Colonization by Other Means: Consequences of Peace Agreements in Northern Ireland and Palestine

Home , Adrian Guelke, New Ireland (Maine), Plantation of Ulster

COLONIZATION BY OTHER MEANS: CONSEQUENCES OF PEACE AGREEMENTS IN NORTHERN IRELAND AND PALESTINE

A thesis submitted to the Kent State University Honors College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for University Honors

Pádraigín O’Flynn

May, 2019

Thesis written by

Pádraigín O’Flynn

Approved by

______, Advisor

______, Chair, Department of Political Science

Accepted by

______, Dean, Honors College

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………..iv

CHAPTERS

I. INTRODUCTION…………….………………………………………..…1

Historical Background………………………..……..…………………….6

Literature Review………………………………………………..……….19

II. WHY PEACE? WHY NOW? POLITICAL ENVIRONMENTS IN THE 1980s…………….…….……23

Northern Ireland………………………..……………..………………….23

Palestine………………………..………………………………..……….29

III. NEGOTIATIONS AND FINAL AGREEMENTS………………………34

Good Friday Agreement………………..……………………..………….34

Oslo Accords………………………..………………………...………….44

IV. TWENTY YEARS ON: PRESERVATION AND TRANSFORMATION……………...….……..59

Economic Inequalities…………………..……………………….……….59

Geographic Segregation………………..……………………..………….65

V. CONCLUSIONS………………………………………………..….……72

REFERENCES………………………………………………………………..…………75

iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This thesis would not have been possible without the efforts and support of a significant number of people. First and foremost, my advisor, Dr. Joshua Stacher, deserves the highest of thanks and praise. He has supported me endlessly throughout this whole process and has been the greatest mentor I could’ve possibly asked for over the course of my undergraduate career at Kent State.

I also owe Dr. Lisa Bhungalia sincere thanks for both the opportunities and support which she has given me both for my thesis and my undergraduate education. She has been an incredible inspiration for me in the two years that I have known her.

Dr. Timothy Scarnecchia and Dr. Suzy D’Enbeau, as members of my committee, have been valuable resources and supporters as well, both during and after my defense, and have provided invaluable perspectives that are integral to my thesis. I am deeply indebted to all of the faculty members, both within Kent State and across my discipline, who have been role models and mentors for me.

Finally, I could not end this without expressing the deepest of gratitude to my parents for their constant love and encouragement. There is no way I would be on the path that I am without their support and all of the sacrifices they have made throughout my life in order to ensure I received the best possible education. My primary goal will always be to make them proud.

iv 1

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

A common practice in both international and interpersonal conflict resolution is to bring opposing parties to the table to negotiate their differences. This has become the goal for many international peace processes, and the global community praises such negotiations because they are seen as a step towards peace and conflict resolution through compromise. However, in practice, most peace talks fail to take into account the unequal power dynamics that inherently exist within any conflict – between governments and citizens, majorities and minorities, colonizers and colonized – despite the fact that this is a key component of conflict resolution theory.1 Bringing two parties to the table without addressing the power disparities between them only serves to perpetuate a relationship of inequality and normalize domination wherein one party maintains a systematic advantage over the other. Additionally, while both sides are expected to make concessions in peace negotiations, the starting point for these compromises almost always puts the oppressed party at a disadvantage. Peace talks have the ability to end physical violence, but they often fail to make participants and victims feel like the core grievances of the conflict are resolved, much less address structural inequalities.

1 Gregory M. Maney et al., “The Past's Promise: Lessons from Peace Processes in Northern Ireland and the Middle East,” Journal of Peace Research 43, no. 2 (2006), 182-183.

This thesis focuses on how peace processes not only preserve structures of settler colonial dominance, but also how such negotiations transform and deepen the preexisting socio-economic and political inequalities which harm the less powerful group. In particular, peace processes that fail to confront or change these power inequalities may stop or slow visible and violent attacks, but they also fail to produce a peace that leads to the conflicting parties practicing co-existence, intermingling, or exercising equal rights.

These dynamics manifest in ways we can see. Peace processes that fail to address inherited settler colonial structures tend to increase wealth inequality and the geographic separation of the groups engaged in the conflict.

The preservation of settler colonial power dynamics in the cases of Palestine2 and

Northern Ireland3 is due in part to the involvement of the American and British empires in forcing the colonized people – Palestinians and Irish Catholics/Republicans – to negotiate their respective agreements from a point of weakness. This led to unjust agreements in both the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland as well as the Oslo

Accords4 between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO); the incremental effects of these two agreements continue today, despite the fact that the Good

Friday Agreement is touted as the great success of the peace process era and the Oslo

2 For the purposes of this thesis, ‘Palestine’ refers to the entire territory of historic Palestine, not just occupied East Jerusalem, West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights. The areas occupied since 1967 will be referred to either individually or via the blanket term of ‘Occupied Territories.’ 3 Northern Ireland refers to the six northeastern counties of the province of Ulster which remain a part of the United Kingdom: Fermanagh, Tyrone, Down, Antrim, Derry, and Armagh. 4 The Oslo Accords are not an official peace agreement, but rather a Declaration of Principles and an Interim Agreement. However, for my purposes in this thesis, the Oslo Accords and Good Friday Agreement will be jointly referred to as ‘peace agreements’ due to the fact that my analysis is more focused on the processes leading to the final agreements and their aftermath rather than the technicalities and legalese of the documents themselves.

Accords are seen as its worst failure.5 The circumstances surrounding both processes were surprisingly similar and brought about the detrimental effects that persist to this day.

I plan to show these negative effects of peace processing without addressing settler colonial structures in three substantial ways: the reinforcement of pre-existing settler colonial structures, growing wealth inequality, and geographic separation between the groups. The failure of peace processes to dismantle the settler colonial structures in both

Northern Ireland and Palestine has transformed the tactics of British and Israeli settler colonialism, which was an outdated form of control on the brink of collapse, to a new reinvigorated form of political dominance that is more palatable to international liberal audiences. As a result, wealth inequality has continued to skyrocket while the physical separation of the oppressed group has reached new heights in the aftermath of both peace processes. All of this occurs as a result of peace processes that the world cheerleads as necessary to ending long-term conflicts, but which, in fact, alter the appearance of these conflicts rather than truly resolving them.

Because of the publicized and outward success of the Good Friday Agreement

(GFA), its deleterious effects in Northern Ireland are ignored, silenced, or erased. People applaud the signing of agreement rather than focus on its ramifications or consequences.

Though parties on both sides of the conflict reached an agreement, this does not mean that it was a truly beneficial agreement for all involved. The GFA did little to reconcile or reverse over 400 years of British settler colonialism in Ireland, and the economic and social inequalities which it maintained became repackaged and increased after the

5 Maney et al., “The Past’s Promise,” 188-193.

agreement was inked. The agreement did not decolonize6 the conflict because the settler colonial structures were not dismantled and the relationships between the conflicting parties were not altered. In fact, they got worse. The civil rights of the native Irish remain under attack, sectarian economic inequality continues to grow, and the British occupation of Northern Ireland was reinforced. The failure to dismantle these settler colonial structures remains the overarching limitation of the Good Friday Agreement, in that it created a false sense of peace and compromise without addressing the roots of power imbalances or producing a working peace between the parties. These failures are most visible in the sectarian nature of growing economic inequality and geographic separation.

The outcome of GFA attacked the civil rights of the native Irish while also impoverishing them and segregating them into their sectarian grouping. The GFA’s outcome was to separate the conflicting parties rather than normalize relations between them.

The Oslo Accords (1993-2000), on the other hand, are widely viewed as a peace processing failure. Their collapse in 2000 is relatively uncontested by scholars and politicians alike, but the point of contention in this case is typically whether or not the playing field upon which negotiations were held was unequal. When Israel entered the

Oslo Accords with Western diplomatic and financial support, it had existed a settler

6 I base my definition of decolonization on the conceptualization put forth by Noura Erakat in Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine, which is explained within the context of Zionist settler colonialism in Palestine: “Perhaps instead of asking what it will take to overcome Zionist opposition to Palestinian belonging, we should ask, what possibilities does the return of Palestinians and the recognition of their belonging create? …The journey will, by definition, be a project of building something new. Returning to Palestine will be literally going back to an unknown future. The overwhelming majority of Palestinians have not demanded Jewish-Israelis removal in the future, only a relinquishment of their desire to rule. Decolonization demands the settler reimagine himself or herself in this environment.” Noura Erakat, Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019), 238.

colonial state and a machine of Palestinian dispossession for nearly 50 years. Conversely,

Palestinians came to the table under a regime of Israeli closure and military occupation with their leadership divided between the PLO in exile and a decentralized national leadership within Palestine that developed during the First Intifada. Additionally,

Palestinians were represented by a body which did not enjoy the same status as a recognized state on the international stage. Being a state with diplomatic support from the world’s only global superpower allowed Israel to have the upper hand, and Palestinians were expected to make greater concessions when the odds were already stacked against them. As a result, the Oslo process allowed Israeli settler colonialism to morph into a new matrix of control, colonization, and native dispossession. As lawyer and academic Noura

Erakat argues, “the entire document was set up to establish a sovereignty trap, a perpetual condition of derivative sovereignty that could only be obtained in reward for participation in our own subjugation.”7

There are many similarities between Northern Ireland and Palestine/Israel in the realms of settler colonialism, majority/minority power dynamics, and peace negotiation failures. As a result, Northern Ireland has been used in significant comparisons with

South Africa and Palestine of deeply-divided societies; however, its use as a primary case in comparative analyses involving the peace process in Palestine has been limited.8

Despite the lack of comparative analysis, the Good Friday Agreement is often hailed as a

7 Noura Erakat, “BDS and Other Strategies for Palestinian Solidarity” (lecture, Cleveland Peace Action Annual Meeting, Cleveland, OH, March 3, 2019). 8 Adrian Guelke, “The Peace Process in South Africa, Israel and Northern Ireland: a Farewell to Arms?,” Irish Studies in International Affairs, Reflections on the Northern Ireland Conflict and Peace Process (2018), 95-96.

model for peace in Palestine/Israel even though the economic inequality and geographic segregation resulting from it continues to threaten the tentative peace in Northern Ireland.

This thesis puts forth a fresh perspective on the 1990s era of peace processes, and in doing so, will show that the advertised, touted success of peace agreements does not always mirror their effects on the ground. This thesis shines a light on the failures of the

Good Friday Agreement and the Oslo Accords, leading to the conclusion that failing to dismantle settler colonial structures in peace processes does not decolonize conflicts or pave a path towards a mutual future of co-existence with equal rights, but rather allows settler colonialism to embed itself more surreptitiously into society while renovating how the settler colonial side oppresses the colonized.

Historical Background

Northern Ireland

The Plantations of Ulster — often cited as the first official, policy-based instance of settler colonialism in Ireland9 — were settled in the early 17th century, a full century before the Act of Union (1707) which incorporated Scotland into Great Britain and nearly two centuries before a similar act brought Ireland into the United Kingdom (1800).

Between the invasion of the Normans in the late 12th century and the Elizabethan wars of the mid 16th century, the English maintained a presence in Ireland, but their power

9 John Patrick Montaño “‘Dycheyng and Hegeying’: The Material Culture of the Tudor Plantations in Ireland,” in Studies in Settler Colonialism: Politics, Identity and Culture, eds. Fiona Bateman and Lionel Pinkington (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011), 48.

fluctuated with that of the Irish/Gaelic chieftains.10 By the time of the Protestant

Reformation in the mid-late 16th century, however, the English promoted settler colonialism to gain control of the island, dispossessing anyone who attacked the crown and replacing them with thousands of Scottish settlers in order to ensure British dominance on the island.11 Britain had effectively integrated Scotland only a few years prior, and King James I utilized the newly-colonized Scots as settlers in the North of

Ireland, or the province of Ulster. The king approved the dispossession of rebellious landowners and claimed that only loyal landowners with legitimate claims to their lands had the right to keep them. However, the categories of “rebellious” and “loyal” landowners were very subjectively determined.

On the stolen land, plantations were built. The first plantation was set up by

Scottish Protestants in 1606, and quickly spread into Belfast and across counties Antrim and Down.12 In 1607, Catholic leaders began to flee for fear of persecution, and settlement of their land in Donegal, Tyrone, Derry, and Armagh began.13 The official, government-funded plan for the ‘Plantation of Ulster’ was formally put into place in

County Derry in 1610. London-based companies, which claimed that the settlers were

‘civilizing’ or colonizing Derry, predominantly funded the seizure of land by settlers.14

10 S.J. Connolly, “Settler colonialism in Ireland from the English conquest to the nineteenth century” in The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism, eds. Edward Cavanagh and Lorenzo Veracini (New York: Routledge, 2017), 52 – 53. 11 Dominic Beggan and Rathnam Indurthy, “The Conflict in Northern Ireland and the Clinton Administration’s Role,” International Journal on World Peace 16, no. 4 (1999), 3. 12 Connolly, “Settler colonialism in Ireland,” 53. 13 Thomas G. Mitchell, Native vs. Settler: Ethnic Conflict in Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, and South Africa (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2000), 12. 14 Connolly, “Settler colonialism in Ireland,” 53.

The companies divided the land between Scottish and English settlers who were prohibited to rent to Irish tenants. The native Irish were pushed out to the less fertile lands both outside and on the fringes of the province of Ulster — for which they often paid double rent. By 1622, settlers constituted 10% of the island’s population, numbering approximately 14,000.15 Though Irish resistance was limited, primarily as a result of both legal limitations and historical legacies of colonialism, the settlers failed to take complete control of even the northernmost regions of Ireland, primarily due to the fact that fewer settlers than emigrated to Ireland than had been anticipated.16 However, tensions were structured into the equation: Protestant settlers were fearful of the dispossessed natives, while the native Irish Catholics were resentful of the violence under which they were displaced, expelled, and continuing to suffer.

Over the following 150 years, British tactics of settler colonialism in Ireland would evolve from the active seizure of land to the structural violence of legal restrictions on the civil and political rights of Irish Catholics. These restrictions were harshest in their limits on land ownership across the island, and, as a result of them, by 1778 barely five percent of the land on the island was legally held by its native inhabitants, many of whom were now forced to become tenant famers on the lands which they used to own in order to survive.17

Unlike previous periods of intensified British control of the island, however, this era never waned. Irish rejection of this fate led to the rise of organized republican

15 Connolly, “Settler colonialism in Ireland,” 53. 16 Mitchell, Native vs. Settler, 6. 17 Connolly, “Settler colonialism in Ireland,” 55.

resistance. They launched multiple unsuccessful uprisings that eventually culminated in the 1916 Easter Rising and Irish War of Independence (1919-1921). These revolts led to the partition of the island wherein the six northeastern counties remained under British rule as a part of the United Kingdom, while the rest of the island became the independent

Irish Free State. While the government of the south attempted to build a new state and repair its relationship with its closest neighbor, Irish Catholics in the newly-established

Northern Ireland grew more intensely oppressed politically, economically, and socially.18

In an attempt to reinvigorate the armed struggle for the unification of the island amidst growing tensions, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) launched armed border campaigns in 1939 and from 1956 – 1962, but they were ineffective. As global movements for civil rights and decolonization of the Global South began to strengthen during the 1960s, Irish civil rights activists joined the struggle for their comrades in the

North. The British and settler loyalists in the North increasingly unleashed violence against Irish Catholics as their political rights were being even more strongly stifled. By

1968, confrontations between civil rights activists and their oppressors ushered in the era known as “the Troubles” as the native Irish rose up once more to fight for their rights.

18 For example, during this period, Eamon de Valera – leader of anti-Treaty forces during the Irish Civil War – built close relationships with senior British officials such as prime minister Neville Chamberlain and Malcolm MacDonald of the Dominions Office. In 1938, MacDonald is recorded as communicating to de Valera: “I cherish especially the memory of our friendly and fruitful talks together. If the personal relations which we established are a symbol of the friendship which will gradually grow between the peoples of the two islands, then indeed is the future bright.” Diarmaid Ferriter, “Bullets and ballot boxes: a history of Anglo-Irish relations since the Easter Rising,” BBC History Magazine, May 2016, https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/bullets-and-ballot- boxes-a-history-of-anglo-irish-relations-since-the-easter-rising/.

On October 5, 1968, police in Derry injured over 30 people when they unleashed indiscriminate violence in the form of batons and water cannons to break up a civil rights protest in Derry.19 In response, local paramilitaries on each side reemerged – the Ulster

Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Defense Association (UDA) for the loyalists and the

IRA, absent in the early years of the Troubles prior to the split of the Provisionals, for the republicans. In mid-1969, the British government granted the Royal Ulster

Constabulary’s (RUC) request for more troops on the ground in Belfast and Derry.20 By this time, 7,000 Catholic refugees had crossed the border into the Republic of Ireland.21

As the IRA recommitted to armed struggle and launched a campaign against the British

Army, the Parliament of Northern Ireland at Stormont (which at this point functioned as a devolved governing body that controlled regional affairs but continued to answer to

Westminster) passed emergency legislation to introduce internment without trial against those suspected of insurgency. This order angered Catholics specifically, as they were targeted for in-depth interrogations and were disproportionately incarcerated in the special prisons set up under the internment regime. This all occurred within the context of house searches, curfews, and other British military campaigns, which had been fact of life in Northern Ireland prior to the Troubles but spiked following the return of British forces.

Divisions within each side fractured the system of shared governance, and on March 20,

1972 – following mass demonstrations against the January murder of thirteen civil rights

19 Bob Purdie, Politics in the Streets: The origins of the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1990): 3. 20 Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, “From War to Uneasy Peace in Northern Ireland,” in A Farewell to Arms? Beyond the Good Friday Agreement, eds. Michael Cox, Adrian Guelke, and Fiona Stephens (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 44. 21 Kennedy-Pipe, “From War to Uneasy Peace,” 45.

demonstrators by the Parachute Regiment of the British Army in Derry – the British government closed Stormont, introducing direct rule.22

Direct rule drew the Catholic community to the more radical views of the IRA

(despite its attempts to create a moderate center) and contributed to some of the highest levels of violence seen throughout the Troubles; the deaths of 480 people in 1972 is the highest casualty rate of the conflict by far, with the next highest occurring in 1976 with

297 deaths.23 Following the failure of a 1973 referendum (boycotted by Catholics) as to whether the North should remain a part of the United Kingdom, the British government released a White Paper that created a power-sharing executive and the Council of Ireland, which was meant to promote cooperation between the North and the South as well as foster the development of a devolved government.24 This policy collapsed in mid-1974 as a result of blowback from unionists, who claimed that the Council of Ireland was little more than a back channel in favor of Irish unity.

Following the dissolution of Stormont in 1972, the British government made a clear point to avoid announcing a state of emergency or declaring war on the IRA in order to emphasize that the situation was one of criminal activity rather than an anti- colonial struggle. The British point was to not legitimize the IRA or endorse the grievances of the colonized majority.25 This decision was compounded by the removal of special category status. Paramilitary prisoners convicted of terrorism were considered

22 Purdie, Politics in the Streets, 4. 23 Malcolm Sutton, Bear in mind these dead…: An Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland (Belfast: Beyond the Pale Publications, updated 2002), https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/sutton/book/. 24 Kennedy-Pipe, “From War to Uneasy Peace,” 47. 25 Kennedy-Pipe, “From War to Uneasy Peace,” 48.

criminals, which prevented them from wearing their own clothes and freely associating with other prisoners. These were rights they had enjoyed when they were classified as political prisoners.26

Hunger strikes against this policy change, led by Bobby Sands, were widely condemned by both the European Commission on Human Rights as well as the U.S. government. At this point, the republican movement began its ‘ballot box and armalite’ strategy of resistance – this referred to its plan to both run candidates in elections to local governing bodies and the Dáil as well as utilize (secretly, of course) the armed struggle methods of the IRA in order to defeat loyalists and the British.

In a surge of support that Sinn Féin received following the 1981 hunger strikes, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) attempted to arrange the New Ireland

Forum (to which Sinn Féin was not invited) 27 in order to gain some form of a unitary position among the Irish nationalist parties. The three options offered in 1984 – a unitary state, a federal system, and a joint Anglo-Irish authority – were rejected by British Prime

Minister Margaret Thatcher. The New Ireland Forum published a report that became the foundation for creating the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, which provided a discussion forum for both British and Irish ministers as well as closer collaboration on security issues. In 1987, the IRA began a two-year campaign of violence in England itself,

26 Kennedy-Pipe, “From War to Uneasy Peace,” 48. 27 Sinn Féin was not invited to participate, as the New Ireland Forum Report established that “participation in the Forum was open to all democratic parties which reject violence and which have members elected or appointed to either House of the Oireachtas or the Northern Ireland Assembly.” Because Sinn Féin had connections to the IRA, they were ineligible. Only Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, SDLP, and Labour were invited. “New Ireland Forum Report,” (Dublin: The Stationery Office, May 2, 1984), https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/politics/nifr.htm

specifically targeting British military personnel. The Brits responded with harsh crackdowns in both internment and violent ‘policing’ that led the IRA to doubt the possibility of armed struggle succeeding in pushing the British out of Ireland. Sinn Féin began backchannel negotiations with John Hume of the SDLP and the Dublin government. Key to these negotiations were talks of decommissioning weapons.

The IRA was wary of decommissioning their arms however, because, while the

British Army was no longer a major risk to the lives of republicans, loyalist paramilitaries increasingly were.28 The peace process resumed, however, especially after the election of

Tony Blair and a Labour government in Britain. Blair, though still reaffirming his support for the union, broke from previous British policy in reopening inquiries into the events of

Bloody Sunday in 1972 and seeking outside intervention from then-President Bill Clinton and his special envoy to Northern Ireland, Senator George Mitchell.29 Though the Good

Friday Agreement was signed by the conflicting parties in 1998, it was, like the 1985

Anglo-Irish Agreement, simply a framework meant to reduce violent attacks rather than build a peace around co-existence and equal rights in the region. Northern Ireland remains a divided society.

Palestine

As nationalist movements began to grow in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century,

Jews established Zionism with the goal to secure a Jewish homeland. The Zionists modeled itself on European national movements. The first group of Zionist immigrants,

28 Kennedy-Pipe, “From War to Uneasy Peace,” 52. 29 Kennedy-Pipe, “From War to Uneasy Peace,” 53.

known as the First Aliya which settled in Palestine between 1882 and 1903, aimed to set up a plantation-style settlement colony, but were inhibited by economic and political factors on the ground when they arrived. Even the small legal land purchases made by

European Zionists relied on the Palestinian Arab workforce.30 Zionism had settler colonial ambitions but not enough settlers. Theodor Herzl, known as the ‘father of

Zionism,’ claimed the immigration of Jews to Palestine would fail unless they secured territorial sovereignty because there would be an “inevitable moment when the native population feels itself threatened, and forces the [Ottoman] Government to stop a further influx of Jews.”31

By the start of World War I, the Ottoman Empire was in irreparable decline. In

1917, British took military control over Palestine. Yet, as they became the military occupier of historic Palestine, they had left a trail of contradictory statements and policies. In 1916, agents of the British government promised the Hashemite family in secret that they would be supported in establishing an Arab state if they supported Britain in the war. Meanwhile, Sir Arthur Balfour publicly announced the Declaration in

November 1917 that the British government supported the establishment of “a Jewish national home in Palestine.” At the time, Jews represented nine-percent of the population.

The Balfour declaration claimed that 91-percent of the non-Jewish community in

Palestine would see their civil and religious (but not political) rights protected. In 1923, the British established the Mandate of Palestine – territory which now contains Israel, the

30 Gershon Shafir, Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 17-18. 31 Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, trans. Jacob M. Alkow (New York: Dover Publications, 1988), 95.

Gaza Strip, and the West Bank – via the League of Nations. Fascism in Europe and immigration controls in the United States increased the attempts by Jews to immigrate to

Palestine. Yet, as more people arrived on Palestine’s shores, the native population grew restive. Clashes between Jews and Palestinians became regular occurrences as two competing national movements rivaled for space. After brutally putting down the 1936

Arab Revolt, the British issued the 1939 White Paper that recognized the existence of two national groups seeking self-determination.32 As a consolation to the majority grouping, the British claimed they would limit Jewish immigration to Palestine. This decision, however, heightened the Zionists’ response against the Mandate authorities including sabotaging British military installations and bombing their headquarters.

The creation of the United Nations after the end of World War II introduced a new international authority to decide Palestine’s fate, as the British turned over their mandate in the hopes of having it returned as a UN trusteeship. However, the UN instead voted on November 29, 1947 to partition Palestine. This would include a Jewish state and an Arab state, making up 56% and 43% of the territory, respectively, despite the fact that the population of Palestinian Arabs outnumbered the Zionist Jewish population by nearly a 3-to-1 margin at the moment of partition. Palestinian Arabs and the surrounding Arab states rejected the plan, while Zionist leadership tentatively accepted it with the intent to expand upon its planned borders.33 As soon as the UN made its decision to partition,

32 Erakat, Justice for Some, 25. 33 Following the proposition of partition by the United Nations, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, stated that “after the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine” when addressing the Zionist Executive, while Chaim Weizmann, the first President of Israel, claimed that “partition might be only a temporary

fighting broke out between the two communities. By April 1948, the well-trained and well-armed Zionist forces militarily had secured most of the territory which had been allotted to them by the UN. They had by that point expelled and dispossessed over

300,000 Palestinians while depopulating major urban cities such as Jaffa and Haifa. For example, Haifa had a population of 75,000 Palestinians in January 1948. By late April, there were only 3,500 Palestinians left in the city.34 Britain left Palestine on May 15,

1948, at which point Israel declared independence and began to pursue territory beyond the UN-proposed borders. Five Arab armies got involved in an attempt to stop the flood of refugees crossing into their countries. The Arab states hardly attacked the territory of the new Israeli state. For example, Jordan never shelled Israel, despite being present in

Jerusalem. By the end of the fighting in January 1949, Zionist militias – which became the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) following the state’s creation – had ethnically cleansed the Palestinian population, killing or dispossessing at least 700,000 people.35 When the war ended in 1949, Israel negotiated individual armistice agreements with the Arab States that stipulated that the State of Israel would cover 77% of the mandate territory, while

Jordan would administer East Jerusalem and the West Bank and Egypt would control the

Gaza Strip.

Despite this armistice, tensions remained as the Middle East became a focus of the Cold War superpowers. Against a backdrop of border clashes between Israel and

arrangement for the next twenty to twenty-five years.” See Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (New York: Pantheon, 1988), 22. 34 Donna Lippes, “Haifa,” Zochrot (August 2017), https://www.zochrot.org/en/village/49192. 35 Ilan Pappé, The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 18.

Syria in 1967, the Soviet Union misinformed the Syrian government that Israel was building up troops on its northern border.36 In May, Egyptian troops amassed along the border of the Sinai Peninsula and Israel. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser closed the straits of Tiran and blockaded Israel’s port of Eilat. On June 5, Israel preemptively struck the Egyptian and Syrian air forces, destroying them, while also defeating the

Jordanian army and occupying the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula, and Golan

Heights, all within six days. In the aftermath of the war, the UN passed Security Council

Resolution 242, which called for Israeli withdrawal from territories it had seized but failed to mention or recognize the Palestinian right to self-determination. Following the

1973 war, Egypt and Israel signed the Camp David Accords in 1979. Israel failed to implement the portion of the Accords which would have granted the West Bank and Gaza

Strip autonomy for five years; additionally, Israel continued to build settlements.37

Rather than withdrawing from all the territories it had occupied in the 1967 war,

Israel began to administer a military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The occupation permeates all aspects of Palestinian life, regulating and restricting movement, political organizing, resistance, social interaction, and political and civil rights.

Additionally, Israel utilizes tactics of closure and collective punishment in order to further subdue the Palestinian population. These include home demolitions, movement restrictions, curfews, uprooting of olive trees, an ID/permit system, closure of roads and public areas, and administrative detention, amongst others. A key method of punishment

36 Joel Beinin and Lisa Hajjar, “Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Primer,” Middle East Research and Information Project (February 2014), 6. 37 Joel Singer, “Twenty five years since Oslo: an insider’s account,” Fathom Journal 21 (August 2018), http://fathomjournal.org/oslo-25-twenty-five-years-since-oslo-an-insiders-account/.

is Israel’s use of its military court system in the Occupied Territories, which convicts

Palestinians at a rate of over 99%.38 Since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, over

800,000 Palestinians have been arrested and hundreds of thousands have been detained, while 40 percent of the male population has endured imprisonment at least once.39

Beyond these direct consequences of the military occupation, Israel continues to confiscate more land in the Occupied Territories. Israel continues to build settlements – despite their illegality under international law – across the West Bank and East

Jerusalem, and strategically locates them in order to fracture the Palestinian population by placing them in archipelago-like pockets of nominal autonomy. Israel had done the same in the Gaza Strip from the beginning of the occupation until the disengagement and evacuation of 7,000-8,000 settlers in 2005. Since 2007, Israel has maintained its occupation of Gaza through a suffocating siege where they control the movement of goods and people into and out of Gaza.

In December 1987, mobilization within Palestine grew into a mass movement across the West Bank and Gaza known as the First Intifada. Popular committees under the National Leadership, rather than the exiled PLO leadership, organized the uprising.

The objective was to use economic and political civil disobedience to highlight the blanket of Israeli control to foreign audiences while also targeting of Israeli military installations to break the occupation. Israel cracked down on the resistance, murdering

38 “Israel: 50 Years of Occupation Abuses,” Human Rights Watch, June 4, 2017, https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/06/04/israel-50-years-occupation-abuses. 39 Beinin and Hajjar, “Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” 7.

and arresting Palestinians at extraordinary rates.40 The intifada continued, despite intracommunity rivalries, and began to shift Palestinian political power from the PLO in

Tunis to the rising leadership within the Occupied Territories.41 Israel faced a dire situation and they needed a lifeline for the occupation. In response, the PLO, which felt its relevance was waning, recognized the State of Israel in December 1988. The PLO also called for an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, and renounced terrorism, in the hopes of beginning negotiations with the Israeli government. Israel failed to respond and refused to change their stance insisting the PLO was a terrorist organization. However, the PLO’s diplomatic isolation following its decision to oppose

U.S. actions in the Gulf War led to its willingness to make more concessions in order to enter negotiations. At the same time, American hopes to stabilize the Middle East and assure its position in the region by resolving the conflict forced a reluctant Israel to agree to negotiate with non-PLO Palestinians and other Arab delegations at the 1991 Madrid

Peace Conference. The peace process in Palestine/Israel began.

Literature Review

The theoretical assumptions of this thesis are primarily based in the fields of settler colonialism and conflict resolution. Works by Patrick Wolfe, Caroline Elkins, and

40 Over the course of the Intifada, Israeli security forces and civilians killed a combined total of nearly 1,500 Palestinians, of which over 300 were children. “Fatalities in the first Intifada,” B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, accessed March 26, 2019, https://www.btselem.org/statistics/first_intifada_tables. 41 Erakat, Justice for Some, 140-141.

Susan Pedersen lay out the fundamental definition of settler colonialism which underpins the analysis in this thesis. Additionally, in the field of conflict resolution, two key debates

– the merits of consociationalism versus integrationism and the roles of grassroots movements and elite negotiators – are vital to the critiques of peace processes in Northern

Ireland and Palestine which this thesis puts forth.

Settler colonial studies offers crucial insights for this project, as both Northern

Ireland and Palestine are considered settler colonial cases. Settler colonialism is a form of invasion wherein the colonial power has a specific intention to move its people onto the land and create a new society that mimics their home country in both standard of living and cultural homogeneity. The arriving settlers do so by acquiring land, and developing mechanisms of private property, in an attempt to establish permanence and a basis for expanding settlement. Wolfe (2006) explains settler colonialism as a structure rather than a historical event.42 He argues that the logic of elimination of the native is the key underlying characteristic of settler colonialism, explaining that “elimination is an organizing principal of settler-colonial society rather than a one-off (and superseded) occurrence.”43 The consequence is that settler colonialism creates a contest between settlers and natives for land, which is also central to life. By acquiring the land at the expense of the native population, a settler colony eliminates the native population, often through dispossession, expulsion, genocide, ethnic cleansing, assimilation, or cultural erasure. Another key characteristic of settler societies is institutionalized settler privilege,

42 Patrick Wolfe, “Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006), 387 – 409. 43 Wolfe, “Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native,” 388.

as Elkins and Pedersen (2005) explain. They also emphasize the way that this privilege is visible through the settler–native distinction in legal and social structures, particularly in settler dominance of government. 44 They argue that “settler colonies…are marked by pervasive inequalities, usually codified in law, between settler and indigenous populations…the caste division between the settler and the indigene is usually built into the economy, the political system, and the law, with particular economic activities and political privileges…reserved for members of the setter population.”45 This shows how settler colonialism permeates all aspects of the settler society at all times.

Furthermore, two key debates in conflict resolution materialize uniquely within the context of settler colonialism and underscore the peace processes analyzed in this thesis. First, the dichotomy between consociationalism versus integrationism and debates over their merits are very significant to understanding the aims of negotiators and final peace agreements. Consociationalism aims to protect the ethos of each respective community involved in the conflict through a form of power-sharing government and provides the basis for the Good Friday Agreement, while integrationism promotes intergroup cooperation and collaboration across communities specifically in the provision of public goods and services.46 Cammett and Melsky (2012), however, argue that neither consociationalism nor integrationism produce sustainable peace, noting that “they

44 Caroline Elkins and Susan Pederson, “Settler-Colonialism: A Concept and Its Uses” in Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century, eds. Caroline Elkins and Susan Pederson, (New York: Routledge, 2005). 45 Elkins and Pederson, “Settler-Colonialism” in Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century, 5. 46 Melani Cammett and Edmund Malesky define consociationalism based upon the definition of Lijphart (1977) and integrationism based upon the definition of Horowitz (1985). See Melani Cammett and Edmund Malesky, “Powersharing in Postconflict Societies: Implications for Peace and Governance,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 56, no. 6 (2012), 986-987.

produce short-term ceasefires but do not lay the basis for long-term peace and democratization.” 47 They favor moving beyond the dichotomy of installing a consociational or integrative procedural democracy after conflict in an attempt to more deeply understand the necessity of building a system which provides solid, sustainable governance and public service delivery. This proposition is notable, as moving beyond the typical consociationalism-versus-integrationism dichotomy is key within settler colonial societies, where institutions and structural power dynamics are built to privilege the settlers over the natives.

Additionally, the role of grassroots movements in concert with elite negotiations has become a key debate in conflict resolution. Utilizing a comparative case-study of

Palestine and Northern Ireland to investigate the importance of these peacemaking dimensions, Pearson (2001) argues that grassroots participation in negotiations is vital to their success and durability.48 In doing so, he explains that the inclusion of grassroots initiatives which occur in concert with elite negotiations strengthen the sustainability of the resulting peace agreement. The difficulty of implementing this in settler colonial societies, however, is that the natives have been structurally excluded from political institutions, while their grassroots political organizing has been extremely limited and controlled by settler governance. As a result, building an inclusive grassroots movement in concert with elite political negotiations may be limited in settler colonial societies.

47 Cammett and Malesky, “Powersharing in Postconflict Societies,” 985. 48 Frederic S. Pearson, “Dimensions of Conflict Resolution in Ethnopolitical Disputes,” Journal of Peace Research 38, no. 3 (2001), 275-287.

CHAPTER TWO

Why Peace? Why Now? Political Environments in the 1980s

The 1980s and early 1990s were tumultuous times globally, and Northern Ireland and Palestine were not insulated from such upheaval. Additionally, they were impacted by local issues – continued violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the lead up to and violent response to the First Intifada in Palestine. Despite all of this, global leaders and local actors attempted to build the preliminary blocks of what would later become the two formal peace processes.

Northern Ireland

Ever-pervasive hostility within Northern Ireland was the primary characteristic of the pre-peace period. Dominic Bryan, an anthropologist at Queen’s University Belfast, recounted a story from his time living in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and pointed out that “a republican friend of mine once told me that going down to Dublin was like taking off a heavy overcoat. All of the things that affected interactions up here didn’t matter down there.”49 This showcases the constant tensions weighing upon every moment of Irish Catholic and republican life in Northern Ireland. The British presence was

49 Dominic Bryan (Professor: Queen’s University Belfast School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics) in discussion with the author, July 2018.

pervasive in all aspects of society, and sectarian considerations were built into almost all day-to-day interactions.

In a more specific example, another researcher, Adrian Guelke, recalls his time living in Belfast in the 1970s, prior to the start of negotiations.

When I drove through [the city center] there would be army patrols and roadblocks, and they were a nuisance of course, but it was never more than that. The soldiers were casual, and they let you on your way. But driving through West Belfast? That was a whole different story. When I was stopped there, immediately the soldiers would have their guns trained on me. Do you know what that feels like? To have guns trained on your heart and know that if anything goes wrong – a car backfires, someone sets off a firecracker, the soldier gets spooked, anything – you’re dead right there. It was a whole different situation.50

However, some of the surface issues underpinning the conflict, such as limitation of voting rights and lack of access to housing and jobs, began to subside as equality legislation was introduced in the 1970s, while republicans began to change their view of the merits of armed resistance versus challenging the status quo in electoral politics.51

These reformist measures alone were not enough to correct past discrimination, however, nor were they implemented quickly enough to stop the barrage of resistance from Irish republicans. In addition to these measures, professor of politics Paul Arthur explains that backchannel negotiations and the seemingly failed attempts at building peace were absolutely key to the eventual signing of the peace agreement.52 During the period of

1970 through 1993, four solutions were proposed, but all of them failed. In 1973, the

50 Guelke’s statement references the demographic dichotomy between West Belfast and the city center; West Belfast has historically been a predominantly Catholic/republican area of the city, while the city center is significantly more mixed or has a slight Protestant/unionist demographic majority. Adrian Guelke (Professor: Queen’s University Belfast Centre for the Study of Ethnic Conflict) in discussion with the author, July 2018. 51 Dominic Bryan (Professor: Queen’s University Belfast School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics) in discussion with the author, July 2018. 52 Paul Arthur (Professor of Politics: Ulster University Department of Applied Social and Policy Sciences) in discussion with the author, July 2018.

Sunningdale Agreement created a means of executive power-sharing, but it collapsed in late 1974. In 1975, the Northern Ireland constitutional convention was called, in an attempt to address the situation, but because it was dominated by unionists who opposed power-sharing and suggested a return to the majority government of previous decades, it was put on hiatus and later dissolved in 1976.53 Global involvement was heightened when, in 1977, the Carter Administration released a statement emphasizing human rights and promising U.S. investment in both Northern Ireland and the border counties of the

Republic if violence ceased.54 This document essentially managed to blur the significance of the border while also putting pressure on the U.S.’s special relationship with Britain.

Between 1979 and 1981, the Atkins Initiative attempted to bring the opposing parties together, but it did so with the knowledge that Irish unity would be ruled out.55 This also failed. Finally, from 1982 until 1986, the parties attempted to discuss devolution on areas that were less contested –– namely education, agriculture, and the environment. The UUP refused to take part in these talks, while the SDLP and Sinn Féin stood for election but refused to take their seats. The SDLP did not want an inter-community solution, but

53 Kennedy-Pipe, “From war to uneasy peace in Northern Ireland,” in A Farewell to Arms?, 47. 54 James T. Wooten, “Carter Vows to Aid Recovery of Ulster If Peace Is Reached,” The New York Times, August 31, 1977, https://www.nytimes.com/1977/08/31/archives/carter-vows-to-aid-recovery-of-ulster-if- peace-is-reached-president.html. 55 Humphrey Atkins was appointed Secretary of State of Northern Ireland by Margaret Thatcher in May 1979. In October, he invited the main political parties in Northern Ireland – Ulster Unionists (UUP), Democratic Unionists (DUP), Social Democratic and Labour (SDLP), and Alliance (APNI) – to a conference at Stormont to discuss a settlement. He published a White Paper in November detailing the aims of the conference, but explicitly ruled out a United Ireland, confederation system, or Northern Irish independence as solutions. The UUP had already rejected Atkins’ invitation, but the publication of the White Paper led to divisions within the SDLP on whether they ought to attend the conference with the ‘Irish dimension’ having been ruled out as a topic of discussion. Paul Bew and Gordon Gillespie, Northern Ireland: A Chronology of the Troubles, 1968-1999 (Dublin: Gill and MacMillan, 1999).

rather one between the British and Irish governments.56 Once the British and Irish governments became involved, the issue moved from internal to international.

In 1980, the Anglo-Irish Agreement negotiation process began when – as Paul

Arthur argues – the British recognized that they couldn’t solve the Northern Ireland issue without the Irish government. He goes on to claim that, contrary to many analyses, the agreement which came out of these negotiations was not a failure, despite the fact that its implementation did not last.57 It provided a doctrine of consent for Irish unity, which meant that the people of Northern Ireland would have to agree to unity by referendum and created a British-Irish Secretariat. It referenced UN Article 102 in order to bring in a system of checks and balances in the form of the international community. It also stated that the British and Irish governments would cooperate on security, which made it difficult for the IRA to carry out attacks. It also had such coalitional support that it couldn’t be brought down via a boycott or Unionist veto, as previous agreements had been. Professor Guelke argues that this agreement was arguably the earliest real result of backchannel negotiations.58 He notes that it managed to put somewhat of an end to Sinn

Féin’s political rise, and as a result, republicans viewed it as a counterinsurgency tactic used against them.59 However, the more it angered unionists, the more republicans supported it. Although it was an agreement between the two regional governments

56 Paul Arthur (Professor of Politics: Ulster University Department of Applied Social and Policy Sciences) in discussion with the author, July 2018. 57 Paul Arthur (Professor of Politics: Ulster University Department of Applied Social and Policy Sciences) in discussion with the author, July 2018. 58 Adrian Guelke (Professor: Queen’s University Belfast Centre for the Study of Ethnic Conflict) in discussion with the author, July 2018. 59 Adrian Guelke (Professor: Queen’s University Belfast Centre for the Study of Ethnic Conflict) in discussion with the author, July 2018.

(Britain and Ireland), American involvement is important to note. Guelke argues that the main reason that then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher signed it was due to the pressure of then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who was under pressure from Tipp O’Neill, the

Speaker of the House.60 Additionally, when Bobby Sands was elected in 1981 for the constituency of Fermanagh and South Tyrone, the IRA realized that they needed to – and feasibly could – change the entire dynamic of the struggle from military to political.61

This electoral shift in favor of Sinn Féin was also emboldened when, in 1988, three members of the IRA were executed by the SAS in Gibraltar.62 Though the 1987 SDLP-

Sinn Féin talks and Sinn Féin’s 1992 “Towards a Lasting Peace” document were both key turning points which showed Sinn Féin’s commitment to the political process, the immediate predecessors to the formal peace process were the secret talks which began between both the SDLP and Sinn Féin as well as the IRA and the British/Irish governments, as well as the Adams-Hume talks of 1993, all of which served to bring the extreme positions into conversation with the moderate ones.63 As ex-political prisoner

Peadar argues, the Adams-Hume talks primed the pump for larger, more formal discussions.64 Talks and agreements failed when the political parties within Northern

Ireland attempted to internally address the situation, and additionally when the British and Irish governments worked to do the same, which showcases the importance of an external mediator to bring all parties to the table – in this case, the United States.

60 Adrian Guelke (Professor: Queen’s University Belfast Centre for the Study of Ethnic Conflict) in discussion with the author, July 2018. 61 Peadar (Tour Guide: Coiste na nIarchimí) in discussion with the author, July 2018. 62 Seamus (Tour Guide: Coiste na nIarchimí) in discussion with the author, July 2018. 63 Mansergh, “Background to the Irish peace process” in A Farewell to Arms?, 28. 64 Peadar (Tour Guide: Coiste na nIarchimí) in discussion with the author, July 2018.

In the 1990s, there was also an atmosphere of global figures being marketed as great leaders if they resolved conflicts. As Lord Alderdice explains, there were leaders like David Trimble, John Hume, Gerry Adams, and Martin McGuinness who could see more broadly the necessity of the peace process, while some such as Ian Paisley did not.65

As Guelke notes, the Clinton Administration wanted to solve the conflict as an affirmation of their outward-looking foreign policy.66

The key point to clarify is that, while the peace process in Palestine was imposed by external actors, the peace process in Northern Ireland – though significantly impacted by external factors, as will be further explained later – had developed more organically and internally. This difference played a key role in the ability of the Good Friday

Agreement to end extralegal violence, something which the Oslo Accords never managed to achieve. George Mitchell managed to get unionists to overcome the idea that all

Americans were biased against them, and the U.S. managed to place itself as an honest broker, which is something it never managed to do in Palestine. The Irish diaspora in

America also played an absolutely key role in bolstering the disadvantaged negotiating position of the republican side in Northern Ireland.67

While international support was being drained from Palestinians at every turn,

Irish republicans had a glimmer of hope from the Irish diaspora in the U.S., which pressured those formulating American policy on the Irish issue into being at least

65 John Alderdice (Lead Negotiator: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland) in discussion with the author, July 2018. 66 Adrian Guelke (Professor: Queen’s University Belfast Centre for the Study of Ethnic Conflict) in discussion with the author, July 2018. 67 John Dumbrell, “The United States and the Northern Irish Conflict 1969-94: from Indifference to Intervention,” Irish Studies in International Affairs 6 (1995), 125.

remotely sympathetic to the Irish republican cause.68 This was the primary means by which they managed to hold some power in the negotiations. However, analysis of the negotiation period and its immediate aftermath exposes the fact that this meager sense of power did little to create a truly just and equitable peace agreement, though it was enough to create a superficial peace that reduced paramilitary violence. Applying the Irish solution to the case of Palestine is highly risky, as the support which the weaker party did have in the Irish context did little more than build a peace which masked the most egregious violence and human rights violations but left unjust settler colonial institutions intact. Therefore, even if Palestinians gain the meager level of power which the Irish republicans had as a result of the mediator (the U.S.) not being completely against them, it remains unlikely that a just, decolonizing peace will result.

Palestine

The fourteen years before the start of the Oslo process were a time of much upheaval for the PLO. As political scientist Belal Shobaki explains, the regional, local, and global factors which played out over those years essentially forced the PLO to negotiate.69

Regionally, the PLO’s expulsion from Jordan in 1970 and subsequent exile from

Lebanon in 1982 was a major blow to its armed resistance campaign, due to the fact that

68 Beggan and Indurthy, “The Conflict in Northern Ireland,” 13. 69 Belal Shobaki (Chairperson: Hebron University Department of Political Science) in discussion with the author, July 2018.

they could no longer conduct cross-border raids on Israeli territory, and their eventual landing in Tunisia distanced them even further from the situation on the ground in

Palestine. This isolation was exacerbated by the outbreak of the First Intifada, as the uprising was led by an entirely different group of leaders who were more relevant and revered within Palestine. Regional actors and the United States were thrilled to see this rising leadership and took the opportunity to support it in order to isolate the PLO; Erakat argues that “mounting external overtures to supplant the PLO troubled its mainstream leadership” which in part led them to make very significant concessions even prior to the formal peace process in exchange for entrance into formal talks with Israel and the

United States, which served as validation of their relevance.70

Locally within Palestine, the First Intifada – which broke out in 1987 – was the first large-scale threat to Israel’s power within the Occupied Territories. As Mustafa

Barghouti, a PLO representative at the Madrid Conference and Washington Talks which preceded the Oslo negotiations, explains, the First Intifada played a key role in shifting the balance of power, showing Israel that it could no longer govern the occupation as it had done before.71 Palestinians utilized well-organized and coordinated tactics of political and economic resistance, as well as protests and attacks on Israeli military targets, while also creating sustainable means for their survival in the interim via alternative economies and underground education systems. However, the Intifada was not without response.

Israel viciously worked to stamp out the resistance. As the Institute for Middle East

70 Erakat, Justice for Some, 140. 71 Mustafa Barghouti (Member of the Palestinian Delegation: 1991 Madrid Peace Conference) in discussion with the author, August 2018.

Understanding (IMEU) reports, Israeli soldiers used brutal force against the uprising, including then-Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s infamous “broken bones” policy, which directed the IDF to break the limbs of Palestinian demonstrators, in an attempt to prevent them from protesting again.72 In the first two years of the intifada, the Swedish branch of

Save the Children estimates that as many as 29,900 Palestinian children were injured as a result of beatings from Israeli soldiers, while Israeli gunfire wounded 6500 – 8500

Palestinian minors.73 The IMEU goes on to note that Israel imprisoned 120,000

Palestinians during the intifada, and that the Shin Bet (Israel’s internal security force) systematically tortured imprisoned Palestinians during this period.74 By the end of the intifada, Israel had killed over 1000 Palestinians, including 237 children, and injured tens of thousands more. Israel failed to crush the intifada via brute force, however. As Noura

Erakat argues, “[Rabin’s] inability to squash the uprising brutally, together with diminished army morale, eventually softened Rabin’s harsh stance towards direct negotiations with Palestinians, and he proposed entering into talks with a Palestinian delegation to be determined by local elections.”75

In addition to these local issues, global factors such as the end of the Cold War and the 1990 Gulf War played key roles in the initiation of the Oslo Accords. Camille

Mansour explains that, “from the point of view of its alliances, the PLO could no longer

72 “25th Anniversary of the First Intifada,” Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU), December 16, 2012, https://imeu.org/article/25th-anniversary-of-the-first-intifada. 73 “25th Anniversary of the First Intifada,” IMEU. 74 Julian Borger, “Israeli government report admits systematic torture of Palestinians,” The Guardian, February 10, 2000, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/feb/11/israel; “25th Anniversary of the First Intifada,” IMEU. 75 Erakat, Justice for Some, 136.

rely on the counterweight in world and regional politics of a collapsing Soviet Union.”76

Already viewed as an enemy of the United States, the PLO and Palestinians were thus left with no international support.77 The PLO compounded the loss of their key global supporter with their support for Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Kuwait, a campaign which eventually failed. This put the PLO in an even worse position, both with the

United States, who had been their enemy in the war, and with Palestinians themselves, many of whom had settled in Kuwait but were expelled in retribution for PLO support of

Kuwait’s Iraqi invaders.78 Though informal talks had begun in 1988 between Palestinian and Israeli delegations, they were at a standstill as a result of divisions between each sides’ willing concessions; Palestinians wanted realization of their right to self- determination, but Israel was at most willing to give limited self-rule.79 Victory in the

Gulf War aided in bridging this gap by giving the U.S. increased influence in the Middle

East, which it utilized in an effort to coerce Palestinians into joining a formal peace process. Mansour argues that the United States’ motivations in inaugurating the peace process were twofold; its “Arab allies, which for two decades had been urging

Washington to make serious efforts in favor of a Palestinian settlement, now needed some ex post facto legitimation of their participation in the war against Iraq…meanwhile,

[the United States] seemed to prefer order to disorder…This could only be attained through the inauguration of a process giving hope, albeit contradictory, to all the parties,

76 Camille Mansour, “The Palestinian-Israeli Peace Negotiations: An Overview and Assessment,” Journal of Palestine Studies 22, no. 3 (1993), 6. 77 Belal Shobaki (Chairperson: Hebron University Department of Political Science) in discussion with the author, July 2018. 78 Erakat, Justice for Some, 137. 79 Erakat, Justice for Some, 136-137.

including the Palestinians.”80 These factors all contributed to the PLO’s eventual acceptance of American conditions for peace talks.

Barghouti goes on to point out that, despite it calling for negotiations in somewhat of a state of desperation, Israel still refused to meet directly with the official PLO members. This was a tactical move, as it forced the PLO to make concessions right off the bat just to get into negotiations.81 This began to reverse the power shift, which the

First Intifada generated. However, there was another side to the beginning of negotiations. The First Intifada showed the PLO, still in exile in Tunisia, that there was a new grassroots movement within Palestine. The PLO viewed this as a threat and agreed to negotiations in part because they knew that a formal process would restore their legitimacy and abate any chance of their loss of relevance.82

80 Mansour, “The Palestinian-Israeli Peace Negotiations,” 7. 81 Mustafa Barghouti (Member of the Palestinian Delegation: 1991 Madrid Peace Conference) in discussion with the author, August 2018. 82 Belal Shobaki (Chairperson: Hebron University Department of Political Science) in discussion with the author, July 2018.

CHAPTER THREE

Negotiations and Final Agreements

The peace processes themselves, as well as the agreements which resulted from them, drew great attention as they occurred during the 1990s era of peace. Additionally, they brought hope of an end to two seemingly-intractable and – at the time of both processes – very violent processes. However, both processes suffered from extreme external imperial involvement, and both agreements failed to dismantle significant settler colonial structures in the realms of policing and security, governance, and settler violence.

Good Friday Agreement

The Good Friday Agreement is seen as the model peace agreement of the 1990s, primarily because of its three-strand approach which sought to address the grievances of all the actors and opposing parties in the conflict – republicans and nationalists within

Northern Ireland, the people of Northern Ireland as a whole and the Irish government, and the British and Irish governments. A close look at both the GFA’s creation and terms expose the ways in which it failed to address the settler colonial roots of the Northern

Irish conflict. The official process worked, as Paul Arthur agues, because it happened at a ripe moment when the international leaders were being significantly praised for their

conflict resolution abilities, and was preceded by secret talks, which allowed actors to negotiate with less public pressure from their respective communities.83

Dominic Bryan emphasizes the importance of diplomatic dynamics which existed both between the conflicting parties and globally, noting that “negotiations do not exist in a bubble, they take place against a backdrop of economic, social, and political dynamics.”84 As has been previously discussed, there were many factors which led to the so-called success – in the sense that an official agreement was signed by all relevant parties – of the Good Friday Agreement. However, the building of the agreement as a consociational peace preserved the settler colonial structures already in place in Northern

Ireland.

The Good Friday Agreement is a classic example of a consociational peace;85 as

Bryan explains, the GFA claims to provide simultaneous protection for “all the people in the diversity of their identities and traditions” in addition to upholding “the principles of full respect for, and equality of, civil, political, social and cultural rights, of freedom from discrimination for all citizens, and of parity of esteem and of just and equal treatment for the identity, ethos and aspirations of both communities” which is very difficult to achieve when attempting to create policies which protect diversity on the whole.86 Bronagh

83 Paul Arthur (Professor of Politics: Ulster University Department of Applied Social and Policy Sciences) in discussion with the author, July 2018. 84 Dominic Bryan (Professor: Queen’s University Belfast School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics) in discussion with the author, July 2018. 85 Bernadette C. Hayes and Ian McAllister, “Gender and consociational power-sharing in Northern Ireland,” International Political Science Review 34, no. 2 (2013), 124. 86 “Agreement between the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Government of Ireland” (annex to the Good Friday Agreement, Belfast, April 10, 1998), Article 1 Section V.

Hinds, a negotiator from the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, elaborates on this, arguing that, because Northern Ireland had been such an intractable conflict which involved groups using their power to perpetuate exclusion and deny rights, the solution that was arrived at was really the only feasible one given the political circumstances; she does clarify that she has serious issues with how the agreement was put into practice.87

The process attempted to address the deeper British and Irish involvement rather than just fixing the issues between the two communities via its three strand organization, which included a strand for provisions regarding the British and Irish governments.

As Bronagh Hinds argues, the agreement’s consociational nature should not prevent integrationist measures from being implemented. “I view the agreement less within the context of political models [like consociationalism and integrationism] and more as an attempt to bring about inclusion, equality, and human rights,” she explains.

“Consociationalism…ought not to be contrary to running an integrated government via power-sharing. Just because there are ‘slow-learners’ and ‘resistors’ does not mean it

87 Hinds elaborated on the key issues she has with the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. Firstly, she notes that the government is not integrated at the council or assembly level, and each side refuses to make important tradeoffs. Secondly, she explains that forcing opposing parties to get together on normal issues has not helped them work through tougher, more political issues, but has instead led to financial mismanagement as all issues become wrapped in hard political issues. Thirdly, she states that the abuse of veto power has become a huge issue. A major roadblock to reform in this regard is that these abuses are most clearly seen operating by minorities, but they feel like they can’t get rid of the protections built into the system. Fourthly, she mentions the assembly’s decision to reduce the number of seats in each constituency from six to five, which they claimed to be a cost-saving measure. However, she argues that this was a huge political choice; during the negotiations, the issue had come up of how to include smaller parties in the assembly, and the agreement they eventually came to was to have six seats in each constituency in order to give a chance to smaller parties. The decrease in the number of seats has led parties to fight amongst each side for votes rather than against each other. Finally, she particularly emphasizes the loss of the civic forum, which the NIWC had fought hard to include in the final document and was meant to bring together economic and social experts that would work alongside the assembly to provide sense, strategic thinking, and expertise. It was suspended with the first assembly, and never resurrected. Bronagh Hinds (Negotiator: Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition) in discussion with the author, July 2018.

shouldn’t be integrated.”88 Though theoretically feasible, the ways in which the Good

Friday Agreement failed to dismantle structures and account for legacies of British settler colonialism in Northern Ireland prevents an integrationist government predicated on justice and equality from being formed.

This is primarily exemplified by the points at which the agreement clearly references “cross-community” initiatives or the inclusion of “both communities,” in that it is set up specifically for the preservation of the nationalist and unionist communities to remain separate. For example, Strand One, which addresses inter-community divisions in

Northern Ireland, implements so-called safeguards to ensure equity and community protection within the Northern Irish Assembly. It specifically calls for “arrangements to ensure key decisions are taken on a cross-community basis; (i) either parallel consent, i.e. a majority of those members present and voting, including a majority of the unionist and nationalist designations present and voting; (ii) or a weighted majority (60%) of members present and voting, including at least 40% of each of the nationalist and unionist designations present and voting” while also assuring the creation of “an Equality

Commission to monitor a statutory obligation to promote equality of opportunity in specified areas and parity of esteem between the two main communities.”89 Though this legally designates the necessity of political cooperation between the two communities, it also in a way preserves the sectarian nature of society on the whole. By designating the legislative decisions to be made specifically based upon the two communities, the

88 Bronagh Hinds (Negotiator: Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition) in discussion with the author, July 2018. 89 “Good Friday Agreement” (agreement reached in the multi-party negotiations, Belfast, April 10, 1998), Strand One: Democratic Institutions in Northern Ireland, Clause 5d-e.

agreement fails to instill general principles of inclusion and equity. It instead promotes continued sectarianism by preserving a system which allows for parity in segregation wherein the communities are separate but equal. In order to reflect the agreement, laws must specifically protect the two communities, and this becomes a legal issue of whether to honor individual or group rights, which cannot be solved in practice. As a result, the preservation of rights based in community identity – and thus, the preservation of settler colonial structures which uphold unionist ideologies – prevents the creation of a society built upon equality for all its citizens.

Even beyond these legislative provisions, the Good Friday Agreement details that

“at their first meeting, members of the Assembly will register a designation of identity – nationalist, unionist or other – for the purposes of measuring cross-community support in

Assembly votes.”90 This designation codifies the sectarian nature of governmental institutions in Northern Ireland, as it is built upon identity-based politics and representation. While the divisions in Northern Ireland are certainly signified by identity, this does not mean that the society must remain locked in the republican-unionist dichotomy.91 If anything, building society’s sectarianism into the foundations of the legislature serves to deepen divisions, rather than mend them.

90 “Good Friday Agreement” (agreement reached in the multi-party negotiations, Belfast, April 10, 1998), Strand One: Democratic Institutions in Northern Ireland, Clause 6. 91 Catholics are predicted to outnumber Protestants in Northern Ireland by 2021. Many unionists fear that this means a united Ireland is the inevitable future, and they will become the oppressed minority that the Catholics of the North have been for most of its history. While this is not the guaranteed result, unionists must gain more wide-ranging support if they want to protect their enclave in the North. As peace monitor Dr. Paul Nolan explains, “The future of unionism depends entirely upon one thing – and I mean unionism with a small ‘u’ – it depends on winning the support of people who do not regard themselves to be unionists with a capital ‘U’.” See David Connett, “Catholics to outnumber Protestants in Northern Ireland by 2021,” The Scotsman, April 20, 2018. https://www.scotsman.com/news-2-15012/catholics-to- outnumber-protestants-in-northern-ireland-by-2021-1-4727502.

Beyond the ways in which the consociational nature of the Good Friday

Agreement preserved sectarianism within Northern Ireland, it also allowed for the preservation of key settler colonial structures. These structures include pseudo-self- governance, in the form of the Northern Irish Assembly; discriminatory policing, in the form of the Police Services of Northern Ireland (PSNI); and accepted settler violence, in the form of loyalist paramilitaries.

The Northern Irish Assembly was at the heart of the first strand of the Good

Friday Agreement. The agreement attempted to build a cross-community, power-sharing assembly to work for both the Republican and Unionist communities.92 In practice, however, Stormont was merely a front for the continuation of British settler colonialism in Ireland. Northern Ireland has been under direct rule from Westminster for 33 of the 45 years since the Northern Ireland Assembly was established, and Stormont is currently dissolved, with Northern Ireland being ruled by limited direct rule from London.93 The

Good Friday Agreement thus confirmed British settler colonialism in Northern Ireland by codifying the power of Westminster’s involvement in Northern Irish affairs.

Policing in Northern Ireland has also been thought of as a discriminatory legacy of British settler colonialism, as the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), which operated in

Northern Ireland until the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, was simply a new name for the Royal Irish Constabulary which had operated across the whole of the island prior to partition. The RUC was known to be a highly discriminatory force throughout the

92 “Good Friday Agreement,” (agreement reached in the multi-party negotiations, Belfast, April 10, 1998), Strand One: Democratic Institutions in Northern Ireland, Clauses 1-4. 93 “What is direct rule for Northern Ireland?” BBC, February 15, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk- northern-ireland-41146779.

Troubles.94 This was in part a factor of the issue that the RUC was not representative of the whole of Northern Ireland; in 1999, only seven percent of officers were Catholic, despite the fact that the population overall was approximately half Catholic, half

Protestant.95 When the RUC was reformed into the Police Services of Northern Ireland

(PSNI) in the Good Friday Agreement, many saw it as a new start for justice in Northern

Ireland and a reform to what had historically been one of the most contentious issues of the pre-peace period. The Good Friday Agreement and subsequent Police (NI) Act of

2000 attempted to look forward rather than backwards, planning reforms for the future instead of focusing on past abuses. However, this means that many of those responsible for atrocities committed by the RUC were not held to justice and were simply transferred to the PSNI, which led to significant Irish Catholic distrust in the new policing services from the very beginning.96 In an attempt to look forward, the PSNI has aimed to equalize by drawing an equal number of Catholics and Protestants from a pool of qualified applicants for a term of ten years, but such measures fail to correct for past injustices.

That ten-year period expired in 2010, and while 31.5% of the officers are now Catholic, there are still concerns around their ability to move up in rank.97 Distrust in security

94 Brice Dickson, “New beginnings? Policing and human rights after the conflict” in A Farewell to Arms? Beyond the Good Friday Agreement, eds. Michael Cox, Adrian Guelke, and Fiona Stephen (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 183. 95 Dickson, “New beginnings?” 175. 96 Data from the Northern Ireland Policing Board in 2014 shows that about 66% of Protestants are confident in the police in their area, while only 59% of Catholics say the same. Millward Brown Ulster, “Links between deprivation and confidence in the Police in NI: Summary Report of Findings,” Northern Ireland Policing Board (2014), https://www.nipolicingboard.org.uk/sites/nipb/files/media-files/links-between-deprivation-and-confidence- in-the-police-in-ni.pdf. 97 Joanne Murphy, “Policing in Northern Ireland since the Belfast Agreement,” The Irish Times, March 20, 2018, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/policing-in-northern-ireland-since-the-belfast- agreement-1.3445634.

forces can be seen publicly in the political murals and graffiti which cover the streets of

Northern Ireland. On the Falls Road, an almost exclusively Catholic area of central

Belfast, murals line the streets, and their critiques of the discriminatory policing of the

PSNI are nothing less than harsh. One such mural depicts a uniformed RUC officer on one side with a PSNI officer on the other, with the caption “Same aim — Different name.” Another poster on the door of a Sinn Féin regional office has a similar sentiment, reading “Same Aim: The guns speak English, even if the RUC/PSNI speak Irish.”

Additionally, oversight is not impartial, in large part because the PSNI remains a British institution rooted in Northern Ireland’s history of settler colonialism and resulting sectarianism.98

Perhaps the most visible aspect of settler colonialism that has remained in

Northern Ireland is the presence of the settlers themselves. Despite the end of deadly paramilitary violence which characterized the Troubles era, paramilitary presence remains endemic. As researcher Adrian Guelke explains, the peace agreement has provided more of a truce than a peace, as it failed to address the ‘representative violence’

– the sense that violent acts are committed against a person as a result of their identification with a group rather than as a result of their individual characteristics – that pervades deeply divided societies such as that of Northern Ireland.99 In this way, the

98 Brice Dickson explains a key issue with the oversight system, pointing out that “even with the office of the Police Ombudsman fully operational, there are still cases where allegations of criminal behavior against police officers – those not resulting from a complaint by a member of the public – will be investigated by the police themselves.” Dickson, “New beginnings?” 182. 99 Adrian Guelke (Professor: Queen’s University Belfast Centre for the Study of Ethnic Conflict) in discussion with the author, July 2018.

threat of violence is always there, and he argues that it is likely that many people are prepared to resume the violence of the conflict, if and when the truce ends.100 Bronagh

Hinds, a negotiator from the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, also recognizes this violence of paramilitaries as a tactic of gatekeeping their own communities in order to weed out non-supporters; she specifically notes the differential, however, between contemporary republican and loyalist paramilitaries, explaining that “on the republican side, it is predominantly just dissidents, but loyalists are like organized gangs that are even provided with funding.”101 Beyond paramilitary presence, settler claims of nativeness remain one of the chief ways in which settlers assert their presence and dominance. Murals along the Shankill Road — a predominantly Protestant/Unionist area of Belfast — feature historical events such as the Battle of the Boyne which Unionists assert as evidence of their claims of nativeness to Northern Ireland. Others are more direct, such as stickers along the road which read “multiculturalism is genocide.” Some even claim their status as pilgrims and settlers, as one mural declares “we are the pilgrims, Master; we shall always go a little further.” The July 11 bonfires and July 12 parades also memorialize the victory of William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne, but they move beyond memorializing to antagonizing the Catholic/Republican populations, as they deliberately march through predominantly Republican areas across Northern

Ireland vocalizing anti-Irish chants and songs. As Bronagh Hinds, a negotiator from the

Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, notes, “Sectarianism is…endemic from the leaders

100 Adrian Guelke (Professor: Queen’s University Belfast Centre for the Study of Ethnic Conflict) in discussion with the author, July 2018. 101 Bronagh Hinds (Negotiator: Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition) in discussion with the author, July 2018.

and thus trickles down into the population; they must move away from that. You see it with the bonfires in East Belfast. Residents have been terrified for ages, but the government won’t act to take them down, because there are paramilitary threats which say they’ll cause trouble.”102 Though the Good Friday Agreement led to the creation of the Parades Commission in an attempt to quell clashes between Unionists and

Republicans on July 12, this left the legacies of British settler colonialism in place by allowing these sectarian parades to continue on the whole and only limiting them in areas where there is a risk of the most egregious violence.

These examples beg the question, however, of whether there are any circumstances under which it would be possible to justly create and implement a consociational agreement. By attempting to protect the two main communities, such agreements fail to instill deeper principles of equality for all citizens by focusing too heavily on a seemingly zero-sum game of representation for the two main communities.103 Perhaps implementing a consociational peace is not theoretically impossible as a step towards the political integration of colonizer and colonized, or perhaps it is the only realistic way to bridge sectarian conflict and a completely integrated society. However, the ways in which the Good Friday Agreement actively preserved sectarianism and failed to dismantle settler colonial structures in Northern Ireland means that, despite some politicians’ and activists’ work to the contrary, the decolonization of

102 Bronagh Hinds (Negotiator: Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition) in discussion with the author, July 2018. 103 Hayes and McAllister, “Gender and consociational power-sharing,” 124.

Northern Ireland is infeasible under the current – and likely any – consociational peace terms.

Oslo Accords

Suad Amiry, a Palestinian delegate to the Washington Track talks in the early

1990s, gave a detailed account of the negotiations, which immediately preceded the Oslo

Accords. American negotiations with the PLO – then based in Tunis – in 1988 led to the convening of the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991, and the Washington Track talks soon followed in 1992. The Palestinian delegation in both of these negotiations was made up of representatives from within the territory of historic Palestine.104 When news broke that

Arafat had secretly been negotiating with Israel via the Norwegians, the Oslo process began, and this delegation was no longer directly from Palestine, but rather primarily made up of PLO members who had been exiled to Tunis.105 Amiry noted that the first revival of peace talks – the Madrid Peace Conference – were forced upon Israeli PM

Yitzhak Shamir in part by the Americans, because he didn’t want to negotiate at first.106

104 As Noura Erakat explains, “Israel insisted that the Palestinian delegation to the peace talks could include only Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza and only those who had no explicit ties to the PLO…To overcome this hurdle, the Palestinians established the Palestinian Steering Committee, made up of Palestinians from East Jerusalem and the diaspora who would accompany the Palestinian delegates but who would not formally participate in the talks. In his capacity as PLO Chairman, Arafat handpicked this committee, which was led by Faisal al Husseini and included Hanan Ashrawi, Camille Mansour, Yezid Sayigh, and Anis Fawzi Kassem.” Erakat, Justice for Some, 144. 105 “The Oslo Accords and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process,” Office of the Historian: United States Department of State, accessed March 26, 2019, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1993-2000/oslo. 106 Suad Amiry (Member of the Palestinian Delegation: 1991-1993 Washington Track Talks) in discussion with the author, August 2018.

Eventually, she explains, Israel accepted negotiations at Madrid because of the ongoing uprising, which was also known as the First Intifada. Israel could not put the revolt down, and it saw negotiations as a way to calm the resistance to its military occupation. At these talks, however, Israel stuck to a position of Palestinian self-rule, wherein Palestinians would govern themselves, but they would have no sovereignty over their land. Some argued that this was an attempt to separate the land from the Palestinian people.107 This conception of Palestinian self-rule was the cheapest occupation option for Israel, because it allowed them to have the land they desired without having to bear the economic burden of policing and providing social services to the people living on it, as international law would otherwise stipulate.108 Israel also wanted peace with the surrounding Arab states, because they knew that once they made peace with these countries, it would put the

Palestinians in a weak spot with no one to defend them.

Shamir refused to negotiate directly with the PLO, instead only agreeing to accept a delegation of “Representatives of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.” The PLO agreed, because they were in a very weak position and attempting to organize from Tunis. Amiry recalls that Arafat personally formed this delegation to Madrid, despite the fact that he was not on the ground in Palestine, and made Haidar Abdul Shafi from Gaza and Faisal Husseini from Jerusalem the leaders.109 When Shamir requested that the delegation of Palestinians for the upcoming Washington Talks negotiate as a part of the Jordanian delegation, the

Palestinians refused, and a compromise was eventually reached wherein at least one

107 Mansour, “The Palestinian-Israeli Peace Negotiations,” 29-30. 108 Erakat, Justice for Some, 69-70. 109 Suad Amiry (Member of the Palestinian Delegation: 1991-1993 Washington Track Talks) in discussion with the author, August 2018.

Jordanian representative would have to be present whenever the Palestinians were negotiating.110 Arafat created the delegation from people inside Palestine, but emphasized that it was headed by PLO members Nabil Shaath and Akram Haniyah, who was a direct advisor to Arafat himself; this emphasized that the PLO was not out of the equation.111

Additionally, the delegation passed through Tunis on its way to Washington, which was a symbolic measure to put out in the open the fact that they were accountable to Arafat.

Because Shamir didn’t yet recognize the PLO as representative of the Palestinians, and any Palestinian found to have a relationship with the PLO was at risk of imprisonment,

Arafat wanted to tell the Americans and Israelis that they couldn’t make peace without him. Amiry notes that he was very sensitive to the issue.112

From January 1992 until September 1993, they negotiated in the State

Department. As Amiry recalls, they spent a significant amount of time fighting over names – whether to call it Judea and Samaria or the Occupied Territories, whether

Jerusalem was disputed land or part of Israel, and what the connection of the delegation was back to the PLO.113 This was in part because the Israelis were in parallel negotiations with other Arab countries, and they were putting off making peace with the Palestinians

110 Israel was attempting to come to a settlement both with the surrounding Arab states of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, in addition to the settlement with the Palestinians. However, the Palestinians could not be an autonomous delegation, and had to be somewhat of a subset of the Jordanian delegation, while their negotiations with Israel were also split into two portions that were five years apart, unlike the rest of the Arab states. Mansour, “The Palestinian-Israeli Peace Negotiations,” 6. 111 Suad Amiry (Member of the Palestinian Delegation: 1991-1993 Washington Track Talks) in discussion with the author, August 2018. 112 Suad Amiry (Member of the Palestinian Delegation: 1991-1993 Washington Track Talks) in discussion with the author, August 2018. 113 Suad Amiry (Member of the Palestinian Delegation: 1991-1993 Washington Track Talks) in discussion with the author, August 2018.

until they made peace with the other countries.114 As another Palestinian negotiator, Dr.

Mustafa Barghouti, explains, the negotiations before Oslo are often forgotten, and their potential is ignored. These processes were not given the chance to succeed or fail; unlike

Northern Ireland, where multiple processes and agreements were tried and failed before the final terms were codified, in the case of Palestine, negotiations were cut short before their success or failure could even be predicted. Barghouti goes on to argue that the delegates in Madrid and Washington had the opportunity to truly initiate a two-state solution, as he believes that they could have gotten Israel to agree to a freeze on settlement growth, which would have provided a more equal footing on which to begin negotiations.115 The Washington Talks delegation specified that they wouldn’t conclude or sign a final agreement without Israel ceasing settlement construction, Barghouti explains, as Israel was using the settlements to change the reality on the ground and attempt to change the balance of power back in their favor; in a sense, the peace process became a cover for Israeli settlement expansion.

A wrench was thrown in this plan, however, when it was discovered that Arafat was having secret negotiations with Israel and trying to find a way to make peace through

European mediation. The PLO began the secret talks because they were afraid of being

114 Camille Mansour write that this was shown particularly in the way the negotiation schedules differed between the Palestinian-Israeli track and the tracks between Israel and surrounding Arab states, explaining that “whereas Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon were to conclude a final settlement with Israel as quickly as possible, the Palestinians had to negotiate in two separate stages – the first to reach agreement on five-year "interim self-government arrangements" in the occupied territories, and the second to reach a final settlement based on resolution 242 that would begin only in the third year of the interim period.” Mansour, “The Palestinian-Israeli Peace Negotiations,” 6. 115 Mustafa Barghouti (Member of the Palestinian Delegation: 1991 Madrid Peace Conference) in discussion with the author, August 2018.

bypassed by the national movement that they saw building within Palestine during the

First Intifada while also claiming that the Washington delegation had too many ‘red lines’ and were holding up passage of a settlement.116 However, the negotiators at Oslo had been outside of Palestine for so long, they didn’t know about the situation on the ground and were more concerned with their public image and perception by the

Israelis.117 Barghouti cites this as one of the major differences between Northern Ireland and Palestine. In Northern Ireland, he notes, the negotiators were people who had really been struggling from the situation, but in Palestine it became the PLO’s political elites that negotiated.118

As Suad Amiry recounts, Arafat asked the Norwegians to mediate negotiations, and this became the Oslo process.119 She explains that Haidar Abdel Shafi, a member of the Washington delegation, met directly with Arafat about it, and was very much against

Arafat’s actions in calling in Oslo, primarily because it didn’t stop the settlements in the interim.120 Amiry explains that part of the issue with the PLO was that they were less familiar with the situation on the ground, so they accepted the division without realizing its consequences.121 The PLO thus paid a higher price than they should have in order to save the organization. The people inside Palestine took power in Madrid, and thus felt

116 Erakat, Justice for Some, 164. 117 Edward Said, “Who is worse? Edward Said on a humiliating year,” London Review of Books 16, no. 20 (October 20, 1994). 118 Mustafa Barghouti (Member of the Palestinian Delegation: 1991 Madrid Peace Conference) in discussion with the author, August 2018. 119 Suad Amiry (Member of the Palestinian Delegation: 1991-1993 Washington Track Talks) in discussion with the author, August 2018. 120 Suad Amiry (Member of the Palestinian Delegation: 1991-1993 Washington Track Talks) in discussion with the author, August 2018. 121 Suad Amiry (Member of the Palestinian Delegation: 1991-1993 Washington Track Talks) in discussion with the author, August 2018.

defeated when this was taken from them in Oslo, which only served to further emphasize the split. Underscoring these internal Palestinian divisions and backchannel negotiations, however, were Israeli policies regarding which Palestinian representatives they would recognize and negotiate with, as well as American backing of the Israeli position at every turn. The fall of the USSR in 1991 left the Palestinians without a global superpower behind them, which only further served to weaken their negotiating stance against the

American-backed Israelis. Additionally, the premise of negotiations was “to establish a

Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority and the elected [President] of the

Executive Authority for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,” despite the fact that the entirety of Palestine had been colonized by Israel and thus ought to have been on the table in peace negotiations.122 As a result, Palestinians were at a disadvantage from the start, as even the idea of “land for peace” — an often-repeated policy of the Israeli delegation — was automatically a loss for Palestinians, as they were forced to give up land even beyond the base concession of the entire territory of Israel inside its 1948 borders.

As Madrid negotiator Mustafa Barghouti argues, all that Israel wanted was to kill the intifada.123 They had no intention to ensure Oslo’s implementation, and they were the true victors at the end of the process as they managed to bring the power balance strongly back into their favor — with the help of the United States — all while upholding the

122 “Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip” (Washington, D.C., September 28, 1995), 8. 123 Mustafa Barghouti (Member of the Palestinian Delegation: 1991 Madrid Peace Conference) in discussion with the author, August 2018.

façade of the peace process.124 This is particularly displayed by the increase in settlement construction which occurred over the course of the Oslo process.125

Even before the breakdown of negotiations, the U.S. and Israel maintained too close of a relationship for the accords to be successful.126 While it may be feasible for a biased mediator to be beneficial in peace negotiations, the U.S. and Israel go too far in the number of internal agreements which they maintain, and when power imbalances are already inherent in the relationship between negotiators (as in this case, where Israel holds power over colonized Palestinians), it is not beneficial but rather detrimental when the mediator is biased towards the side which already holds more power. As a result, part of the failure of Camp David in 2000 can be ascribed to the fact that the U.S. and Israel had an agreement that Israel would look over any offers proposed by the U.S., which meant that any U.S. offers presented were really just Israeli offers repackaged as their own.127 This showcases the deep connections between the U.S. and Israel, and debases the case for the U.S. as an ‘honest broker’ of the peace process.

Such unequal power dynamics within negotiations significantly contributed to the ways in which the Oslo Accords preserved and transformed settler colonial structures

124 Mustafa Barghouti (Member of the Palestinian Delegation: 1991 Madrid Peace Conference) in discussion with the author, August 2018. 125 The highest amount of outpost construction and overall settlement construction to date occurred during the Oslo period, according to data from Israeli NGO Peace Now. The impacts of this will be further explained and more specific data will be provided in Chapter Four. “Data: Population,” Peace Now, accessed March 26, 2019, http://peacenow.org.il/en/settlements- watch/settlements-data/population. 126 Aaron David Miller, “Israel’s Lawyer,” Washington Post, May 23, 2005, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2005/05/22/AR2005052200883.html?noredirect=on. 127 This was known as the ‘no-surprise rule.’ Malley and Agha, “Camp David.”

within Palestine. Primarily, the creation of the Palestinian Authority allowed for the codification of the agreements of the Oslo Accords, because, although the process fell apart before a final agreement was signed, its creation of a pseudo-self-governing body for the Palestinians forced the PA remain loyal to the stipulations of the Oslo Accords in order to maintain its legitimacy. This preservation of the Accords as a final agreement despite the fact that they were never signed as such has also allowed for the preservation and transformation of settler colonial structures in the realms of discriminatory security forces as well as settler violence.

The 1994 Gaza-Jericho Agreement formally established the Palestinian Authority

(PA), in accordance with the provisions of the Declaration of Principles signed in 1993, as the precursor to the Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority, which was meant to be the ‘government’ of the Palestinian people.128 Because the Interim Self-Government

Authority was never established as a result of the breakdown of the Camp David Accords in 2000, the PA continues to be recognized as the so-called representative and governing body of the Palestinian people.129 The international community as well as Israel itself tend to act as if the PA holds complete, independent governmental control over

128 “Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip” (Washington, D.C., September 28, 1995), 10. 129 As Darryl Li explains, Mahmoud Abbas’ signing of international agreements following Palestine’s upgrade to a UN-recognized ‘state’ has done little more than “expose Palestine to scrutiny as if it were a state, when the Palestinian Authority remains legally and effectively subordinated to the Israeli occupying power.” Darryl Li, “Preening Like a State,” Middle East Research and Information Project, April 3, 2014, https://merip.org/2014/04/preening-like-a-state/.

Palestinians in the West Bank,130 and critiques them accordingly.131 However, this leaves out a key part of the story; the Oslo Accords also divided the West Bank into three areas

– A, B, and C – giving the PA civil and security control over area A, civil control with security control under the jurisdiction of the Israeli military in area B, and no jurisdiction with full civil and security control given to the Israeli military in area C.132 Area A has never been greater than 18% of the West Bank.133 In this way, the PA effectively holds little power to take productive action, and merely functions as a pseudo-self-government that attempts to pacify Palestinians by convincing them that they have power over their own land and political future.134 This fools few, however, and critiques of the PA are common throughout the West Bank.135 Also, the reliance of many West Bank

Palestinians on the PA for jobs and subsidies as well as the increasing security coordination between Israel and the PA has discouraged and silenced most dissent.136

Following the creation of the PA, Israel transferred day-to-day policing responsibility within Area A to an entirely Palestinian police force formally under the

130 In 2005, Ariel Sharon and other defectors from the Likud and Labour parties joined to form the Kadima party and carry out Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip. Israel evacuated all settlements and built a wall to close off the strip. Following Hamas’ winning of a majority of seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council in 2006, the United States, Great Britain, Russia, and the UN cut off financial support for the PA, while Israel refused to turn over tax revenue which it had collected for the PA. Hamas predicted an attempted U.S.-backed coup by Fatah in 2007 and won control over the Gaza Strip. Governmental control of the West Bank and Gaza have been divided between Fatah and Hamas ever since. Beinin and Hajjar, “Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” 15. 131 Li, “Preening Like a State.” 132 Jeff Halper, “The 94 Percent Solution: A Matrix of Control,” Middle East Report 216 (2000), 16. 133 Gershon Shafir, “A Mosaic of Control” in “Fifty Years of Occupation: A Forum (Part 2),” Middle East Research and Information Project, June 7, 2017, https://merip.org/2017/06/fifty-years-of-occupation-2/. 134 International Crisis Group, “The Emperor Has No Clothes: Palestinians and the End of the Peace Process,” Middle East Report 122 (2012), 6-8. 135 CITE 136 According to the International Crisis Group, PA payroll constitutes nearly 20% of the Palestinian GDP. International Crisis Group, “The Emperor Has No Clothes,” 8.

authority of the PA. Though it can clearly be said that the results of the codification of security coordination in Palestine have been significantly deadlier than their perpetuation in Northern Ireland, there is nevertheless an important parallel to be drawn between the two cases in regard to reforms aimed at making policing more representative in order to increase public trust. The Oslo Accords formally created a Palestinian police force which was meant to “assume the responsibility for public order for Palestinians,” but from the beginning, the primary purpose of security coordination between Israel and the

Palestinian Police was for the so-called security of Israeli ‘borders’ and citizens.137 As a report by the Middle East Monitor explains, “not only is it recognised that the PA is openly sharing files with Israel’s notorious domestic intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, but there is also no attempt to hide the fact that the entity of the PA has been created as a

‘tool’ solely for this purpose.”138 This has completely broken Palestinian trust in the PA security forces, as they are seen as yet another arm of the Israeli occupation, engaging in monitoring and surveillance of Palestinians.139

This is mainly seen through their suppression of resistance to the occupation. In

2015, “Palestinian security forces stepped up cooperation with their Israeli counterpart after Abbas instructed the security forces to make precautionary arrests among

137 “Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip” (Washington, D.C., September 28, 1995), 19. 138 Jessica Purkiss and Ahmad Nafi, “Palestinian security cooperation with Israel,” Middle East Monitor, October 2015, 5-6. 139 Alaa Tartir cites a 2010 Maan News Agency poll which found that “78% of respondents said they believe that the PA security forces are engaged in surveillance, monitoring activities, and intervening in people’s privacy.” Alaa Tartir, “The Palestinian Authority Security Forces: Whose Security?” Al Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, May 16, 2017, https://al-shabaka.org/briefs/palestinian-authority-security-forces-whose- security/.

Palestinians in the West Bank to prevent deterioration of the security situation and avoid escalation.”140 These crackdowns severely impacted the Palestinian public and stifled resistance into the future. A report by Human Rights Watch in 2018 explains that these crackdowns have been predominantly pursued via arbitrary arrest and administrative detention of those engaged in criticism of the PA or other forms of peaceful dissent, as well as surveillance and restriction of news sources, journalists, and lawyers seen to be working in opposition to the PA or Abbas, both via physical restrictions and internet- based social media crackdowns.141 As a result, perhaps even more so than in Northern

Ireland, Palestinians severely distrust the PA security services. Al- Shabaka reports that

78% of Palestinians said they believe that the PA security forces are engaged in surveillance, monitoring activities, and intervening in people’s privacy, while 67% of

West Bank Palestinians said they feel that they are living in an undemocratic system that cracks down on freedoms in large part as a result of the security realm.142 Despite the security forces’ undemocratic practices, Western states (namely the U.S. and Britain) continue to fund and train PA security forces.143 However, outside support clearly isn’t everything; despite significant U.S. funding cuts to the Palestinian security sector, Abbas

140 Adnan Abu Amer, “Despite mounting violence, IDF-PA security cooperation unlikely to end,” Al- Monitor: The Pulse of the Middle East, October 7, 2015, https://www.al- monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/10/palestine-authority-israel-security-cooperation-negotiations.html. 141 Human Rights Watch, “Two Authorities, One Way, Zero Dissent: Arbitrary Arrest & Torture Under the Palestinian Authority & Hamas,” October 2018, 2-12. 142 Tartir, “The Palestinian Authority Security Forces.” 143 Jessica Purkiss and Ahmad Nafi, “Palestinian security cooperation with Israel,” 5.

has promised that security coordination will continue and the PA has no plans to violate this aspect of the Oslo Accords in the future.144

Another preserved – and, in fact, exacerbated – settler colonial structure within

Palestine is the acceptance of and support for settler violence. While settler violence in the Occupied Territories has been a fact of Palestinian life since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, the Oslo period saw a surge in the number of settlers. Between 1967 and the beginning of the Oslo negotiations in 1993, 116,300 settlers colonized the

Occupied Territories.145 Over the course of negotiations, this number increased by over

70% to 198,300, and in 17 years following it more than doubled to 413,400 settlers in

2017.146 B’Tselem reports that the settler population in East Jerusalem also grew significantly, though at a slower rate; in 1993, the settler population in East Jerusalem totaled 146,800 in 1993, and it increased by 20 percent to 176,900 in 2001.147

Additionally, the physical construction of settlements skyrocketed during the Oslo process; the peak construction of outposts occurred over the period of 1996 through 2002, while the highest levels of overall settlement construction to date occurred between 1991 and 2000.148

144 Associated Press, “Abbas pledges to continue security cooperation with Israel,” February 6, 2019, https://apnews.com/6a14a0e1875042118c1ad815b5b0c55f. 145 “Data: Population,” Peace Now, accessed March 26, 2019, http://peacenow.org.il/en/settlements- watch/settlements-data/population. 146 “Data: Population,” Peace Now, accessed March 26, 2019, http://peacenow.org.il/en/settlements- watch/settlements-data/population. 147 Yehezkel Lein and Eyal Weizman, “Land Grab: Israel’s Settlement Policy in the West Bank,” B’Tselem (May 2002), 17 148 A total of 85 outposts and 75,352 settlements were constructed in the Occupied Territories during this period. “Data: Population,” Peace Now, accessed March 26, 2019, http://peacenow.org.il/en/settlements- watch/settlements-data/population.

As more settlers have poured into the West Bank, settler violence has also increased. This means that the Israeli state forged new ways by which settlers could commit extralegal attacks against Palestinians to cope with the spike in incidents.

B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, defines settler violence as attacks ranging “from blocking roads, throwing stones at cars and houses, raiding villages and farmland, torching fields and olive groves, and damaging crops and property to physical assault, sometimes to the point of hurling Molotov cocktails or using live fire.”149 In the aftermath of Oslo’s failure in 2000 – in other words, between 2001 and 2018 – there have been 18,000 such attacks on Palestinians and their property.150

The division of the West Bank and subsequent strategic assignment of security jurisdiction to PA and Israeli forces has thus exacerbated settler violence. Because Israeli security forces have jurisdiction in both Areas A and B, which make up over 80% of the

West Bank, international law stipulates that they are to protect Palestinians from settler attacks. However, as B’Tselem reports, the precise opposite often occurs instead. “Israeli security forces not only allow settlers to harm Palestinians and their property as a matter of course – they often provide the perpetrators escort and back-up. In some cases, they

149 “Settler Violence: Absence of Law Enforcement,” B’Tselem, November 11, 2017, https://www.btselem.org/settler_violence. 150 The Jerusalem Fund and Palestine Center has utilized data from the Palestinian Monitoring Group, a subset of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Negotiation Affairs Department, to build a database of acts of settler violence in the Occupied Territories from April 2004 through November 2018. This data is accessible in the following spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yixx_CP94IKfmC5Z9qgoVvWrny9CkSodaoyQuRuE8Z0/edit#gi d=0.

even join in on the attack.”151 Law enforcement agencies and the Israeli court system also fail to provide recourse for Palestinians in the wake of an attack.152 As Breaking the

Silence points out, “the law is not enforced because security forces do not treat settlers as regular citizens but as partners. In the process, the security forces also serve the settlers’ political aspirations: annexation of large portions of the Occupied Territories for their use.”153

Additionally, international bodies that provide some protection from settler violence can be forced out at a moment’s notice so long as Israel provides some sort of pretense, regardless of its validity. Such was the case with the Temporary International

Presence in Hebron (TIPH), an international monitoring force put into place by the

Hebron Protocol in 1995 which documents human rights abuses and violations of international law across the city of Hebron in the southern West Bank, when Israeli Prime

Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ended its mandate in January 2019.154 The absence of

TIPH has transferred the burden of protection onto Palestinian civilians who do not have the resources, training, or diplomatic backing that TIPH did. Chris Eijkemans, an Oxfam representative in Hebron, argues that this sudden change is “a dangerous green light for

151 “Settler Violence: Absence of Law Enforcement,” B’Tselem, November 11, 2017, https://www.btselem.org/settler_violence. 152 Breaking the Silence explains that, because settlers are so deeply embedded in the security sector of Israeli bureaucracy, they are viewed as another means by which Israel exercises control. They often hold positions in the agencies that ought to provide justice for Palestinians affected by settler violence, which prevents such agencies from being impartial. Breaking the Silence, Our Harsh Logic: Israeli Soldiers’ Testimonies from the Occupied Territories, 2000 – 2010 (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012), 5. 153 Breaking the Silence, Our Harsh Logic, 5. 154 Noa Landau and Yotam Berger, “Israel to Expel International Monitoring Force in Hebron After 20-year Presence,” Haaretz, January 28, 2019, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-to-expel- international-monitoring-force-in-hebron-after-20-year-presence-1.6883412.

more violence,” while Palestinian activist Issa Amro explains that “after the TIPH observers packed up…‘the soldiers are acting differently, the settlers are acting differently.’”155 This has left Palestinians with only one choice: avoid entering land surrounding settlements, or risk injury or death. This has become a method of Israeli settler colonialism which has served settlement expansion by driving Palestinians away from land near settlements, thus creating a self-reinforcing process which opens up even more land for seizure across the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

155 Oliver Holmes, “Palestinians patrol Hebron after Israel ejects observer mission,” The Guardian, February 19, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/19/palestinians-patrol-hebron-israel- ejects-foreign-peacekeepers.

CHAPTER FOUR

Twenty Years On: Preservation and Transformation

Economic Inequalities

The massive economic improvements following the end of the peace process in

Northern Ireland are often the focus of reports on its success. Because the Good Friday

Agreement managed to quell paramilitary violence, foreign direct investment and economic development in the North began to grow, as the political situation had been stabilized and was more conducive to business operation.156 However, the consociational nature of the agreement prevented it from addressing the sectarian roots of economic inequality in Northern Ireland. While the 2008 financial crisis hit the entire island of

Ireland particularly harshly, in Northern Ireland, those who had been economically disadvantaged before the peace process – working and middle-class Catholics – were the first and most severely affected. Sociologist Colin Coulter’s analysis of the Northern Irish economic situation reveals that the high levels of worklessness in the North have led to nearly a quarter of the working-age population receiving at least one form of welfare (as compared to 15% in the rest of the United Kingdom). As a result of this, Coulter argues that “the vicious cuts to the welfare budget will impact particularly gravely

156 John Alderdice (Lead Negotiator: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland) in discussion with the author, July 2018.

on…the Catholic working class, while moves to reduce and privatize the public service will disadvantage…middle-class Catholics, often working for the state.”157

While Northern Ireland has been integrated heavily into the UK economy, particularly following the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, it remains unique within the UK because of its deep economic connections to the Republic of

Ireland. However, British economic policy does not always take the unique aspects of

Northern Irish economic development into account when formulating policy, and because of the on-and-off nature of Stormont’s governance, British policy is extremely impactful.

This in part explains the more devastating impact of and slowed recovery from the 2008 financial crisis in Northern Ireland as compared to the rest of the UK, as recovery policy was not tailored to the specific impacts on Northern Ireland, but now a larger threat looms: Brexit. Despite the fact that a majority of Northern Irish voters chose to remain in the EU,158 Northern Ireland will be deeply impacted by the choices of the British government in ways that are quite different to other regions of the UK, as a result of its close relationship with the Republic of Ireland. As a report on the economic impact of a no-deal Brexit from the Confederation of British Industry explains, the dependence of

Northern Irish businesses on both Irish markets and Irish ports could be severely disrupted by a hard border resulting from Brexit, which would make certain markets throughout Ireland and southeast England either inaccessible entirely or too expensive

157 Coulter, “Under Which Constitutional Arrangement Would You Still Prefer to be Unemployed?” 772. 158 “EU Referendum: Results in full,” BBC, https://www.bbc.com/news/politics/eu_referendum/results.

and economically inefficient in which to sell.159 Both Paul Arthur and Adrian Guelke argue that these economic effects go far beyond just the threat of a recession; the tentative nature of the Good Friday truce could allow these economic woes to spark larger issues of violence.

An additional impact of the Good Friday Agreement on economic inequality is rooted in its consociational nature. As anthropologist Dominic Bryan explains, the political system in Northern Ireland remains based around the two communities, and as a result, resource division, housing, and educational services have all been built around protecting the identities of the two communities and are thus very segregated.160 Short of a complete dismantlement and subsequent recreation of the peace agreement, there is little that can be done within the terms of the current agreement that will address the root sectarian causes of economic inequality in Northern Ireland, because, as Dr. Bryan notes, group identity politics were built into the agreement.161 This is merely another reason why the Good Friday Agreement is a poor model for Palestine, as it fails to address deep- seated economic inequalities, and thus allows a return to the asymmetric economic woes of the pre-peace era.

On the other hand, the official premise of the Oslo Accords was to move towards a two-state solution. This entailed the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state next to

159 Confederation of British Industry, “Impact of a ‘No Deal’ Brexit across the UK: Northern Ireland,” CBI.org, 2017, http://www.cbi.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/impact-of-a-no-deal-brexit-across-the- uk/impact-of-a-no-deal-brexit-across-the-uk-continued/#northernireland2. 160 Dominic Bryan (Professor: Queen’s University Belfast School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics) in discussion with the author, July 2018. 161 Dominic Bryan (Professor: Queen’s University Belfast School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics) in discussion with the author, July 2018.

an Israeli one. Building a future Palestinian state would require the reduction of

Palestinian economic dependence on Israel, yet the Accords failed to establish any provisions to this end. Rather, their attempt to protect Israeli economic productivity at the expense of that of Palestinians allowed Israel to implement policies which forcibly integrated the Palestinian and Israeli economies even further, while simultaneously reducing Israeli need for Palestinian labor. As Roger Normand explains, following the collapse of the Accords, “deliberate Israeli policies…were designed to block the development of a viable economic base that might eventually support a Palestinian state,” going on to note that Israeli restrictions on Palestinian movement and economic activity which have followed Oslo “constitute an enormous shock to the Palestinian economy – disrupting routine trade and business, discouraging outside investment, and severing economic links to Israel after 27 years of dependency enforced through military occupation. Today the Palestinian economy is structurally incapable of responding to

Israel's economic warfare.”162 The key economic decisions reached during the Oslo negotiations were codified in the Paris 27 years old – had already weakened the economy of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Paris Protocol served to further increase Palestinian dependence on the Israeli economy and place key economic policy issues and decisions under Israeli control. For example, Palestinians had no control over their ports or borders, and thus were not permitted to have independent customs policies for checking imports and exports.163 Because of the heightened security that Israel forces on Palestinian goods

162 Roger Normand, “Israel’s Accountability for Economic Warfare,” Middle East Report 217 (2000), 33. 163 “Annex IV: Protocol on Economic Relations between the Government of the State of Israel and the P.L.O., representing the Palestinian people,” (Gaza-Jericho Agreement, Paris, April 29, 1994), Article III.

and companies, export and import costs are increased.164 Additionally, rather than create a free trade area between Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, the Protocol created a customs union which restricted the Palestinian Authority’s control over import policies and made Palestinians reliant on Israeli rebates of customs and import taxes. This further delayed any negotiations on formal borders, while also allowing the unrestricted flow of

Israeli goods into Palestinian markets, flooding them and providing excessive competition for Palestinian-produced goods whose markets were already limited by

Israeli export restrictions.165 This led to a severe trade imbalance and lack of diversification in the Palestinian economy.166

Since the failure at Camp David and outbreak of the Second Intifada, the economic situation in the West Bank and Gaza has only deteriorated further. Net trade in goods and services plummeted, while unemployment — following a sharp increase immediately after the outbreak of the Second Intifada — continues to steadily rise.167

Economic growth in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is dependent on Israeli supply and demand, as Israel now accounts for “more than 70 per cent of Palestinian imports” while receiving “85 per cent of Palestinian exports.”168 The Palestinian Territories are effectively a captive market that Israel directs. At the same time, the economy of the

164 Belal al Fallah (Research Associate: Palestine Economic Policy Institute – MAS) in discussion with the author, July 2018. 165 Nu’man Kanafani and Sahar Taghdisi-Rad, “The Palestinian economy: Macroeconomic and trade policymaking under occupation,” United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (2012), 11-13. 166 Fischer et al., “Economic Developments in the West Bank and Gaza since Oslo,” F269. 167 World Development Indicators, The World Bank (last updated Oct 18, 2018). 168 “Report on UNCTAD assistance to the Palestinian people: Developments in the economy of the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (September 1, 2016), 6.

Territories – and in particular the PA – remains dependent on foreign aid, which offsets the cost of the occupation for Israel.

Much of this is rooted in the issue that the Oslo Accords were built without measures of accountability; in this sense, there was little oversight over their implementation and certainly no ramifications if they were broken. The burden of monitoring their implementation rested on the international community, namely the chief mediator of the process: the United States. Given its consistent deep connections to

Israel, the U.S. has not been an honest broker in this monitoring, and thus, Israel continues to break them, while the PA plays strictly according to the Oslo rules in an attempt to curry favor with Western powers.169 As policy fellow Nur Arafeh rightly argues, “the ‘Palestinian economy’ is a political construct, shaped to serve the more powerful player: Israel. Any economic shifts that do not challenge the biased power structure underpinning this system serve as window dressing, obfuscating the deep-seated power differential in which Palestinians and their economy are at the mercy of Israeli interests.”170 The Oslo process – particularly the Paris Protocol – failed to even challenge, let alone dismantle the power structures built into the very creation of the post-1948

Palestinian economy, and as a result, its policies have only further exacerbated the economic disparities between Israel and the Occupied Territories.

169 Belal al Fallah (Research Associate: Palestine Economic Policy Institute – MAS) in discussion with the author, July 2018. 170 Nur Arafeh, “The myth of a ‘Palestinian economy,’” Al Jazeera, July 6, 2017, https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/07/myth-palestinian-economy-170706060337109.html.

Geographic Segregation

Falls Road and Shankill Road in West Belfast have long been known for their ethno-sectarian geographic segregation and its resulting violence. Clonard – the neighborhood encompassing Falls Road – is 98% Catholic, while Shankill I – the neighborhood of Shankill Road – is 99% Protestant.171 Tensions in this area have been longstanding but were exacerbated with the outbreak of the troubles. In 1969, in an attempt to quell the rising violence, a ‘separation barrier’ was built to separate the two communities. A report by the Belfast Interface Project reports that this wall – one of the largest in Belfast – measures 800 meters long and includes a 4.5-meter-high concrete wall, topped with 3-meter-high metal sheeting and 6 meters of open mesh fence.172 The

Belfast Interface Project goes on to report that since 1969, 99 ‘security barriers’ have been built across Belfast (though walls are also present throughout Derry, Portadown, and

Lurgan), with the predominance owned by the Department of Justice and Northern

Ireland Housing Executive.173 However, the walls are no relic of the pre-peace period; in fact, the decade of the peace process saw the highest levels of wall construction, due in part to uncertainty in the face of a changing future, and the years since 2000 have seen even more walls being built in addition to the highest levels of wall rebuilding and/or

171 Fredenrick W. Boal, “Territoriality on the Shankill–Falls Divide,” Irish Geography 41, no. 3 (2008): 354. 172 Belfast Interface Project, “Belfast Interfaces: Security Barriers and Defensive Use of Space,” (2011) 39, https://www.belfastinterfaceproject.org/sites/default/files/publications/Belfast%20interfaces.pdf. 173 Belfast Interface Project, “Belfast Interfaces,” 9.

extension.174 Both Protestants and Catholics claim that the walls have gone up to protect the communities from one another in the wake of the peace process, as the fear of communal violence remains prevalent.175 Additionally, this physical segregation is widely supported, as the Public Attitudes to Peace Walls survey found in 2015 that only

35% of those living near peace walls wanted them to be removed at some point in the future, while 6% wanted greater accessibility and 7% wanted cosmetic improvements to the walls, with 30% preferring the status quo to remain; these figures are in comparison to the same survey given in 2012, which found that 44% wanted the walls to be dismantled in the future and only 22% wanted to preserve the status quo.176 Preservation of the walls is particularly favored by Protestant Unionists, with 44% of Protestants and only 23% of Catholics preferring to keep the walls standing.177

However, the walls – in addition to the publicly visible flags, memorials, murals, and paramilitary symbols that signal the political and religious leaning of an area to outside visitors – are primarily a means of physically cementing the deeper roots of

174 There were a total of 26 walls built and 5 rebuilt or extended between 1990-1999, while the highest level prior to this decade was 18 built during the height of the Troubles’ violence in the 1970s. Since 2000, 7 walls have been built and 16 have been built or extended. Belfast Interface Project, “Belfast Interfaces,” 11. 175 Brian Kingston, a council member affiliated with the Democratic Unionist Party, explains that “they're called peace walls I suppose because they're there to keep the peace between communities where there have been attacks, attacks on houses. Despite proposals by various governing bodies to dismantle the walls, none have been executed. As a woman living on the Shankill Road (a predominantly Protestant area) explains, “If the politicians are going to say it's a good idea, I don't know what they're thinking about, because there's too much bitterness between the two communities…I'm not proud of it, but it's there to keep the two communities separated, so there's nobody gets really hurt, because if that peace wall came down there'd be more lives taken.” See Barbara Miller, “Northern Ireland's peace walls: the great divide keeping Troubles at bay,” Australian Broadcasting Channel, June 10, 2013. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-11/barbara- miller-on-peace-walls/4745202. 176 Rebecca Black, “Support grows for Northern Ireland peace walls to stay,” Belfast Telegraph, December 16, 2015, https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/support-grows-for-northern-ireland- peace-walls-to-stay-34291021.html. 177 Black, “Support grows for Northern Ireland peace walls to stay.”

segregation. As Adrian Guelke explains, “People’s identities are formed by whose violence they’re frightened by.”178 In the decrease of sectarian violence that has followed the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, a more sinister means of preserving spatial segregation has emerged – “presenting the other community as fearsome and pathological” has become “a tactic…to homogenize communities and as such to reinforce spatial enclosure,” and as a result, communities are now reproducing their own fear-based segregation, rather than having it thrust upon them.179 Social and political exclusion have been downplayed in the public sector, despite the fact that the peace process at one level increased segregation, particularly for those living in urban areas who did not benefit from the investment and economic growth that followed the political stability which resulted from the peace process.180 Additionally, the increased construction of peace walls in urban communities which has exacerbated segregation has predominantly served to “impede the search for work, the uptake of training and education, and the use of public services,” which have even further polarized the two communities’ access to resources in the wake of the peace process.181

Rather than “simply” physically segregating Israelis from Palestinians in one geographic plane, as has been done in Northern Ireland, the Israeli settler colonial project has employed multiple tactics of geographic segregation in varying intensities between

178 Adrian Guelke (Professor: Queen’s University Belfast Centre for the Study of Ethnic Conflict) in discussion with the author, July 2018. 179 Peter Shirlow, “Segregation, ethno-sectarianism and the ‘new’ Belfast” in A Farewell to Arms? Beyond the Good Friday Agreement, eds. Michael Cox, Adrian Guelke, and Fiona Stephen (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 234. 180 Brendan Murtagh, “Ethno-Religious Segregation in Post-Conflict Belfast,” Built Environment (1978-) 37, no. 2 (2011), 224. 181 Shirlow, “Segregation, ethno-sectarianism and the ‘new’ Belfast” in A Farewell to Arms?, 235.

the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and within Israel following the breakdown of the

Oslo Accords at Camp David. Similar to Northern Ireland, Israel has used walls as a tool to physically separate the West Bank and Gaza from the State of Israel in its construction of two apartheid walls – one surrounding the West Bank (which annexes 16% of West

Bank territory beyond the Green Line to Israel) and the other enclosing the Gaza Strip.182

Additionally, Israel has imposed a siege on the Gaza Strip since 2007, isolating the people of the strip by severely limiting their movement and destroying economic activity, all while regularly embarking upon bombing campaigns and military incursions in the

Strip.183 While the walls may be the most visible physical separation of Israelis and

Palestinians, Israel has also implemented more inconspicuous means of separation between both Israelis and Palestinians as well as Palestinians themselves.

In East Jerusalem, Israel simultaneously separates Palestinians from Israelis and from one another. As Helga Tawil-Souri explains, Palestinians living in East Jerusalem are not granted Israeli citizenship (barring some exceptional cases, wherein Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem gained citizenship in 1967 or in the early 1990s prior to the establishment of Jerusalem as a topic of final status negotiations) but instead are granted

‘temporary residency,’ which is always just that – temporary – as Israel has been attempting to remove the Palestinian presence in East Jerusalem since 1967 by revoking residency, increasing Jewish-Israeli presence, and limiting Palestinian building and

182 Usher, “Unmaking Palestine,” 35. 183 Sara Roy, The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2016), xx-xxi.

infrastructure.184 According to Al Jazeera, Israeli has revoked the residency of over

14,500 Palestinians since 1967, while simultaneously allowing an increasing settler population to gain control over the land; as of 2017, Israel directly controlled 86% of East

Jerusalem, and over 200,000 settlers lived there.185 Additionally, because of the legal status of temporary residency permits, Palestinians are unable to travel abroad unless they receive permission from the Israeli government or hold another passport, and must continuously prove that their ‘center of life’ is in East Jerusalem, which limits the amount that they can travel and stay in the West Bank. Since the outbreak of the Second Intifada,

Palestinian East Jerusalemites have been further segregated from their Jewish Israeli counterparts in West (and, as the number of settlements rapidly grows, East) Jerusalem via the wall, security gates, and checkpoints.186

In the West Bank, Israel’s attempts to segregate Palestinians from Israeli settlers while still allowing settlers to freely move are underwritten by settler colonial aims to gain control of more Palestinian land while simultaneously dividing Palestinians from one another in order to pacify resistance to the occupation. The Oslo Accords’ division of the West Bank into Areas A, B, and C has been a significant facilitator of this segregation. As Suad Amiry explains, the division of the West Bank is putting as many

Palestinians as possible onto the smallest amount of land possible, while Israel ramps up

184 Helga Tawil-Souri, “Uneven Borders, Coloured (Im)mobilities: ID Cards in Palestine/Israel,” Geopolitics (2012), 6. 185 Al Jazeera News, “How Israel is Judaizing East Jerusalem,” Al Jazeera, December 6, 2017. 186 Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley, “Israeli Practices Towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid,” United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (2017), 29.

settlement construction.187 Checkpoints between settlements and Areas A and B as well as between Palestinian cities themselves divide the Palestinian population and heavily regulate movement. Additionally, Israeli military control over Area C has led to excessive urbanization and has forced good agricultural land in Area B to be converted into housing, as people are now sprawling from the overcrowded Area A to Area B, which is making land prices there increase exponentially.188 As Israel continues to divide and annex Palestinian land, this problem will only get worse.

The most recent example of Israeli annexation has been their proposed plan to annex the Ma’ale Adumim settlement block and E1 land, which connects Ma’ale

Adumim to Jerusalem. This would split the northern and southern West Bank by land which would fall on the other side of the wall – within Israel – which West Bank

Palestinians cannot enter without a permit. A policy brief from Al-Shabaka explains that the annexation would be devastating for Palestinians living in East Jerusalem, the E1 corridor, and the entire West Bank, given that “the contested annexation of the E1 corridor seeks to formally bring Ma’ale Adumim into the fold of Jerusalem, severing the land diagonally and also cutting Palestinians off from Jerusalem – their intended capital.

It would also displace Palestinian communities who have lived there for generations.”189

This fate is in part a result of the ways in which the Oslo Accords failed to address the

187 Suad Amiry (Member of the Palestinian Delegation: 1991-1993 Washington Track Talks) in discussion with the author, August 2018. 188 Belal al Fallah (Research Associate: Palestine Economic Policy Institute – MAS) in discussion with the author, July 2018. 189 Zena Agha, “Israel’s Annexation Crusade in Jerusalem: The Role of Ma’ale Adumim and the E1 Corridor,” Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, March 26, 2018, https://al- shabaka.org/briefs/israels-annexation-crusade-in-jerusalem-the-role-of-maale-adumim-and-the-e1- corridor/.

issue of Jerusalem and allowed for the continuation – and, in fact, ramping up – of settlement construction.

Though the rates and pervasiveness of geographic segregation in Northern Ireland and Palestine are different, the underlying patterns remain similar. Communal and representative violence – or rather, the fear of its resurgence, particularly by unionists – keeps the walls across Northern Ireland standing, while Israeli policies of segregation, settlement expansion, and closure force Palestinians into ever-shrinking bantustans.

Visible segregation serves to reinforce divisions while giving the settlers control over increasing tracts of land and the freedom of movement of the natives. Because of the ways in which both peace processes codified such segregation, it has remained prevalent in Northern Ireland and taken on new forms in Palestine.

CHAPTER FIVE

Conclusion

In the era of Brexit, “The Deal of the Century,” cuts to UNRWA, and resurgent nationalist autocracy worldwide, the future of equitable peace and justice seems rather bleak. As the American empire continues to forcefully assert its dominance in order to maintain its diminishing grip on the world, marginalized communities at home and oppressed nations abroad have felt the predominance of the consequences. In light of this, the cases of Northern Ireland and Palestine have become key examples of the limitations and destructive character of imperial attempts at building peace, as well as the dangerous effects of the failure to dismantle settler colonial structures within such imperially-built peace processes. The involvement of the British empire in the internal politics of

Northern Ireland forced the colonized Irish to negotiate the peace agreement from a point of weakness. Although the Good Friday Agreement quelled the worst violence of the

Troubles era despite its failure to dismantle settler colonial structures in Northern Ireland, it has become clear in recent years that it simultaneously allowed settler colonialism to pervade society in a more sinister manner, transforming how Unionists and the British oppress the Irish and thus exacerbating economic inequities and geographic segregation.

The Oslo Accords, despite their failure, have brought about a similar situation; because no final agreement was reached, Israeli settler colonial structures have remained stronger

than ever in the post-peace process era, and thus a similar case of intensified economic inequality and geographic division has developed in Palestine.

As two settler colonial cases whose peace processes occurred relatively concurrently, Palestine and Northern Ireland provide strong comparative examples for the impact of peace processes on the implementation of settler colonialism. In both cases, the peace process transformed settler colonialism from control on the brink of collapse to a newly reinvigorated form of political dominance that is more palatable to international liberal audiences. This thesis primarily has focused on the realms of policing/security, pseudo-self-governance, and changing forms of settler violence, as these are the most significant parallels between the two cases, but there are certainly other settler colonial structures which were preserved or transformed in each individual case. The failure of both peace processes to dismantle such settler colonial structures has allowed for the exacerbation of economic inequalities and geographic segregation by continuing to perpetuate divisions and power dynamics built along sectarian lines which allow the settlers to maintain their historic dominance.

These case studies provide insight beyond their respective situations, however.

Analyzing the parallels between Palestine and Northern Ireland following their respective peace processes showcases the importance of dismantling settler colonial structures in order to build sustainable peace in settler colonial conflicts. Despite significant differences in the two political settlements, the parallels between their outcomes can be explained by the commonality of upholding settler colonial structures. This identifies a very important lesson about settler colonial societies globally; the implementation of a

truly sustainable, equitable peace after conflict relies significantly upon the successful dismantling of settler colonial structures which uphold the privilege of the colonizers over the colonized. Additionally, it critically analyzes two imperially-built peace processes in order to provide insight into their potential pitfalls. In doing so, this thesis draws its conclusions beyond commentary on Palestine and Northern Ireland alone – important though these case-based discussions are – and remark more broadly on the detrimental effects of imperially-built peace processes which fail to dismantle settler colonial structures, in the hopes that this analysis will transform the future of conflict resolution in settler colonial cases in order to prevent future processes from falling into the same dangerous cycle.

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