Ending cycles of violence

I just got done writing my mid-June column for Al-Hayat… It’s one I’ve been thinking about for many days. Maybe as a sort of slightly philosophical commentary on the resurgence of violence in Palestine/Israel. Anyway, the idea is to take some of what I was looking at and discussing on my recent Africa trip, in terms of trying to figure out what it is that permits a serious peace negotiation to (1) start and then (2) succeed.
The main two examples of that that I looked at were, of course Mozambique and South Africa. In Rwanda, the outcome was notably NOT negotiated; and has anyway been less successful.
Well, mainly in the column, I wrote about South Africa. And since that won’t come out for another 10 days or so, I can’t write much about it here. (Buy the paper!) But there were also a few interesting and relevant things that I learned in Mozambique, that I didn’t have time to write about there…


Anyway, there were a number of aspects of the civil-war-era peace negotiations in Mozambique that I found interesting. One was the basic question of “what was it that finally persuaded the parties on both sides that they had to negotiate with each other?” There, as in SA, it was a realization that “total victory” over the other side was not possible.
(And when, might we ask, will that realization sink in with Sharon and that majority of Jewish Israelis that keeps him in power???)
Another factor, in Mozambqiue, seems to have been sheer exhaustion, mass impoverishment, and war-weariness. In my discussion with Herminio Morais, who headed the Renamo military team at the peace talks, he said that was the main factor propelling the negotiation.
Another factor was that, by the time the government (Frelimo) side finally agreed to negotiate face-to-face with Renamo– which they’d been resisting doing right up until then– that was just about the only negotiating option they had left. They had tried earlier to reach a peace deal with the Pretoria government, Renamo’s main backers, but that hadn’t worked out.
Meanwhile the Mozambican church leaders who were the main people who were talking to leaders on both sides, played an incredibly wise role, stressing to both leaderships that they weren’t going to act as intermediaries or even message-carriers; rather, the two sides should talk to each other directly.
(The Middle East, by contrast, is littered with well-meaning or self-important busybodies who just love to see their role as being that of intermediaries.)
Of course, in the case of Israelis and Palestinians, there’s a huge structural problem with the idea of “just letting the two sides sit down in a room together and work things out between them.” If that is to have a chance of working at all, then some serious efforts need to be made to level the playing-field between them. And it is hard– though I suppose not impossible– to think that the US government might be inclined to allow that to happen.
How can serious, respectful, non-coercive negotiations be held between these two sides? What steps can others take to help make this happen?
And if that is impossible to bring about, what alternatives to direct bilateral talks could bring about a fair and sustainable outcome?
Well, I don’t have a whole lot of answers here. I’m still thinking a lot of these issues through.
If anyone has any good suggestions– send in a “Comment”.

13 thoughts on “Ending cycles of violence”

  1. Two primary differences I see between Mozambique and Israel/Palestine:
    a) Despite a good deal of support among American conservative groups, Renamo didn’t get unconditional backing from Washington – outside the Scaife Fund and Heritage Foundation it didn’t actually get any direct support – and Reagan even made some gestures against South African support with the Komati Treaty: the absence of overt aid helped, at least.
    b) Mozambique was an intra-ethnic conflict between political factions, not a blood feud between people with their own ethnic identities, corresponding senses of nationalism, outside political ties, and religions.
    I’m still trying to figure out why they’re still feuding at all. It’s senseless: the majority of Israelis as well as settlers (a greater majority, in fact) are in favor of dismantling the settlements, a large plurality (47%) of Israelis think the US favors Israel too much, the majority of Palestinians see the goal of the infitada as merely ending the occupation and have accepted the existence of Israel – or that’s what I’ve gleaned from what scant numbers there are on Palestinian public opinion – and by and large dismantling the settlements would undermine whatever support there is for Hamas’ terrorist attacks and make it possible for the PA to “dismantle the terrorist infrastructure”, something completely impossible with the present cantaanization of Gaza and the West Bank.
    But hey, who needs the polls when you’ve got “democracy”. 😛

  2. The suggestion: Abbas is willing to bow down before the master and read State Department speeches, so you need an Israeli PM willing to play ball, toss some easy pitches and then see if Rantizzi is willing to uncork his bat for the sake of the popular solution. Barring that: outside, coercive intervention.

  3. Thanks Buermann for some thought-provoking comments. Re yr first comment, I totally agree w/ yr analysis that it frequently seems senseless why the Israelis and Palestinians keep on w/ their conflict when as you note a srtong majority in each community favors the same eventual accomodationist outcome (the broad shape of which everyone knows.) Meantime, as one hears from people there themselves, people are also “thinking with their gut instead of their brains”. In other words, the climate of fearfulness allows them be jerked around by the scaremongers/men of violence on both sides–and this includes many of the same people who favor the accomaodationist outcome.
    So how do people live with this degree of cognitive dissonance? I guess most people, maybe including thee and me, are not at the end of the day totally logical, calmly rational beings…
    So the policy question is, what force can be found that will enable the desire for accomodation swell up and overpower the gut-level desire for expressive or instrumental violence? Personally, I have huge doubts that coercion from outsiders is the answer. But some form of firm and principled outside intervention that speaks to the best in all those currently-traumatized direct participants could be enormously helpful.

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