Galtung (1975), the founder of the discipline of peace and conflict studies, introduced the term peacebuilding when distinguishing among peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peacebuilding. For him, “The mechanisms that peace is based on should be built into the structure and be present as a reservoir for the system itself to draw up … More specifically, structures must be found to remove causes of wars and offer alternatives to war in situations where wars might occur” (1976, pp. 297–298). Less than two decades later, United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali coined the term for the United Nations in “An Agenda for Peace.” He defined peacebuilding as a post-conflict activity or action “to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse into conflict” (1992, para. 21). His emphasis was on “concrete cooperative projects which link two or more countries in a mutually beneficial undertaking.” John Paul Lederach, a peace studies scholar, moved away from a state-centric model and argued for working together to resolve root causes of conflict so as to create ←6 | 7→and live a sustainable peace. He held that peacebuilding is “a comprehensive concept that encompasses, generates, and sustains the full array of processes, approaches, and stages needed to transform conflict toward more sustainable, peaceful relationships.” In addition, the term “involves a wide range of activities that both precede and follow formal peace accords. Metaphorically, peace is seen not merely as a stage in time or a condition. It is a dynamic social construct” (1997, p. 20). For Michael Barnett and his colleagues, peacebuilding involves more than “stability promotion.” It is meant “to create a positive peace, to eliminate the root causes of conflict, to all states and societies to develop stable expectations of peaceful change” (Barnett et al., 2007, p. 44). The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development/Development Assistance Committee (OECD/DAC) guidance report in 2008 acknowledged that peacebuilding has become “an overarching term for an entire range of actions designed to contribute to building a culture of peace … [and] covers a broad range of measures implemented in the context of emerging, current, or post-conflict situations and which are explicitly guided and motivated by a primary commitment to the prevention of violent conflict and the promotion of a lasting and sustainable peace” (2008, p. 15).
Peacebuilding entities engage in a variety of initiatives meant to enable their members, participants, or students to develop the aptitudes, skills, and behaviors necessary for going beyond conflict and living peace. The focus of activities is on young people; peace education; sensitive development; human security; the environment; gender and women’s rights; health and counseling; human rights, justice, and legal aid; mediation and conflict transformation; interfaith encounters; reconciliation; culture and media; and research. Hidden or missing in most of these activities, and which need to be prioritized, are healing and the cultivation of habits of peace, mainly a wider perspective, a long-term view, dialogue, compassion, forgiveness, nonviolence, and reconciliation.
Peacebuilding in the Israeli-Palestinian Context
Ned Lazarus defines peacebuilding in the context of Israeli-Palestinian relations as “voluntary civic engagement in organized non-violent social or political activity aimed at transforming perceptions, policies, and/or structural/sociopolitical relations between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs with aspirations to contribute to longer-term resolution of intergroup conflict” (Lazarus, ←7 | 8→2017, p. 18). The current field of peacebuilding, according to him, has 164 active organizations in Israel and Palestine, which are engaged in peace, conflict resolution or cross-conflict, and human rights. Categorizing these organizations by the identity/citizenship/residency of the target populations of peacebuilding initiatives, he finds out that 68 (41.46%) active initiatives pertain to cross-border (Palestinian and Israeli Jews), 61 (37.20%) to shared society (Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel), 19 (11.59%) to Jerusalem (Palestinian Jerusalemites and Israeli Jews), 14 (8.54%) to primarily internal Israeli/Jewish, and 3 (1.83%) to mainly internal Palestinian (2017, pp. 18–20).
Sheila H. Katz writes of a century of joint nonviolence, also variously known as “coexistence, people-to-people programs, second-track diplomacy, citizen action, peace building, advocacy, solidarity, co-resistance, or simply work for equality and to end occupation” (2016, p. 3). She enumerates 500 initiatives, arranged into 14 categories: the arts; civil society, human rights, and democracy; communications; community activism; dialogue; economy and business; educational activism and research; political activism; political negotiations, parties, and policy; religious activism; science, environment, medicine, and mental health; sports and physical activism; women’s activism; and youth activism. Other sources have listed far less initiatives or organizations, principally because they are dealing with the current period. For example, Peace Insight, the leading online resource for local peacebuilding around the world, includes 88 peacebuilding groups, arranged into 15 categories, including conflict prevention; human rights; mediation and dialogue; peace education; transitional justice and reconciliation; and women, peace, and security. The Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP)—an organization consisting of non-governmental organizations that promote reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians and between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East—has 111 members, with most of them being peacebuilding groups.
This book considers 56 Israeli and Palestinian peacebuilding entities, with some involving both Israelis and Palestinians. Peacebuilding is not limited only to peace promotion in each individual society, but also includes relations between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, whether they happen to be Israeli citizens or not. A friendly modification of Ned Lazarus’s definition, therefore, views peacebuilding as “voluntary civic engagement in organized non-violent social or political activity aimed at transforming perceptions, policies, and/or structural/sociopolitical relations in each of Israel and Palestine, as well as between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs in support of peace.”
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The roots of peacebuilding in Israeli-Palestine relations actually go back to when Arabs and Jews lived in historic Palestine, first toiling under Ottoman rule (1516–1917) and then under the British Mandate (1920–1948). It took time for these roots to take hold, and now the leaves of peacebuilding are starting to sprout. Chapter 1 provides short narratives of Arab-Jewish/Israeli-Palestinian relations.
Meantime, peace scholars and practitioners have identified phases through which peacebuilding evolved. Walid Salem and Edy Kaufman, in their historical perspective on Palestinian-Israeli peacebuilding, elaborate on three main phases (2006, pp. 12–26), while Ned Lazarus recognize five historical turning points.
As per Salem and Kaufman, Phase I (late 1870s–1948) saw daily interactions between Arabs and Jews in neighborhoods, joint organizations, and at work. Jewish organizations, such as Hashomer Hatza’ir, Canaanite Movement, Brith Shalom, and Kedma Mizraha, advocated for coexistence, cooperation, or dialogue. Palestinian parties, such as the National Party, Farmers Party, Village Cooperation Society, Islamic National Society, Al-Ahali Party, National Bloc Party, Defense Party, Reform Party, Arabic Palestinian Party, and Independence Party, entered into negotiations with the Jewish leadership or pursued nonviolence to achieve their goals. This happened even though there were continual tensions between Arabs and Jews, especially during the British Mandate.
Phase II (1948–1967) experienced little peacebuilding activity as the Arab states and Israel erected physical and psychological walls between them, having gone through their first war in 1948. While there was some domestic Arab-Jewish rapprochement within Israel, there was no interaction between the Arab and Israeli civil societies. “Given the shock and
