The Success and Failure of Peace Processes in Deeply Divided Societies

Peace- n. 1. the normal, nonwarring condition of a nation, group of nations, or the world. 2. (often cap.) an agreement or treaty between warring or antagonistic nations, groups, etc., to end hostilities and abstain from further fighting or antagonism.3. a state of mutual harmony between people or groups, esp. in personal relations.4. the normal freedom from civil commotion and violence of a community; public order and security.5. cessation of or freedom from any strife or dissension.

(Random House Unabridged Dictionary, http://www.infoplease.com/ipd/A0581136.html)

When writing an essay on the success or failures of peace processes, one must be certain as to what peace is. To some it may be just the end of a war; to others the end of segregation and hostilities among the once warring communities. If you believe the latter, then peace is almost impossible among deeply divided societies. Even if they have declared cease-fires (such as in Northern Ireland), they still have prejudices against each other. Orange marches still take place. In other cases, peace in the most elemental definition will probably never exist, between the Israelis and the Palestinians (for example). In the pages following, I will discuss the attempts at achieving peace in deeply divided societies, mainly Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine.

The first attempt at peace in Palestine occurred on November 29, 1947. After witnessing the carnage involved in partitioning India, the United Nations voted with a two-thirds majority to partition western Palestine-creating a Jewish and an Arab state. Of course the Jews accepted this-having no land of their own as it was. They received 75% of the territory in Palestine. The Arabs rejected this allocation of their land and denied the existence of the state of Israel. Twenty years later, the United Nations proposed Solution 242 to achieve peace in Palestine and withdrawal of troops from lands occupied. Israel would return land to the Palestinians and the Palestinians would grant peace to Israel. It was declared that possession of the war territory was not permissible and just settlement was needed for the Palestinian refuge problem. However even this seemingly brilliant attempt at peace did not work because the Palestine Liberation Organization denied its legitimacy. It wasn't until 1988 that Arafat recognized Solution 242. In 1978, the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty was created which would give the Palestinians 'limited autonomy' in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Egypt was soon after ostracized by the rest of the Arab world. The very next year there were over 100 illegal Israeli settlements in the West bank and Gaza Strip. This showed how much the Israelis thought of obeying the agreement. In 1989, the Times for Peace demonstration in Jerusalem attracted 40,000 people (Israelis, Palestinians and foreigners). But during this time the Israelis and Palestinians still fought, resulting in 626 Arabs dead, 30,000 wounded and 40,000 arrested. In 1990, the National Unity government of Yitzhak Shamir collapsed in a vote of no-confidence.

In 1991, a Middle East peace conference was held in Madrid. The perception was that something should be done in favor of the Arab population. In 1992, the Labour/Meretz coalition won the general election in Israel on a pro-peace agenda. Secret negotiations are still taking place from the peace conference concerning Solution 242 and on September 13, 1993, Rabin and Arafat take part in the signing ceremony of the Oslo Accords. This meant that limited autonomy would be granted to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israeli troops would withdraw from Palestinian areas, and a new timetable for peace negotiations would be created. Strike days are ended and the Uprising is officially declared over. However Hamas and Islamic Jihad vow to continue the uprising against Israel. The Declaration of Principles for the Oslo Accords also included: Israel must recognize the PLO as a legitimate peace process; the PLO must recognize Israel's right to exist. Big questions remained. Who would get how much land? There were 195 Israeli settlements; what about the Palestinian refugees? Who would gain control of Jerusalem? The language was very obscure; many wondered what it really meant. Israelis continued to control borders, wanted to keep at least 20% of the West Bank, and wanted to keep Jerusalem united. What seemed like a perfect peace process crumbled at the seams.

In 1994, Israel and Jordan sign a formal peace treaty. In 1996, Benjamin Netanyahu wins the Israeli general election by 1% on a strict agenda on peace with the Palestinians. The next big attempt at peace was when the U.S. intervened in 2000 and invited both leaders to Camp David for negotiations. During this the second Intifada was still going on strong, Palestinian suicide bombs continued, and the American war on terror decreased sympathy for the Palestinians in the international community. No agreements were reached at Camp David. Israel was willing to give up 97% of the land it occupied after 1967 to the Palestinians for their independent state. It was also proposed that the Palestinian refugees would be able to return to their homes under a family reunification act. Both leaders felt that they could not compromise too much for fear of their lives. Arafat walked away from the meeting with the blame on his head for not reaching peace. As you can see, what seemed like an end to a long war went wrong because of stubbornness on both parties. Israel felt it shouldn't negotiate until Palestine renounced terrorism. And Palestine felt it wasn't getting enough out of the bargain-and instead walked away with nothing.

The Northern Ireland case is similar in the way the conflict has gone on for over a century and the outlook that peace would never be reached. From the 1970's till the cease-fire there had been British troops in Northern Ireland in aid of the civil war that was going on between the North and the South. In November 1985, the Anglo-Irish Agreement was reached. This did little to no good as history shows deaths still caused by the IRA and paramilitary forces. Bloody Sunday still is too painful to talk about with any Irishman. The paramilitaries declared a ceasefire in 1994 which looked to be the end of the conflict, but once again wasn't. In 1998, the Good Friday agreement was reached by the Patten Commission and that is the last peace process attempted as to date. Most would say that that is the end. But segregations still run rampant and things such as peace walls in Derry and Shankill Road, Belfast and "Free Derry" still exist, so I am doubtfull.

Historical parallels between Israel/Palestine and Northern Ireland include: (1) the origin of the two entities in partition, (2) the siege mentality of the dominant community, (3) common view of the conflicts as a clash of nationalisms. Palestinians fight for their land because they have been there for generations. Israelis fled there and think that they have a right over the Arabs to the land. The Irish have lived in Ireland since the Viking Conquests. The Anglo-English settlers came to Ulster and think they have more of a right to the land than the natives. The Irish groups such as the IRA are considered nationalists, just as the PLO (Arabs) are.

Partition or secession was thought of a peace process to both areas. Does it create prevent war recurrence or simply replace internal war with international war? One has already been aware of failure this has meant for Israelis and Palestinians. They both want Jerusalem. If Palestine was given an independent state, where would it be? When the Republic of Ireland seceded from Ulster and Britain, it seemed a victory. But what about the hostilities between the two? And what about minorities stuck in the state of the conflicting party? Many argue that Ulster is not a democratic society because the Catholic minority has no say in what the Protestant majority decides to do. The police force in Northern Ireland is predominantly Protestant and there looks to be no change in that. Another issue is the right to self-determination. Who decides who the 'self' is? The only peaceful secession ever made was Slovakia and Czechoslovakia. All others have ended in deaths on both sides and an ongoing war.

After a deeply divided society is partitioned, who decides the security of it? Who has the right to police? In Israel/Palestine, Israeli troops still control Palestinian settlements even after granting 'limited autonomy'. Protestants police Catholics in Northern Ireland and have been known to be unfair. It is a problem that a cease-fire does not solve-nor did Oslo have plans for who would police afterwards. And in fact, in 1990, John Whyte said, "Even if by some miracle, leaders... could agree on a political settlement, it might still be jeopardized by disagreement over the security measures needed..." (Interpreting Northern Ireland).

In deeply divided societies, after 'peace' is achieved, parties still have to live together in the same way. Conflicts may rise over goods that can't be divided (like culture and identity). Especially the nationalists experience this. According to the Human Needs School, the two parties need to act together to realize needs, emphasis on needs of a community, and recognizing the legitimacy of each other. These societies may be reluctant to take this change because memories of trauma are so fresh in their minds. They may not have only physical walls (such as the Peace Wall in Derry) but psychological walls. Negotiations fall on deaf ears, as each side denies recognition of the needs of the other. Even if a leader identifies with the other party's hurts, hopes, and fears-he may arouse suspicion from his own side. A good leader may be assassinated simply by trying to put himself in the shoes of the other party. Violence is a huge obstacle to obtaining peace in a deeply divided society. Peace contracts may be signed under force, or parties involved may know that they are under danger if they do not do or say a certain thing during the negotiations. Also, Stedman says, "Beyond strategic and tactical uses of violence, there is the obvious need to convince those with the guns to lay them down and reconstruct their lives in a peaceful manner," (Contemporary Peacemaking, p. 103).

Even the phrase 'peace process may be harmful to the goal of deeply divided societies. Unionists (Protestants in Northern Ireland) never liked the term. The British government later moved toward using 'political process' to discuss negotiations with the IRA. The reason the British government didn't like the term is because of its connotation of conflict as war. They insisted that it was a policy of criminalization and refused to recognize convicted IRA members as POWs. They also knew that the implication of war carries with it the implication of defeat, in which case, the IRA had been defeated. If this was the case, there could be an obstacle to decommissioning the organization for fear of their pride. They also didn't want to raise international expectations (the logic of criminalization lowered expectations). Schirch says that an alternative to the controversial term could be another, 'peacekeeping'. "Peacekeeping is a dissociative approach to peace: it keeps the parties to conflict apart from each other to prevent, reduce, or stop violence, and may provide space for both parties to cool off and negotiate," (Transforming Violence, p. 162).

The use of peace as a transcendent value has had some success in these deeply divided societies. To be against peace, a leader must be against virtue. Any political agenda with the term 'peace' attached to it was likely to be successful. Opponents became opponents to peace. A problem of peace processes, no matter what you called them, was implementation and interpretation. An example of this was the decommissioning of Sinn Fein after the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein was only allowed into all party talks after they declared permanent ceasefire. However they did not use the word 'permanent' in 1994. The agreement made it unclear as to what paramilitaries were committed to. There was no start for the decommissioning and this delayed implementation for 18 months. The IRA finally began the process in 2001 but other issues intruded: Columbia, 9/11, the Castlereagh break in, interface violence and the Stormont spy scandal.

Peace processes have mostly failed in deeply divided societies such as Israel/Palestine and Northern Ireland because of many factors. The base for these is the social cleavages that make it almost impossible for the conflicting parties to negotiate. These include: class, caste, religion, language, race, settler/native, centre/periphery, rule by two polities, and ethnicity. Even once peace settlements have been reached (perhaps by partition or secession) there are still the questions of security and policing. This essay makes clear that the definition of peace to deeply divided societies should not be just the end of violence, but a truce, and new ways of reaching this truce need to be explored in order to make peace processes more successful in deeply divided societies. Perhaps Galtung and Jacobsen say it best, "In order to realize the aspirations of the founders of the United Nations and the lofty goal of 'saving future generations from the scourge of war', new resources, new approaches and new strategies for dealing with the rising number of challenges facing the world must be found," (Searching for Peace, p. 269).

Darby, John and Roger MacGinty (editors), Contemporary Peacemaking: Conflict, Violence and Peace Processes (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 103.

Galtung, Johan and Carl G. Jacobsen, Searching for Peace: The Road to Transcend (London: Pluto Press, 2000), p. 269.

Herr, Judy Zimmerman and Robert Herr (editors), Transforming Violence: Linking Local and Global Peacemaking, (Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1998), p. 162.

"Peace" definition, Random House Unabridged Dictionary, (Random House, Inc., 1997), http://www.infoplease.com/ipd/A0581136.html