http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1970563,00.html
This week the Obama administration is set to mediate talks between Israel and Palestine. Negotiations have steadily worsened over the past decades, now communicating through the Americans instead of together. US Senator George Mitchell will travel between Jerusalem and Ramallah. Rather than actually expecting any results from the peace talks, the Palestinians and Isrealis are expected to continue to blame each other for the gridlock. Palestinians hope that America will press Israel to accept a deal they would not agree to without pressure. Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu has been offering Palestine fewer concessions than his predecessors, but still plans to strategically blame the stalemate on Palestine. As a solution is unlikely to come from either side, America as the mediating country will have to choose whether to intervene and put forth a potential solution.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has continued for over a century, but a couple decades of peace talks has produced nothing close to a resolution. The situation has become complex, with the involvement of many Arab countries and the US. Both sides of these talks are approaching the issue from a realist perspective. The Palestinians believe that the Israelis will expand their territory until they claim the entire region, while the Israelis believe that the Palestinians want to take back all of Palestine for themselves. From their desire to survive, both sides refuse to change from their positions in the status quo, refusing to give the other side more power than they have. The US is using its superior position of power to try to bring peace to the region before US involvement in the conflict sparks more violence both in the region and against the US as it did with 9/11.
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The assertion that Palestinians and Israelis are taking this matter from a realist seems valid. They are making objective assesments of the others power and attempting to develop a situation that results in self-serving relative gains (if only because the stakes are so high for both countries). However, there are several elements that don't quite fit into a realist construction, such as the fact that Israel is concerned with a group of people who are not a sovereign nation. This runs contrary to the idea that states can not have their relative power changed by non-states, seeing as Israel seems very invested in the suppression of the Occupied Terrritories. Although you could argue that they are also trying to prevent another Six Day War, you have to consider that most of their efforts are efforts that are being put towards the Gaza Strip and West Bank that do not affect sovereign states in the area.
ReplyDeleteYou also can look at the issue from the perspective of the United States. The United States both has strategic investments in the area (the massive amount of weapons, resources and money that have gone to Israel over the years) but also a liberal interest (the reconciliation of this problem by using democracy, diplomacy and the Roadmap to Peace). This mix of realism and (ostensibly) liberalism has further complicated the issue for sure.