Premium
National narratives and the Oslo peace process: How peacebuilding paradigms address conflicts over history
Author(s) -
Khoury Nadim
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
nations and nationalism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.655
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1469-8129
pISSN - 1354-5078
DOI - 10.1111/nana.12166
Subject(s) - peacebuilding , narrative , partition (number theory) , identity (music) , sociology , process (computing) , evasion (ethics) , peace economics , peace and conflict studies , national identity , political science , political economy , law , aesthetics , politics , computer science , linguistics , philosophy , mathematics , immune system , combinatorics , biology , operating system , immunology
National narratives are an essential part of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Little is said, however, on how the Oslo Peace Process sought to address these narratives. Conventional wisdom argues that the peace process initiated in the 1990s largely ignored the matter. This article challenges this view, arguing instead that the peace process was and continues to be actively engaged in solving the narrative wars that divide Israelis and Palestinians. To shed light on these solutions, this article looks beyond the agreements of the Oslo Peace Process and focuses on the peacebuilding paradigms that informed it, more specifically, the national partition and the liberal peace paradigms. These prescribe two solutions to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict over history: narrative partition and evasion. In their implementation, the article concludes, these solutions imposed greater identity costs on the Palestinian narrative than on the Israeli one.