The Middle East Peace Process: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

313 Pages·1997·6.631 MB·English

by  Ilan Peleg

The Middle East
Peace Process
SUNY Series in Israeli Studies
Russell Stone, editor
Edited by
ILAN PELEG
The Middle
East
Peace Process
Interdisciplinary Perspectives
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS
Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 1998 State University of New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data
The Middle East peace process: interdisciplinary perspectives I
edited by Han Peleg.
p. cm. - (SUNY series in Israeli studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7914-3541-5. - ISBN 0-7914-3542-3 (pbk.)
1. Jewish-Arab relation-1973- 2. Israel-Politics and
government. 3. Palestinian Arabs-Politics and government.
4. Israel-Foreign relations-Jordan. 5. Jordan-Foreign relations
-Israel. I. Peleg, Han, 1944- II. Series.
DS119.7.M471784 1997
327.569405695--dc21 97-1208
CIP
r97
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedicated to the memory of
Yitzhak Rabin and Anwar Sadat
Two soldiers who fell
on the way to peace in the Middle East

Contents
Preface ix
PART I. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
1. The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process in Historical Perspective 3
Laura Zittrain Eisenberg and Neil Caplan
2. The Historians' Debate in Israel and the Middle East
Peace Process 21
Mordechai Bar-On
PART II. PEACE AND ISRAELI ATTITUDES
3. The Peace Process and Competing Challenges to the
Dominant Zionist Discourse 41
Myron J. Aronoff and Pierre M. Atlas
4. Two People Apart: Israeli Jews' and Arabs' Attitudes Toward
the Peace Process 61
Tamar S. Hermann and Ephrain Yuchtman-Yaar
PART III. PEACE AND ISRAELI INSTITUTIONS
5. Political Institutions and Conflict Resolution: The Israeli
Supreme Court and the Peace Process 87
Gad Barzilai
6. The Peace Process and Societal-Military Relations in Israel 107
Stuart A. Cohen
viii THE MIDDLE EAST PEACE PROCESS
PART IV. PEACE AND THE PALESTINIANS
7. The PLO and the Peace Process 123
JoAnn DiGeorgio-Lutz
8. Palestinian Christians and the Peace Process: The Dilemma
of a Minority 141
Daphne Tsimhoni
PART V. JORDAN AND PEACE
9. Jordan in the Middle East Peace Process: From War to Peace
with Israel 161
Curtis R. Ryan
10. Israel's "Jordanian Option": A Post-Oslo Reassessment 179
Aharon Klieman
PART VI. PEACE AND ECONOMICS
11. Labor in a Peaceful Middle East: Regional Prosperity
or Social Dumping? 199
Guy Mundlak
12. The Peace Dividend: The Economy ofIsrael and the
Peace Process 223
Ofira Seliktar
Epilogue: The Peace Process and Israel's Political Kulturkampf 237
Ilan Peleg
References 265
About the Contributors 291
Index 295
Preface
The peace process in the Middle East has been pursued, in one fonn or another,
for thirty years. Thus, a short time after the 1967 war, intensive negotiations on
the language of a Security Council resolution began, leading eventually to the
famed Resolution 242. Nevertheless, for most of the last three decades the
peace process was frozen, showing only on rare occasions (e.g., at Camp David
in 1978) signs of life.
In late August 1993, this paralysis and inaction came to an abrupt end.
Rumors about an imminent breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations
spread and were quickly substantiated. It became clear that the Israelis and the
Arabs (and specifically the Palestinians) had decided to focus on the peace
making process and to move, however gradually, from a condition of an on
going conflict, erupting on occasion into open warfare, to a condition of peace.
The dramatic acceleration of the peace process was accompanied by what
might be appropriately called a flood of analysis of and reflection about the
meaning of the historic event. Journalists, academics, politicians, editorialists,
and others wrote over the last few years thousands of articles and millions of
words about the Middle East peace process. Yet, all of the analysts and
commentators ran into three major problems which made their observations, in
reality or by appearance, overly speculative:
First, the problem of perspective. Most analyses of the Middle East
peace process have been offered very close to the events themselves or
even immediately following the events. Although that kind of instant
analysis could be fascinating, it often lacks the rigor emanating from a
larger view, a view which is possible only with the passage of time and
only after some of the events have come to an end;
Second, the problem of the complexity of the peace process, com
pounded the difficulties of the instant analyst. Factors such as the sheer
ix