Christine Wüst
DOOMED TO FAILURE
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Introduction A settlement of the Middle East conflict without the mediation efforts of the United States (US) is almost unimaginable. Right from the start, the US seemed rather sympathetic to Israel and sided with the new established democratic state, while discrediting the Palestinian claim, due to the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) inclination to terrorist activities. Still, the US made great endeavours to settle the most serious issues with the help of the Camp David accord. Then after the end of the cold war, the peace process grinded to a halt. Clinton’s efforts only showed minor progress and contributed to the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Also, the consecutive Bush administration’s Road map did not display any new initiative for the settlement of the dispute. Finally, a fresh start seemed to occur when President Obama held his Cairo speech in 2009, pressing Israel to stop the settlements in the West Bank. The result was only an icy USIsraeli relationship. Yet, the Palestinian claim for statehood in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) made the US stand again by Israel’s side, uncovering the complete deadlock of the peace process. Considering the shattered peace efforts over the last 20 years; How did the US involvement as a mediator influence the IsraeliPalestinian Peace Process? Following neoliberal arguments, a player is judged by other actors in an interdependent system based on his actions that add up to his reputation. Actors will most likely try to deal with other players who behave in line with their own preferences. This interaction can further trigger the establishment of stable cooperation based on a mutual norm foundation. Nonetheless, conflict arises when the objectives of states are contradicting. Once this occurs, mediation efforts are pursued to (re-)enter the conflict parties into a cooperative relationship by facilitating norms of peaceful interaction. The mediator must be trusted by both parties wherefore he needs to be “neutral” to the conflict. Considering the close link between the US and Israel, the following hypothesis is established: With the US as the primary mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the deadlock of the peace process was the obvious outcome. The methodology, applied to test the hypothesis, will stick to a state level analysis, wherein the US influence on the development of norms,
favourable to cooperative conflict settlement, shall be examined. It will be argued that by pursuing strategies to make a stable and self-policing agreement come about, the mediator triggers a learning process within the disputants that ultimately transforms the underlying norms of their behaviour. The conflict parties thus change their perception of all involved actors, making further mediation endeavours more likely or impossible. As norms only evolve and change over time, the paper will consider events that took place after the turn of the millennium. Hence, the analysis will entail the following steps. First, the US neutrality characteristics shall be considered to get an insight whether the United States was the preferred mediator by both conflict parties. To that end, the situation at the end of the Clinton administration in 2000 will be under closer scrutiny. Second, the strategies of the US to settle the dispute will be looked at more closely to gather information on how it contributed to a norm transformation. Therefore, the subsequent administrations of Bush and Obama will be examined, with a special focus on their strategies regarding the Road map and the Sharon Plan, the Annapolis agreement, the Cairo speech, as well as the settlement quarrels and ultimately the Palestinian unilateral decision of posting a statehood bid in the United Nations (UN). For the establishment of the theoretical framework concerning the neoliberal assumptions, monographs by Keohane and Nye were primarily used, though articles in journals by Axelrod, Bercovitch and others provided further insights into the theoretical issues of norm-building and mediation. The incidents studied within the paper are mostly based on secondary literature, i.e. articles in journals and newspapers, while primary literature was found in Special Documents of the Journal of Palestine Studies. The first chapter is dedicated to the portrayal of neoliberal theory, largely in line with Keohane’s assumptions. It establishes a feasible analysis framework by using the idea of Bercovitch’s contingency model, which is based on interdependent context and process variables. The context side will be covered by an approach of mediator neutrality based on leverage, while the process part takes into account Mandell and Tomlin’s theory on the impact of mediation on the development of norms through the use of manipulative strategies. The consecutive two chapters shall then outline
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