Conflict Resolution, Ethnonationalism and the Middle East Impasse
By Alexis Heraclides (Mediterranean Studies Foundation)
Publish in : Journal of Peace Research, vol. 26, no. 2, 1989, pp. 197-212
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Article Description:
It is obvious that conflict resolution in the Middle East context, as distinct from all kinds of ephemeral conflict management, can only come about through a process of open-ended peace talks between the legitimized leaderships of the two parties to the conflict; talks that would address themselves to the conflict in all its dimensions to all the fundamental problems involved, all the ten and other stumbling-blocks that have through the years erected an almost insurmountable barrier against peace. The revolutionary ethnic conflict of the Middle East can only be resolved by way of negotiable acceptance policies by both sides to the conflict. In the Middle East context genuine acceptance solutions revolve around a federal binational or consociational Palestine, a federal binational Jordan or two states in historical Palestine. The resolution of a revolutionary ethnic conflict such as the Palestinian-Israeli clash cannot come about by the magic stroke of the traditional diplomatic mediator and other such deus ex machina, and even less so by irredentism and 'denial' policies that can do nothing more than prolong the conflict indefinitely.
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