| Abstract [eng] |
Many conflicts in the 21st century are perceived as intractable: long-lasting, brutal, irreconcilable, of a zero-sum nature. One of these conflicts – over a century long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This conflict is a struggle between two nations claiming their rights to the same territory which they both consider to be their homeland. This struggle is usually perceived as a zero-sum conflict over the territory but one of the main propositions of this research is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for many years was perceived as a zero-sum struggle over national identity as well. For over four decades many Jews and Palestinians believed that one nation can implement its national aspirations only at the expense of the other nation. This belief was the principal impediment for the conflict to break-through. This mutual belief also resulted in neglecting any possibility to recognize the other nation’s legitimacy and therefore – permanent confrontation and conflict escalation. This paper seeks to take a different approach to the analysis of conflict. One fundamental statement of this research is that many academics limit their analysis of Israeli-Palestinian struggle to mechanistic and deterministic explanations this way failing to explain some crucial factors having tremendous impact on the course of the conflict. This research paper emphasizes the role of national identity in conflict resolution and claims that the condition for peace between these two nations was never only about Israel’s retreat from the occupied territories. The premise of this paper is that there is a direct connection between national identity and state’s foreign policy decisions. The paper is based on the constructivist approach of international relations which emphasizes constitutive nature of social reality: the lived life and knowledge about it are socially constructed. But the research was also very much influenced by Michael Barnett’s theoretical “hybrid” – conditional combination of constructivism and institutionalism. This theoretical approach emphasizes that constructivist theories fail to incorporate a core insight of institutionalism – actors strategize in an institutional setting – and therefore is not able to address foreign policy change. On the other hand institutionalism fails to incorporate a core insight of constructivism – actors are embedded in a normative structure – and therefore is unable to explain what creates and constitutes legitimate action. The aim of this paper is after determining how and when national identity influences state’s foreign policy decisions to analyze Israel’s national identity’s influence on the course of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This conflict is analyzed from its beginning at the end of the 19th century seeking to reveal what caused changes in Israel’s foreign policy decisions. But the focus of analysis is Israel’s national identity in the years 2000–2007. The goal of this analysis is to determine what influence this identity had on the renewed peace talks with Palestinians in 2007. |
