The PLO and Israel in Central America: The geopolitical dimension

Recently, attention has been drawn to the close relations between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the ruling Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. The support, training, and arms furnished by the PLO to the Sandinistas and like‐minded revolutionary movements in surrounding Central American countries have often been cited as proof that Nicaragua has been transformed into a base for international terrorism in the Western Hemisphere.

This article assesses the relationship between the PLO and the Sandinistas. In particular, it examines the geopolitical dimension of this relationship, that is, the extension or transposition of the conflict between the PLO and Israel in the Middle East to Central America. In this respect, PLO support and assistance to the Sandinistas and other revolutionary movements in surrounding countries has served as a counterbalance to Israeli support and arms sales to Nicaragua's neighbors in Central America.     

Altering conflict attitudes through prenegotiation contact

This experiment investigates the hypothesis that prenegotiation contact improves conflict attitudes between adversaries. Many different literatures theoretically support variations on this theme, but there has been very little empirical work which directly tests the idea. Using experimental methodology and an international conflict simulation to collect data, the findings from this study demonstrate that there is a strong recasting effect associated with prenegotiation contact. Attitudes are changed in relation to the conflict in general, views of the opponent, and views of self. While the results strongly support the positive effect of prenegotiation contact upon conflict attitudes, important questions are raised regarding other theoretical and empirical dimensions of the process as it relates to international conflict resolution.     

The long‐term stability of deterrence

In this article, we construct a model of deterrence that specifically integrates both systemic and decision‐making variables. After contrasting its underlying structure with more standard views of the deterrence relationship, we demonstrate the logical consistency of the power transition model with the expected utility framework. The model we develop combines and extends the insights of each of these two approaches, thereby permitting us to develop a theory of the necessary and sufficient conditions of major power war and conflict initiation. In other words, for the first time, we are able to specify, precisely, the theoretical consequences of variations in power dynamics, evaluations of the status quo, salience, and attitudes toward risk. As theories of the necessary conditions for international conflict, neither the power transition theory nor the expected utility model provide this information. Thus, by combining and then extending these two frameworks, we merely refine propositions implicit in each of them, making them more exact. The resulting structure provides several additional insights into the dynamics of nuclear conflict.     

Creating a counterhegemonic praxis: Jewish-Israeli activists and the challenge to Zionism

Despite over 20 years of peace process, Israel’s occupation, colonisation and repression continue, and the political and geographical fragmentation of the Palestinian people is proceeding apace. In this context, re-conceptualisations of the conflict and alternative visions of the future will take on increased urgency—both in Israel and Palestine. This article therefore focuses on two activist groups in Israel—Zochrot and Boycott from Within—engaged in provoking a confrontation with the hegemonic narrative of Zionism through a praxis of ‘re-framing’, ‘counter-branding’, solidarity and direct action. Theoretically, the research is placed within debates regarding hegemony and counterhegemony, and how activists develop praxis. Empirically, it is based on in-depth interviews with activists from these groups, analyses of their writings, observations of their social media activities and attendance at their events over a two-year period.     

Securing the State: From Zionist Ideology to Israeli Statehood

Between early 1947 and May 1948, the Zionist movement went from being a non-state actor representing the minority population within the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine to establishing the State of Israel, which would be recognised almost instantaneously by the world's two Superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Such a result, however, was never a given. What processes allowed a non-state actor, the Zionist movement, to secure international acceptance for the creation of a Jewish state in highly ambiguous circumstances? This analysis explores the dual-track adopted by the Zionist movement, whereby it worked to create facts on the ground within Palestine whilst securing support for its state-building project at the international level. By establishing state-like institutions in Palestine whilst building international support, the Jewish Agency was able to secure for itself a unique place from which to declare statehood.     

Choosing Transformation over Crisis in the Levant

A brief window of opportunity for an Israeli-Palestinian peace process has opened up since the Hamas-Fatah confrontation in Gaza in June. Yet the governments of both Israel and Palestine are weak, and if they fall, this could cause further instability and violence. More robust international involvement is required, including closer coordination and consultation between the Quartet and the Arab Quartet. A comprehensive process towards a final-status deal must be undertaken. This would include a new timetable for implementation of existing framework agreements, an international implementation and enforcement mechanism with close monitoring and compliance facilities, and a built-in conflict resolution mechanism to help the parties overcome disagreements in the process. Once serious progress is made on the peace front with the current Palestinian government, a concerted effort will have to be made to promote Fatah-Hamas reconciliation with a view to reintegrating Hamas into the political process.     

After Oslo,a paradigm shift? Redefining ‘peoples’, sovereignty and justice in Israel-Palestine

Since the Oslo Accords, conflict resolution regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict has been guided by two conjoined premises regarding (1) the identity and rights of the two ‘peoples’ involved, and (2) Israel’s sovereignty, or lack of it, in portions of Mandate Palestine. Although seemingly incontestable, in tandem these premises have paradoxically proved ruinous to the welfare of civilians under occupation by fostering notions that peace can be achieved through geographic partition to serve rival ethno-national projects for self-determination. Proposed here is that this approach is fundamentally flawed in accepting as legitimate the Jewish-settler ideology that ethnically dismembered the ‘Palestinian people’, as well as a form of Palestinian-Arab ethno-nationalism that has also become anachronistic in light of contemporary law and norms. Drawing on comparative politics regarding the construction of ‘peoples’ and constructivist international relations theory regarding sovereignty, this article proposes that these premises must therefore be reassessed and principles of collective rights be reinterpreted to suit the current condition of advanced settler colonialism in Mandate Palestine, which compels full political unification.     

奥巴马政府的综合性和平理念与中东和平进程

为改变中东局势恶化和美国在阿拉伯国家受损形象,奥巴马提出"综合性和平"的构想和政策,即:推动巴勒斯坦建国,敦促巴、以履行和平路线图职责,改善美国同叙利亚和黎巴嫩的关系,说服沙特等中东其他国家共同参与,以实现中东永久和平。然而,巴以矛盾能否调和,阿拉伯国家能否重树对美国的信任和信心,政策构想能否得到以色列和美国内犹太人财团的认知以及伊斯兰激进派的认可,都有待观察。     

Influencing Negotiation Willingness in the Middle East: The Potential Contributions of Private Actors

Numerous efforts to solve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict through diplomacy have taken place over the last four decades. To shed light on this dilemma in this article, the role that private actors and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) can play to enhance the negotiation willingness of nonstate armed groups was examined. It was argued that the NGOs in particular could play key roles in promoting the negotiation willingness of nonstate actors and also in influencing their internal dynamics and increasing their cohesion. Specifically, we examine two pairs of efforts to resolve the conflict in Israel and Palestine: the “Road Map” and the track two Geneva Initiative of 2003, and the Olmert Peace Plan and Jimmy Carter's visit to the Middle East in 2008. In the first pair, NGO efforts yielded unexpected results. The Palestinians were ready to compromise even though the deal offered by the Israelis did not seem very generous. In the second pair, the reaction of the Palestinians to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's generous peace offer seemed especially puzzling, illustrating, the internal dynamics between the Palestinian factions. Negotiation willingness was closely related to cohesion, and that cohesion plays an important role in conflict negotiations. President Jimmy Carter's efforts in 2008 to enhance cohesion among the Palestinians illustrated the potential that NGOs have to complement official negotiations.     

Interaction and participation in sub‐war conflict, 1959–63

This research is concerned with the spread of sub‐war conflicts. It is hypothesized that higher levels of interaction with the contestants in such conflicts increase the probability of participation. A study of the behavior of the states in the CREON data set toward the Cold War during the years 1959–63 supports this contention. Attention then centers on determining the types of states that are most prone toward high levels of interaction. The findings in this section indicate that alliance members have significantly higher levels of interaction than non‐members. For members there is a strong negative logarithmic relationship between a state's geographical distance from the center of conflict and its level of interaction. This suggests that security interests strongly affect the inclination of such states to participate. Among non‐members of alliances, economic involvement in the international system and ties to the Warsaw Treaty Organization are most closely associated with interaction.     

Militarized Interstate Disputes and United States Uses of Force

Research on questions such as whether national leaders use force in the international arena to divert attention from problems at home depends on a valid and reliable list of the incidents in which various states have used military force. In the case of the United States, several data sets have been used for this purpose. This research note compares two widely used data sets, the militarized interstate disputes (MID) data, which cover disputes involving all states between 1816 and 1992, and the data originally compiled by Stephen Kaplan and Barry Blechman, which cover only the United States since World War II. This comparison indicates that, in spite of its usefulness for other conflict research, the MID data are not appropriate for analyses of U.S. decisions to use force, including tests of the diversionary hypothesis. The MID data set excludes several categories of incidents relevant to major theoretical arguments about the use of force and includes many irrelevant incidents. These problems are likely to apply to similar analyses of other states as well. The Blechman and Kaplan data set also excludes some relevant events, but its omissions are less consequential. We offer a revised list of United States uses of force between 1870 and 1995.     

Religious Affiliation and Individual International-Policy Preferences in the United States

Empirical examination of individual-level survey data on national identity, in general, reveals a significant relationship between religious affiliation and an individual's international-policy preferences and that this relationship varies across Protestant denominations. Specifically, we test attitudes toward import and immigration policies, the role of international institutions, and unilateral policy actions. The empirical results indicate that individuals affiliated with conservative Protestant denominations are more likely to support positions on international issues that can be regarded as consistent with the anti-globalist right. We also find evidence of a reinforcing regional effect among conservatives in the south, and differences in the preferences of Baptist and non-Baptist African Americans.     

The Loneliness of Israel. The Jewish State’s Status in International Relations

Israel’s international position has declined in recent years. Even if its relationship with the EU – and even more with the US – is solid, there have been frictions that are not likely to disappear in the years to come. Its relations with other states, from Middle Eastern countries to India and China, are either highly problematic or have not improved despite the Israeli government’s efforts. It is Israel’s policy in the Occupied Territories that is being increasingly criticised and this is creating a sort of ‘vicious circle’ in Israel: the critiques reinforce Israeli’s ‘bunker mentality’, strengthening the ethno-nationalist character of Israeli politics and society and causing de-democratisation, and this, in turn, brings on more international isolation.     

Governing migration from a distance: interactions between climate,migration, and security in the South Mediterranean

Links between security and migration are well established and are associated with the meaning, status, and practice of borders in the international political system. This article assesses how and with what effects the effects of environmental and climate change have entered this relationship between migration and security. It does so by assessing the EU’s external governance of migration in “South Mediterranean Partner Countries” (SMPCs): Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, and Tunisia. It is argued that a focus on promoting “adaptation” and building “resilience” has developed that is consistent with the logic of governing migration from a distance. However, the article challenges ideas that environmental/climate change act as simple migration “triggers” and instead explores implications of movement towards and not away from risk, as well as the potential for populations to be trapped in areas that expose them to risk. It is shown that both have important implications for the relationship between migration, environmental/climate change, and security in SMPCs.     

The single-state alternative in Palestine/Israel

Since the Oslo Accords, the two-state solution has dominated, and frustrated, the official search for peace in Palestine/Israel. In parallel to it, an alternative struggle of resistance—centred upon the single-state idea as a more liberating pathway towards justice to the conflict—has re-emerged against the hegemony of Zionism and the demise of a viable two-state solution in Palestine/Israel. This paper inquires into the nature of this phenomenon as a movement of resistance. To this end, it reconstructs the re-emergence of the single-state solution intellectually and organisationally from within a Gramscian-inspired lens—while specifically focusing upon the centrality of the anti-Oslo writings of Edward Said and the consequent role of the Diaspora within this alternative. This it does from within a de-colonial approach to the politics of resistance which centres the political practices of the oppressed themselves in its analysis. Thus, it analyses the potential of the single-state alternative as a Gramscian ‘philosophical movement’ from within its own self-understandings, strategies and maps to power. In doing so, it aims to shed light upon a largely silenced pathway of resistance to the current peace process, to question its location between the ‘local’ and the ‘global’, and to take its possibility as a more just alternative to the status quo seriously.     

The Determinants of Palestinians' Attitudes Toward Peace with Israel

This study explains the variations in the Palestinians' support of the peace process with Israel. It uses multivariate Logit analysis, employing a large public opinion poll conducted in January 2000. It tests seven hypotheses, drawn from various perspectives, on the conditions of Palestinian support of or opposition to the peace process.
The study supports several of our hypotheses including the positive association between the Palestinians' perceptions of democracy and the support of peace and Palestinian women's support of the peace process. These results are important because they reconfirm the findings of the vast international relations literature, which established a strong linkage between democracy and peace and that women are more peace-oriented than men.
The study further suggests that the Palestinians associate their support of the peace process positively with their trust of domestic political institutions, a sound nation-building process, and governmental public accountability, and negatively with the perception of governmental corruption. It also reveals that the Palestinians' positive evaluation of their domestic institutions and Israel's commitment to a just and fair settlement to the conflict are more important determinants of the support of the peace process than efforts to improve their economic conditions and that the economic conditions have, at best, a small impact upon the support of or the opposition to peace. Lastly, the study points to the presence of a positive relationship between support of the peace process and each of political institutionalization, party identification, and the second level of leaders. This finding points to an emerging trend among Palestinians toward political maturation and stabilization of their domestic politics.     

Attachment Styles, Conflict Perception, and Adolescents' Strategies of Coping with Interpersonal Conflict

In this study, we examined the relationships between and among adolescents' attachment styles, conflict perceptions, and strategies for coping with conflicts with their peers. The study participants were 146 pupils at a junior high school who completed self-report questionnaires about their attachment styles (secure, anxious, or avoidant), conflict coping styles (avoiding, dominating, obliging, compromising, and integrating), and conflict perceptions (positive or negative), as well as social and academic status and the frequency with which they and their friends were involved in conflicts.
We found strong, statistically significant correlations between attachment style, coping strategy, and conflict perception. Generally, participants whose secure attachment scores were higher reported that they held more positive attitudes toward conflict, used more cooperative strategies to cope with conflicts, and were involved in conflicts less often; they also seemed to be less obliging and more dominating in their coping strategies. Avoidant attachment adolescents in our study displayed more negative conflict perceptions and made greater use of dominating strategies.
We also found that participants' conflict perceptions mediated the relationship between their attachment styles and coping styles. Because it is generally easier to change attitudes than it is to change attachment styles, which are more fixed, our findings suggest that changing adolescents' conflict perceptions, through school curricula, for example, may be an effective way to improve their ability to cope with conflict.     

War and Peace in Space and Time: The Role of Democratization

Democratization reduces the risk of war, but uneven transitions toward democracy can increase the probability of war. Using country-level data on democratization and international war from the period 1875–1996, we develop a general additive statistical model reassessing this claim in light of temporal and spatial dependence. We also develop a new geopolitical database of contiguities and demonstrate new statistical techniques for probing the extent of spatial clustering and its impact on the relationship between democratization and war. Our findings reaffirm that democratization generally does reduce the risk of war, but that large swings back and forth between democracy and autocracy can increase war proneness. We show that the historical context of peace diminishes the risk of war, while a regional context plagued by conflict greatly magnifies it.     

Arms transfer and recipient cooperation with supplier policy references: The case of the Middle East

The principal hypothesis of this paper is that the utility of arms transfers as an instrument of supplier influence is highly dependent upon two sets of variables over which the supplier has little control. This is partly because the recipeints’ demand for arms rests largely on forces outside the major power suppliers’ control. The relative impact of arms transfers is evaluated in conjunction with 1) the arms transfers to the recipients's principal local adversary; 2) the intensity of the recipient's conflict involvement; 3) the amount of political support it receives from its major power supplier/patron; and 4) the identity of the supplier country itself. Recipient countries are Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Supplier countries are France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States for the years 1947–1973.

Combat aircraft weighted by their performance characteristics and treated as the dominant weapon system are used as the “arms transfers” variable. Conflict, cooperation and political support variables include both verbal and non‐verbal actions weighted for their relative intensity by a 13 point interval scale.

Multiple regression using standardized (beta) coefficients is used in a time series analysis to determine the relative impact of arms transfers and other salient influences on the intensity of recipient cooperation to its principal major power supplier.

The findings in general support the main hypothesis. They suggest that arms transfers may be one useful instrument for extracting additional increments of cooperation from Egypt and Israel, (particularly in the context of Egyptian‐Israeli peace negotiations) but not for any of the other recipients in the study. However, this inference is valid only so long as those two countries continue to be engaged in an arms race with each other, heavily involved in conflict with their neighbors, and economically dependent upon outside powers. Cooperation of the Arab states with their respective major power suppliers is more strongly affected by the quantity of arms transferred to their respective regional adversaries and the intensity of political support from their suppliers than by their own arms transfers. Given the differential impact that the identity of the supplier had on cooperation intensity one conclusion is that the major power suppliers may not be equally successful in using arms as an instrument of political influence. Another is that the development of a “special relationship” between supplier and recipient in conjunction with supplier support for the recipient is probably a prerequisite for effectively using arms transfers as an instrument of supplier influence or coercion.     

The Influence of Religion and Ethnonationalism on Public Attitudes towards Amnesty: Northern Ireland as a Case Study

The granting of amnesties has now become a cornerstone of peacebuilding efforts in societies emerging from conflict. Yet, the impact of the role of religion and ethnicity in determining attitudes towards such arrangements has not been empirically assessed. Mindful of this omission, this article investigates the relationship between a range of religious measures — religious practices and beliefs in and about God — and ethnonationalist identity on public attitudes toward amnesty in Northern Ireland. Based on nationally representative survey data, the results suggest that, although Protestants are significantly more opposed to such an initiative than Catholics, both religious beliefs and ethnonational identity are significant, albeit divergent, net predictors with respect to their differing views.