Israeli and Palestinian Stories. Can Mediators Reconfigure Incompatible Narratives?

Valérie Rosoux

Global Policy, 2019, vol. 10, issue S2, 61-67

Abstract: The rise of further tensions and wars in the Middle East interconnects, oversimplifies and radicalizes narratives. The aim of the article is to question the scope and practical limits of the mediators’ power regarding parties’ representations of the past. The study is divided into four parts. The first describes the specific challenge faced by practitioners. The other parts explore the Israeli‐Palestinian case, focusing on three distinct approaches to contradictory narratives. The first can be summarized by the formula ‘neither nor’ (neither the Israeli narrative, nor the Palestinian narrative). In concealing interpretations of the past, mediators try to do away with the ‘tyranny of the past’. The second approach takes into consideration ‘both the Israeli and the Palestinian narratives’. It tends to be inclusive and to consider all interpretations of the past. The third and last approach applies a ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ reasoning in order to forge new interpretations of the past. At each stage of the research, the purpose is to question the actual impact of these approaches. Do they enable the parties to move on, or do they reinforce the deadlock? Do they open the minds of the negotiators or do they rather close them?

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12675

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:glopol:v:10:y:2019:i:s2:p:61-67

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1758-5880

Access Statistics for this article

Global Policy is currently edited by David Held, Patrick Dunleavy and Eva-Maria Nag

More articles in Global Policy from London School of Economics and Political Science Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().