Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

In Annapolis, Conflict by Other Means by Robert Blecher and Mouin Rabbani, Middle East Report Online, November 26, 2007

At an intersection in front of Nablus city hall, a pair of women threaded a knot of waiting pedestrians, glanced left, then dashed across the street. “What’s this?” an onlooker chastised them. “Can’t you see the red light?” Not long after, his patience exhausted, the self-appointed traffic cop himself stepped off the curb and made his way to the other side of the boulevard. Such is life in the West Bank on the eve of the meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, where the Bush administration intends to create the semblance of a “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinians for the first time since it assumed office. There is excitement in Palestinian towns about the urban order newly emerging from years of chaos; there is a willingness to play by the rules even as many remain convinced that doing so will not get them very far; and, lastly, there is the reality that when the waiting grows tiresome, people will again take matters into their own hands. As for the Annapolis meeting itself, it is being greeted with indifference, with few believing it will lead to either meaningful change in their daily lives or substantive progress toward the end of an Israeli occupation now in its fifth decade.

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are also once again playing by the rules, cajoled by the United States to return to the table following the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in June and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ subsequent formation of an interim government in Ramallah. This would be no small feat, as negotiations over the core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for which the Palestinian leadership has long been clamoring, have been frozen for more than six years. But today, with Palestinians deeply divided and the international community deeply invested in perpetuating their division, negotiations have become a venue for struggle as much as a means for reaching a settlement. The current talk of peacemaking is thus an exercise in conflict by other means, raising opposition — among Israelis and Palestinians alike, though in different ways — to what was already a contentious process.