The International Dimension of the Israel-Palestinian Conflict
A Post-Eurocentric Approach
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Analyzes the Israel-Palestinian conflict by looking at its interactions with seven regional and global powers and the way the conflict is framed at the international level.
Description
2021 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title
Despite decades of international diplomatic efforts, a solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict is still as elusive as ever, forcing us to ask the question: have global and regional powers, rather than helping to solve the conflict, actually led to its perpetuation? This book explores this question from a post-Eurocentric perspective. Departing from the literature that sees the United States, Europe, and Russia as outside diplomatic actors, and regional powers such as Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey as part of the conflict, Daniela Huber instead conceptualizes all of them as actors in the regional/international dimension of the conflict, which they (re)produce through their role performances. Anchored in grounded theory and critical discourse analysis, she examines the scripts that have been performed by these powers at the United Nations and how the authoritative international framing of the conflict has evolved in the UN Security Council and General Assembly, identifying periods of continuity and ruptures in these scripts, as well as alternatives to them.
Daniela Huber is Head of the Middle East and Mediterranean Department at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) and teaches at Roma Tre University, both in Rome, Italy. Her books include Democracy Promotion and Foreign Policy: Identity and Interests in US, EU and Non-Western Democracies.
Reviews
"The UN and the Israel-Palestinian conflict are thus deeply intertwined, and Daniela Huber does an excellent job at demonstrating and analyzing how the issue has been treated at the UN; how this treatment has developed over time; and how a variety of UN members have addressed the issue at the UN … There is much to be learned from Huber's excellent account for readers interested in the UN, Israel/Palestine, or both." — Journal of Peace Research
"This is an important critical analysis of the conflict, anchoring it in grounded theory and critical discourse analysis to explain its perpetuation … Highly recommended." — CHOICE
"This meticulously researched, must-read book historicizes how the US-led 'peace process' script came to dominate, necessarily at the expense of Palestinian rights and international law. It also offers hope that in the age of Trump, Israeli overreach, and global civil rights struggles, new discursive battles in and outside the UN can reframe the very meaning of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. A new, international performance based on rights and law is desperately needed." — Karim Makdisi, The American University of Beirut
"This book—scholarly, insightful, incisive—tells us much about the important regional and international actors whose policies, alliances, orthodoxies, and blinders have so decisively shaped the course of the Israel-Palestinian conflict." — Michael Lynk, Western University in London, Ontario
"The book promises to deliver a post-Eurocentric approach to the study of the Palestine/Israel question and does so extremely well. It includes very original research which has so far been missing from the existing literature." — Dimitris Bouris, University of Amsterdam