Israel–Palestine impasse

A central factor in the failure to resolve the Israel–Palestine conflict is the direct competition that exists between its two most central international norms: ‘self-determination’, the fundamental claim of the Palestinians, and ‘self-defence’, the overriding concern of Israelis. Particularly since 9/11, Palestinian violence has been a liability for their cause and has served to validate Israel's self-defence arguments. Increasingly, Palestinian violence has been perpetrated by the Islamically oriented under the banner of jihad, which is understood almost exclusively in terms of armed struggle. Non-violence — which has the potential to undermine Israel's self-defence arguments and generate external pressure on Israel to adhere to the terms of a just peace — has been under-appreciated by such Palestinians. Non-violence is far from having a normative status in the Muslim world as an Islamically legitimate response to occupation and it is yet to be conceptualised as an effective form of resistance. The concept needs to be reformulated in accordance with the realities and opportunities confronting the Palestinians. Contextualisation combined with a maqasid or objective-oriented approach establishes non-violence as a preferable option to violence both in terms of the higher objectives of jihad, enshrined in the Quran, as well as of the attainment of Palestinian self-determination.     

Dithering over Darfur? A preliminary review of the international response

The extreme violence against civilian communities in the Sudanese province of Darfur has coincided with the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. This article makes a preliminary assessment of the international response to Darfur to see how it compares to the denial and delay of ten years ago. The slow evolution of the international community's response is charted from early Chadian efforts at mediation in 2003, the eventual involvement of the UN Security Council in July 2004, the increasing role of the African Union and the US government's conclusion in September 2004 that the violence constitutes genocide. The international community has certainly been too slow and divided in its response in the face of competing political priorities. There were also significant misgivings about a US-led military intervention and considerable Sudanese intransigence and diplomatic skill. Nevertheless, there are important signs that key parts of the United Nations and the international community have worked with a definite post-R wanda consciousness. Important developments have also been made in combining humanitarian and political negotiation while a committed African Union is now in a position to make a real difference. Although late to gather force, international political will and US leadership have been strong. But, like many tragedies before it, Darfur shows that political will is not enough. The choices facing even the most wilful politicians still remain intensely difficult and 'doing something' is not as easy as most NGO press releases imply.     

The governmentalities of infrastructure and services amid urban conflict: East Jerusalem in the post Oslo era

Urban conflict in Jerusalem has mainly been studied through the lens of spatial and functional segregation and discriminative fragmentation between Israeli and Palestinian localities. This article adopts a governmentality approach to the study of the politics of urban infrastructure and services in urban conflict, and argues that a governmentalization process of East Jerusalem by Israel has evolved in the last two decades that has been enacted mainly through the control and management of Palestinian urban infrastructure and services. Since, as manifestations of resistance to Israeli occupation, many of the Palestinian urban functionalities historically operated separately from Israeli state apparatuses, this new development and its consequences indicate an increasing dependency and forced adaptation of Palestinians in Jerusalem to Israeli rule. Based on analysis of Palestinian public transport and education systems, the article demonstrates how the “soft” power of governmentality – mediated through the control and management of urban infrastructure and services – diffuses among the Palestinian population and in space, restructuring them as objects and subjects of Israeli administration and governmental order. In this light, urban infrastructure and services appear in the course of urban conflict as an arena of governmentality and counter-governmentality. On the one hand they serve as a site where identities are practiced and defended; on the other, they may mediate and facilitate the restructuring of political subjectivities and normalization of political structures and hierarchies.     

The End of Violence and Introduction of 'Real' Politics: Tensions in Peaceful Northern Ireland

This article discusses contemporary developments in the Northern Ireland peace process, and pays particular attention to some of the main paths away from political violence towards 'real' politics. Even the peace process has left many tensions in Northern Ireland. The article focuses on the gap between formal governing or decision–making and everyday life in localities, and the role of geographical scales in the peace initiatives is touched upon. In particular, the Belfast Agreement and its effects on localities are assessed to illustrate some of the advances and drawbacks of the multi–level peace developments. By looking at the local context of Derry/Londonderry, this study shows how ambiguous the very existence of peace is in Northern Ireland: for international media there is peace in Northern Ireland, for local politicians 'yes, maybe', but for many locals 'no'. In the localities territoriality, secured boundaries and collective identities remain crucial elements of everyday life.     

Acts of Aid: Neoliberalism in a War Zone

Abstract:  International aid is a dynamic bundle of geographical relationships at the intersection of war, neoliberalism, nature, and fear. The nexus between development and security warrants further conceptualization and empirical grounding beyond the instrumentalist and alarmist discourses that underwrite foreign aid. This article examines two such discourses, that of "aid effectiveness" and securitization, that serve to frame an analysis of aid to Sri Lanka. Since 1977, neoliberal policies of international assistance have shaped the country's economy and polity, and, since 1983, government troops and militant rebels have been at war. International aid focuses on economic development and support for peace negotiations, but little attention has been paid to the ways in which these agendas intersect to shape donor behavior and aid delivery. Drawing from research on international aid agencies operating in Sri Lanka, in particular the Canadian International Development Agency, the geopolitics of aid are analyzed.     

Sidelining the Hardliners: A 2 + 1 Solution for Israel‐Palestine

This article presents a modified two‐state solution to the Israeli‐Palestinian conflict. A “2 + 1 solution” would see the establishment of a State of Palestine in the West Bank whose constitution proscribes the participation in government of any party whose platform calls for the elimination of Israel; Gaza would accede upon the reform or demise of Hamas. Achieving a state in the West Bank should be the proximate, urgent goal of the Palestinian people. Ideologically motivated Israeli settlement of the West Bank continues apace and threatens the viability of a two‐state solution. Meanwhile, religiously motivated policies of colonization hide behind a security narrative conflating Hamas with Fatah and suggesting that the Palestinians pose an existential threat. The 2 + 1 solution, by excluding Hamas from a State of Palestine, directly addresses Israel's legitimate security concerns and thus carries the potential to lay bare the extent to which ideology informs Israeli policy. The approach also gives moderate Palestinians the opportunity to define the civic values and attributes of Palestinian national identity in a way that supports a lasting two‐state peace.