The Transformation of Just Peace
The transformation of just peace:
EU and the Middle East peace process
Anders Persson, Lund University, Sweden
Paper to be presented at the JAD-PbP Regional Seminar in Jerusalem, May 23-25, 2009
Abstract
The terms justice and peace have long been the focus of much debate as well as numerous attempts of conceptualization. Just peace however, has been very little studied despite being widely used together in everyday language. The terms justice and peace are therefore insufficiently conceptualized together and surprisingly little interest has been given to how a just peace can be realized. This paper looks into how the European Union has conceptualized just peace in the Arab-Israeli conflict over the past 40 years and identifies five phases of different conceptualizations of just peace in the narrative of the EU: the first three phases evolved in the 1970s when the EC approved of Security Council Resolution 242 and recognized the Palestinians as a party to the conflict with “legitimate rights” including a “homeland”. The last two phases evolved in the 1980s and 1990s when the EC/EU endorsed the Palestinians rights to “exercise fully its right to self-determination” and ultimately a “Palestinian state”.At the same time, despite its economic power, the EU has had great difficulties to go beyond the issuing of declarations to actually implement what it conceives as a just peace in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Keywords: EU, CSFP, peacebuilding, just peace, Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Introduction[1]
The European Union and its member states have for many years desired a greater role in the Arab-Israeli peace process. This desire stems from a long-standing dissatisfaction with the marginalization of the EU from key negotiations within the peace process and with the role assigned to the EU by the United States and Israel as the main donor of the peace process. EU leaders have often maintained that they are well equipped, perhaps better than the United States, to develop a set of policies towards a just and durable peace in this conflict.The efforts undertaken by the EU to bring about peace between Israel and her adversaries have not always been appreciated by Israel. In fact, as we shall see later on, many of the most important EU statements on the Middle East peace process have been harshly criticized by Israel over the past 40 years. But despite being seen as pro-Arab and later pro-Palestinian by successive Israeli leaders, the EU has always portrayed itself as an honest broker with a policy of even-handedness as the guiding principle.[2]
The EU has sought to establish a just and durable peace in the Middle East since the early 1970s, when the integrational level of what was then called the European Community reached a point where it could begin to actinternationally.[3] Since the early 1970s, the EC/EU has issued numerous declarations and other statements on just peace in this particular conflict. What is interesting here is that the content and the terminology of these declarations have clearly changed.Maybe most importantly, the Palestinian problem has moved over the past 40 years, from being a subordinated problem of refugees, into becoming the most crucial issue at the very center stage of any possible conflict solution regarding peace in the Middle East.[4] This development has been reflected in the various EC/EU statements on the Middle East peace process. As the years went by and the Palestinian problem rose to prominence, the content and the terminology of EC/EU statements changed, from not mentioning the Palestinians at all as a party to the conflict, to placing the Palestinians and some of their core issues in the center of EC/EU declarations on the Middle East.Simultaneously, as this process went on, the conception of what constituted a just peace in the Middle East changed along the lines of this new terminology. Consequently, my main argument in this paper is that the term just peace is a dynamic and transformative concept that can change and developedover time depending on the circumstances. In other words, what constitutes a just peace in the Middle East in the eyes of the EU today is not the same as it was in the past and the future will probably see a new understanding of the concept of just peace. The puzzle here is how and why the conceptualization of just peace changes and what factors are behind these changes? In this paper, I try to show how and why the EU has conceptualized just peace in this conflict the way it has and what the union has done practically to realize its vision of a just peace in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Theoretically, I start off by introducing the term just peace, which has been given very little attention in the academic literature, despite the fact the term just peace is widely used in everyday language and in EC/EU documents over the past 40 years. After that, in the next part of this paper, I go through the records and look into how the EC/EU has conceptualized the term just peace over the past 40 years, ever since the EC/EU began to get involved in the affairs of the Middle East. In the last part of the paper, I look into what the EC/EU has done in order to realize its vision of just peace in the Middle East.
Just peace in the context of peacebuilding
The practice of peacebuilding originally evolved out of an institutional response to handle the challenges of peacekeeping operations and humanitarian interventions that responded to internal conflicts situations.[5] Peacebuilding emphasizes the overarching political and economic factors that might be necessary to sustain post-conflict societies.This means that the concept of peacebuilding usually involves a wide variety of both military and what might be termed civilian or non-military activities, including the administration of elections; the retraining of judges, lawyers and police officers; the nurturing of indigenous political parties and NGO’s; the reorganization of governmental institutions and the delivery of emergency humanitarian and financial assistance.[6]It is quite common to think of peacebuilding on different levels and then usually in terms of some kind of elite top-down approach versus some kind of grass root bottom-up approach.[7] In general, the literature on peacebuilding emphasizes the importance of having a long-term perspective, but peacebuilding entails both short-term and long-term frameworks. The former focuses on emergency relief and control of violence, while the latter focuses more on development, conflict transformation and social change.[8] The aim of peacebuilding, at least in the words of former UNSecretary-General Kofi Annan is “to create the conditions necessary for a sustainable peace in war-torn societies”, that is in Paris’ words,“a peace that would endure long after the departure of the peacebuilders themselves.”[9] This noble aim of peacebuilding is contested by theorists from more critical perspectives. Critical voices, like that of Oliver Richmondsay that there is an implicit recognition in the literature that peacebuilding is about exporting a particular version of peace into conflict environments.[10] Adding to Richmond’s critical stance, Michael Merlingen and Rasa Ostrauskaite argue that peacebuilding involves pastorship which may develop heavy footprints in the affected societies.[11]
The disruptive potential of including aspects of justice in peace processes
As Rama Mani has argued, there is a connection between conflict and injustice as well as between peace and justice. Restoring justice after conflict means relinking peace and justice again after having been torn apart by the conflict.[12] However, thequest for transitional justice in post-conflict societies is often elusive for several reasons, most notably because of the disruptive potential that the inclusion of aspects of justice may have in peace processes.This is mainly because of the likely resistance from those who will be negatively affected by the measures taken to restore justice, which is perhaps especially true in cases where justice needs to be imposed rather than negotiated on members of the former regimes. In Latin America for example, the countries coming out of military dictatorships had the quest for justice compromised by the threat of military coups. Outgoing military regimes passed amnesty laws to indemnify themselves and the argument was that without amnesty the military regimes would not hand over power. It was also argued that this process of neglecting accountability created conditions where the rule of law could not be affirmed. Consequently, this led many Latin American countries to situations, where the people had some kind of rudimentary peace but no justice.[13] Mari Fitzduff has noted that just peace agreements are indeed rare. She argues that most agreements are a mixture of pragmatism and politics, often acceptable only because the continuance of war is a worse alternative.[14] It is not easy, but certainly not impossible to overcome this problem of justice versus peace. Justice, according to William Zartman, is liberty, dignity and human rights, in other words, end values for which one fights, but as long as one fights, there could be no peace. The fighting therefore has to come to an end in order to create the necessary conditions for achieving justice. This means that peace must be reached first, but not in a way that precludes justice.[15] However, according to Zartman,immediate peacemust precede justice and is a precondition for it, but there are two sides of this relationship. The implication is that peace comes first but that it contains the promise of justice.[16]
The ideas behind just peace
The very basic idea behind just peace is that justice and peace are interrelated. Where justice is violated, peace is put at risk. Where peace is lost, conditions of deep injustice will soon prevail.[17] As the term just peace indicates, the concept is about justice and peace in relation to each other. Both justice and peace have long been the focus of much debate as well as numerous attempts of conceptualization.Just peace,however, has been very little studied, despite being widely used in everyday language.[18] The terms justice and peace are therefore insufficiently conceptualized together and surprisingly little academic interest has been given to how a just peace can be realized.[19] In contrast to the notion of just war, no set of criteria is available for evaluating just peace.[20] This lack of criteria for evaluating just peace reflects a related discussion about justice in contemporary negotiation theory, where almost all theorists maintain that there is no single universal criterion of justice to be found by which negotiated outcomes can be judged.[21]Out of the numerous elements that may contribute to the idea of just peace, some may appeal more to developing states, others to wealthier ones. Some may be highly attractive for non-state actors, some may not.[22] Theorists like Robert Williams and Dan Caldwell claim that an unjust war cannot produce a just peace.[23] Others, like Pierre Allan, argue that just peace can come about for various reasons, even after an unjust war.[24] My own view is that just peace can come to places like the Middle East even if that particular region has seen few wars that could be considered just. I believe that a just peace could be found in conflicts like the one(s) in Iraq even if the American-led invasion was unjust. The same is true for the Israeli-Palestinian as well. In practice, as we shall see in the coming sections, the concept of just peace is dynamic, transformative and highly adaptable. Unjust wars may very well obstruct the chances for reaching a settlement, but they do not rule out the possibilitiesfor a just peace.
Many scholars see just peace as a process rather than a set of requirements and argue that this process includes the creation of an intersubjective consensus of what ought to be a just peace and of the core interests of each side. The intersubjective understanding between the conflicting parties is at the very heart of the concept of just peace.[25]Pierre Allan has defined just peace as “stable peace with justice”[26], and indeed just peace resembles stable peace in many ways but with some notable exceptions. Like stable peace, just peace can be seen as an ongoing and dynamic process, rather than a single situation, which might take place in many different settings.[27]Stable peace and just peace also resembles each other in that neither of them can be seen as resulting from a single predominant cause or condition. Instead, they are the results of a number of interrelated factors.[28]The main difference though, according to Pierre Allan, lies in the latter’s strong emphasis on justice. In this regard, just peace goes beyond the notion of stable peace in the sense that the peace order is seen not only as natural or normal, but as just.Because of this argues, Allan, just morally is superior to stable peace.[29]In any case, the use of the word just in ’just peace’ is not arbitrary. It serves to measure not only the stability of every political order but also the ethical quality, for example how far it aims at the development and upholding of life conditions in which basic demands of justice are realized.[30]
The path to a just peace is often a long way full of political and practical obstacles,but just peace cannot be had on the cheap andthere should be no doubt that just peace generally demands painful concessions from those involved. Apart from the division of territory, sovereignty, and power, negotiations are often marked by overriding symbolic factors that structures the conflict and that are initially considered non-negotiable by one or more of the parties. Compromise-driven peace approaches are about relinquishing dreams, a tough but inevitable price of just peace.[31]For a just peace to be durable, it requires explicit rules of settlement, acceptable behavior and objective yardsticks, allowing all parties involved, including outside observers or guarantors to approve of the solution found.[32]As in all other forms of peacebuilding, there are a number of different supporting roles to play for third parties in order to enhance just peace. Approving or guaranteeing the solutions found are two of them, and third parties can also try to contribute to the process by promoting new norms and codes of conduct in areas like human rights and in other issues of concern.[33]
How the EU has conceptualized just peace in the Arab-Israeli conflict: an historical overview
The European Union’s conception of a just peace in the Arab-Israeli conflict has changed considerably over the past 40 years. In this paper, I identify five phases of different EU conceptions of just peace in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Three of them evolved in the 1970s when the EC started to get engaged in the Middle East, the fourth in the early 1980s and the last one in the late 1990s. It is possible to argue that there might be more phases where the concept of just peace has changed, but I consider these five the most important ones. Indeed, all the phases marked significant changes in EC and later EU policy towards the peace process and the various parties in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Most, if not all of the changes in EU policy,clearly took into account the Arab and later Palestinian claimsand were therefore met with strong objections from the Israeli side.
The first phase: EC starts engaging in the Arab-Israeli conflict
The first phase evolved in the early 1970s when the integrational level of the EC reached a point where it could begin acting internationally.[34] In November 1970, the foreign ministers of the six member countries had met in Munich for the first time in the framework of the newly established European Political Cooperation. The issue on the agenda was foreign policy and the situation in the Middle East was oneof the top priorities. When it comes to foreign policy, the Arab-Israeli conflict has remained a main concern for the EC/EU ever since that meeting in Munich in 1970.[35] A year later and also within the framework of the EPC, the member countries agreed on a secret report, the so-called “Schuman document”, that called for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories in return for recognition of Israel by Arab states. The status of the Schuman documents was unclear, but France considered it an official policy unlike Germany and the Netherlands who were more hesitant to endorse it and described the document only as an informal working paper.[36]
The first mentioning of the term ‘just peace’ in the context of EC-Middle East relations was in a statement from May 14 1971, at the second EC foreign ministers’ conference on political cooperation. The meeting was held for the purposes of consultation on various problems of common interest, of which the situation in the Middle East was one. Regarding the situation in the Middle East, the foreign ministers’ of the EC stated that: