Peace and Liberal Misrecognition: Non-liberal Peace Initiatives in Israel-Palestine

In this article, I consider the way the as yet unrealized peace between Israelis and Palestinians has been conceptualized by Western scholarship and also by the elite Israeli peace camp. Their approach to reconciliation is liberal, in that it is secular, individualistic, looks to human rights discourse for its sense of justice and for a model for citizenship. The liberal peace culture is laden with social norms, values, and ethical demands, many of which are not necessarily inherent to "peace", but rather related to the taken-for-granted liberal social expectations of the people who run these initiatives, and often of scholars who write about peace. By contrast, much of the Israeli and Palestinian population, are far more religious, culturally traditional and community oriented, experience a sacred connection to the land, and look to their religious traditions for their sense of justice and ideas about citizenship. They are, in other words, non-liberal subjects. These non-liberal groups are also beginning to re-envision peace through their own cultural, Middle Eastern, lens. Not only do liberal approaches differ from non-liberal ones, but they also misrepresent non-liberal approaches as both anachronistic and authoritarian. This misrecognition is not mal-intentioned, but its consequences are grave nonetheless. This paper suggests that in order for academia to make a substantial or meaningful contribution to the topics of peace and conflict resolution, it needs to do far more self-reflection on the ideological assumptions inherent in its current approach, so as not to reproduce Euro-centric models and concepts.