Take the Peace Process Public
By JOEL POLLAK
Joel Pollak is a speechwriter and researcher for South
African opposition leader Tony Leon.
HEBREW
DEUTSCH
As recently as 1990, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
the South African struggle and the "troubles" in Northern Ireland were
considered equally irresolvable. The end of the Cold War brought the
softening of old antagonisms and inspired renewed efforts at peacemaking in
all three cases. But while South Africa made the transition to democracy,
and Northern Ireland stabilized somewhat, the negotiations between Israel
and the Palestinians eventually collapsed into violence.
Why? Because unlike the negotiations in South Africa and Northern Ireland,
the Oslo process never created shared, public negotiating institutions
composed of representatives from the various parties on both sides.
In South Africa, the government and 18 other political parties came together
in 1991 to form the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, or Codesa, in
which they publicly formalized negotiations that had previously only taken
place at the highest level. In Northern Ireland, the Forum for Peace and
Reconciliation was created in 1994 and the Northern Ireland Forum in 1996,
until finally the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 provided for a 108-member
Northern Ireland Assembly in Belfast.
In many ways, these institutions were failures: The Codesa talks in South
Africa collapsed, and the Belfast assembly continues to lurch from one
crisis to the next.
But the public negotiating forums in South Africa and Northern Ireland
helped the peace process achieve a kind of permanence. By including public
representatives, they involved ordinary people in the negotiations in an
indirect and sometimes direct way, giving the peace process a life beyond
the formal institutions themselves.
Crucially, the public negotiating forums in South Africa and Northern
Ireland excluded groups that refused to abandon violent methods. Boundaries
were thus set around the kinds of actions that would be considered
politically legitimate. That is partly why the repeated collapse of
negotiations did not precipitate a return to armed struggle in either case.
The public negotiating institutions did not resolve the fundamental
differences between the parties, nor did they solve many of the technical
difficulties that arose. Back-channel diplomacy was still necessary to
secure the final agreements.
But the public forums helped the peace process win the support and
involvement of the vast majority of ordinary people on all sides, and
therefore provided a political environment in which negotiated agreements
could survive setbacks.
The architects of Oslo realized that cooperation between Israelis and
Palestinians would have to continue even after a "permanent" settlement was
reached, possibly in the form of a political confederation like that of the
Benelux nations in Europe. The two societies are too entwined — socially,
geographically and economically — to be totally separated.
But the creation of shared institutions was left to the end of the process
instead of being taken up at the beginning. In retrospect, this was a grave
error, given the inherent instability of both the Israeli and Palestinian
political systems. Confrontation with the enemy has long been the only
cohesive political force in both societies. When problems arose, Israeli and
Palestinian doves had difficulty encouraging public support for the Oslo
process and wasted energy sniping at each other.
If a public, multiparty dialogue had existed from the beginning, the
moderates from both sides might have joined together in an alliance or
coalition to support the peace process.
The American-sponsored "road map" aimed to give peace a second chance. But
like the Oslo process, the peace plan failed to create public negotiating
forums. As a result, peace has failed to filter down to the grassroots
level. As the violence has continued, leaders on both sides have dug in
their heels, and the vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians who want to
live in peace have been denied a voice.
Some hold out the hope that strong American leadership will push the process
forward, but the Bush administration has failed to make that kind of
commitment. In any case, a peace that is pushed onto Israelis and
Palestinians by the United States or anyone else will be a brittle peace,
one that is merely held in place by external powers, like the perforated
calm enforced under the British Mandate.
The peace plan drafted recently by members of the Israeli opposition and
senior Palestinian negotiators, the so-called Geneva accord, holds promise.
But like so many of its predecessors, this new initiative was drafted
without broad public involvement and lacks a local institutional base. By
itself, it will be unable to overcome the grave political obstacles it
faces.
The creation of public, institutionalized, multiparty dialogues, made up of
representatives elected by the Israeli and Palestinian people, could play an
important role in fostering peace alongside the road map and initiatives
such as the Geneva accord. It is an approach that has worked in Northern
Ireland and South Africa. Though it has been completely overlooked in the
Middle East, it may well be the key to success.
[Hebrew -
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[English - Follow South
Africa's Lead]
Der israelisch-palaestinensische Konflikt:
Von Sued-Afrika lernen
hagalil.com 05-08-2003 |