The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Internal Challenges on the Road to Peace
Certain domestic Israeli and Palestinian concerns—from state institution-building and secular-religious divides, to coalition politics and educational reform—have strong implications for the broader conflict, and for international efforts towards a peaceful resolution. Through a range of programing launched in 2010, USIP has explored such critical yet oft-neglected internal dynamics, and continues to prioritize this issue through convening, grants, and programing in the field.
Goals
- Analyze issues of internal significance to Israelis and Palestinians and their implications for achieving a peaceful resolution to the conflict;
- Promote debate and discussion around the impact of these issues on the ability to build consensus toward a negotiated solution among the Israeli and Palestinian publics;
- Contribute to the field of analysis and awareness surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by emphasizing the interplay between top-down and bottom-up processes
Context
With the resumption of direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians in September of 2010, focus on the conflict became centered once again on government-to-government peace process efforts and the paradigm of bilateral – and in some cases multilateral – relations and negotiations. Such an emphasis, while key to efforts to resolve the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian and Arab conflict, can obscure the multitude of challenges that the individual parties face internally and the socio-political dynamics that contribute to the life of the conflict yet potentially offer opportunities for resolving it.
Whether relations in Israel between Jewish and Arab citizens of the state; deepening political and ideological divides between secular and religious segments of society; the split in Palestinian leadership between Hamas and Fatah, factious politics within the ruling parties, or the challenges of building a state, or pursuing a peace agenda within such a fractured and fraught context, such issues, call for serious consideration.
Explore
- Learn about the Institute's programmatic work on some of these issues in Israel and the Palestinian Territories.
- Read President Nancy Lindborg’s reflections on the value of intra-societal initiatives in her piece: “Can Anything Save the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process?”
- Read about the Abraham Fund Initiative’s USIP grant on policing in a divided society.
- Read about the USIP and University of Maryland partnership study of Israeli and Palestinian public opinion.
- Watch USIP’s public conversation with Jerusalem’s Hand in Hand School.
- Learn about the Institute’s public event: Identity Politics, Public Opinion, and the Peace Process: The Challenges and Opportunities for Bringing Publics on Board; part of USIP’s one-day conference on Twenty Years After Madrid.
- Read USIP’s report by Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow, Sammy Smooha, on “Arab-Jewish Relations in Israel: Alienation and Rapprochement.”
- Listen to the Institute’s public event on Israel (Un)Divided: Internal Conflicts and Prospects for Peace.
- Learn about the Institute’s public event: Towards a Palestinian State: Is Institution Building Succeeding?
