Post-Oslo peace initiatives and the discourse of Palestinian-Israeli relations

Abstract

The author’s argument is that the efforts made by the Obama administration to realize Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation will, like all “peace” initiatives before them, ultimately exacerbate direct and structural violence between the two parties. He makes this argument in four stages. First, he explains his Foucault-inspired discourse analysis. Second, he describes and historicizes the discourse of Palestinian-Israeli relations. More specifically, he identifies the three persistent practices, three silences and three rules of formation that constitute the discourse. Third, he demonstrates how all post-Oslo peace initiatives, the Roadmap and the Geneva Accord for example, were articulations of, and rearticulated, this discourse and consequently (re-)produced Palestinian- Israeli violence. Fourth and finally, he argues that if the Obama administration is to realize Palestinian-Israeli peace, it must violate the determinant rule of the discourse and talk about Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine.