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“The Result of Hegemonic
Peace: Instability for Both Israel and Palestine,”
Introduction: 12 September 2000—The fact that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) has again postponed declaring a state until sometime after September 13 is of little long-term significance. Regardless, the “final status” peace agreement that will be promulgated between Israel and the Palestinians will be hegemonic in nature, and therefore highly destabilizing for both peoples. The outcome of the Oslo process will accurately reflect the broad (im)balance of power between them, and a hegemonic peace will necessarily result. While the notion of a “just peace” is upheld by many, peace treaties invariably reflect not justice, but power. The Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and agreements over the past seven years are no different. On every major issue, Israel’s power—with American backing—has held sway over Palestine’s justice. To begin with, all of the key issues have been left for last—at Israel’s insistence. Only now are the issues of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees, among others, being discussed. Yet although international law clearly recognizes East Jerusalem as occupied territory, negotiations remain focused on whether Palestine will relinquish most, or only some, of its legitimate claim to this significant territory. In addition, while international law plainly acknowledges the right of return for the millions of Palestinian refugees, discussions are based on whether only a relative handful of them—or none—will be allowed to return to what is now Israel. Indeed, most of the Oslo process has focused on how exactly to divide up the 22 percent of historic Palestine occupied by Israel in 1967; the 78 percent captured in 1948 is rarely addressed. The Peace Treaty Spectrum: Hegemonic peace lies somewhere in between a peace based on balance of power, and one based on complete domination. Treaties negotiated on either end of this power spectrum tend to be relatively stable. Peace based on a balance of power is usually stable because both sides know that the other can inflict significant and unacceptable levels of damage if the peace breaks down. The Cold War and the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction between the United States and the Soviet Union demonstrated the stability of this kind of peace, however “cold” it may have been. Conversely, the U.S. occupation of Japan and parts of Germany following World War II illustrated the stability of total domination, where the controlling power is relatively free to remake the institutions and politics of the defeated adversary. In fact, the domination of many of these polities by another has been so total that they have becomes mere footnotes in history: from Normandy to Nubia, from the Papal States to the Confederacy. A hegemonic peace, by contrast, is quite unstable for both parties. Following World War I, the allied powers were strong enough vis-á-vis Germany to extract a one-sided and vengeful peace at Versailles, but not so powerful to remake Germany in their own image. The predictable result: instability on both sides, and another war. As a perhaps even more relevant example, Israel imposed a one-sided formal peace treaty—but without total control—on Lebanon following its 1982 invasion. This peace resulted in instability and violence, and ultimately the collapse of the hegemonic peace. The Precarious Nature of Hegemonic Peace: There is a compelling logic for why a peace based on hegemony will produce instability for both parties. For the weaker party, the volatility is rather obvious. There will necessarily be a great deal of opposition to the government for signing a peace that so clearly compromises national rights in the eyes of the population. Political opposition at the social level strengthens, while the “capitulating” government feels compelled to crack down on dissent. Polarization occurs that, in simple terms, pits the state against its own society. Ironically, a hegemonic peace is destabilizing for the powerful party as well. Outsiders usually view such a peace as disproportionately benefiting the stronger faction. Internally, however, dissent against the government focuses on the utter lack of necessity to make any significant concessions at all. By definition, the dominant side is not compelled by the weaker party to concede anything. The opposition in the hegemonic power asserts that any meaningful concessions are not only unwarranted given the circumstances of power and (their own constructed) morality, but are a sign of weakness and betrayal by their government. The Case of Israel and Palestine: The peace between Israel and the PLO will be unstable because of the hegemonic nature of their relationship. Israel is powerful enough to compel the Palestinians to accept unjust terms, but not strong enough to utterly dominate the Palestinian national movement. The coming instability in Palestine is predictable enough, and will fit the pattern described above. Due to intense domestic opposition to the one-sided terms of the agreement, the regime will repress dissent from individuals and the institutions of Palestinian civil society. The hopes for democracy will be among the first casualties of the hegemonic peace. This has in fact been the history of the past seven years in the West Bank and Gaza. While moments of exhilaration have occurred, such as during the Israeli withdrawal from some major West Bank urban areas in the fall of 1995, for the most part the “peace process” has failed to deliver Palestinian national rights. Through the years, as the failure of the PLO to “deliver” in its negotiations with Israel has become more apparent, dissent has increased. In turn, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has used repression to ensure that the opposition was contained within manageable limits. Thus, the future of Palestine will look very much like the present, only more so. The polarization, repression, violence, and instability born of a hegemonic peace will only intensify. Israel will also continue to suffer from instability brought on by this type of peace. While the Palestinian oppositional discourse rejects as unjust the terms of the agreements, the oppositional discourse in Israel contests any substantial concessions to a much weaker party. As with Palestine, this pattern has already been apparent in Israel since the first Oslo accord was signed in 1993. The opposition in Israel has consistently berated former Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, as well as current Prime Minister Ehud Barak, for their “selling out” of Zionism when there is virtually no pressure on Israel compelling it to make concessions. While the assassination of Rabin in 1995 was the most obvious example, the sharply vitriolic turn of Israeli public discourse since Oslo is perhaps a better indicator of the impact this kind of peace has on the Israeli body politic. Compare Israel’s three peace treaties with Arab countries. While Israel was clearly more militarily powerful than Egypt, their peace treaty of 1979 was between two strong states that had shown they could do considerable damage to one another. There was a rough balance between them. That peace, however “cold,” has stood the test of time. Few in Israel question its wisdom. Broadly speaking, a similar statement can be made for how Israel’s public greeted the Jordan-Israel peace treaty. No significant force in Israel has denounced Israel’s government for making that deal, because there was no major concession Israel was compelled to make. It is only with the Palestinians that peace has proven so destabilizing to Israel. Given Israel’s domestic political cleavages, there is no reason to assume that the final status agreement will change this volatility. If the past seven years of assassination, recrimination, and critical public discourse are prologue to Israel’s future, then the kulturkampf (culture wars) predicted by one of Israel’s more astute scholars, Ilan Peleg, will likely be at hand.
Glenn E. Robinson
is an Associate Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey,
California, a Research Associate at the Center of Middle Eastern Studies
at UC Berkeley, and the author of Building a Palestinian State; The
Incomplete Revolution (Indiana University Press, 1997). The above text
may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the author
and to the Palestine Center. This Information Brief
does not necessarily reflect the views of the Center for Policy Analysis
or The Jerusalem Fund. |
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