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19.3: Four Peace Processes

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    77220
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    We turn now to an examination of four cases where conflicts ended with peace accords, agreements, or processes – The Oslo Accord in the Middle East, the negotiations leading to the new 1994 South African constitution; the Dayton Accords the ended the wars in former Yugoslavia, and the 1998 Good Friday Accords that ended the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland.

    The Middle East Peace Process

    The Oslo Accord was signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Negotiator Mahmoud Abbas in September 1993. The official name of the accord is the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements. The PLO renounced terrorism and recognized Israel’s right to exist, and the two sides agreed on a system of governance in which a Palestinian Authority would be created and have some exclusive authority within the West Bank and Gaza, and other areas would be administered jointly or by the Israeli government and did not fundamentally alter the occupied status of the territories. Differing statuses were created for three areas in the West Bank. Area A is under full civil and security control of the Palestinian Authority and includes the eight largest cities and areas including Nablus, Jenin, Qalqilya, Tulkarem, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Jericho, and 80% of Hebron. Area B is under civil control of the PA and joint Israeli-Palestinian security control. Area C is completely under Israeli civil and security control. Area B comprises about 22% of the land in the West Bank and 450-500 villages. Area C has a Palestinian and Bedouin population of about 150,000 but contains about 90% of the natural resources in the West Bank. There are about 300,000 Israeli settlers living in Area C, and some of Area C is also considered state land and some is appropriated for military outposts. The Palestinian population in Area C has declined by about half since 2013, primarily due to demolitions carried out by the Israeli government. Palestinians are denied permits to building Area C. The international court considers Israeli settlements there to be illegal. Demolitions are ordered for a range of reasons including as punishment of the families of those accused or convicted of carrying out attacks against Israelis or failure to produce documentation of their occupancy, even though they have occupied these areas primarily as goatherders and agriculturalists, since they fell under the rule of the Ottoman empire.

    Today, the fastest way to make friends in Palestine is to open a conversation with “Whoever signed Oslo should be shot.”

    From Apartheid to Democracy: South Africa’s New Constitution

    Although the UN called for an arms embargo and subsequent expansions of sanctions against South Africa from 1977-1986, the US and UK did not actively support the sanctions regime until 1985. Within only a few years, the white supremacist government in South Africa felt the international pressure, and the ruling National Party entered into negotiations with the African National Congress (ANC) that led to the creation of a new constitution in 1993, the first democratic all-race elections in 1994, and the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1995. The TRC was actually authorized by the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act of 1995 and created three committees – one on amnesty, one on reparation and rehabilitation, and one on human rights violations. The TRC was very clear about two things in its deliberations. One was that in order to be considered for amnesty, the crimes in question had to be fundamentally motivated by politics, and the other was that people committed crimes and atrocities in part because they lived in an ideological environment that normalized the dehumanization of Black and non-white South Africans. Victims’ families were invited to attend and offer their support for or opposition to applications for amnesty, and while their testimony and positions carried a lot of weight, the decision to grant amnesty or not was not solely based on the support or opposition of victims’ families.

    The Yugoslav Wars of Secession

    The “Ten Day War” of Slovenian secession and the response by Yugoslavia’s Belgrade government marked the beginning of an armed conflict in connection with the post-Tito status of Yugoslav republics and autonomous regions. Although the Dayton Accords of November 1995 brought to an end the armed conflict between the Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), subsequent efforts by the Serbian government to expel Albanians from Kosovo provoked a NATO response that has since been considered subject to the same judicial process for war crimes accusations arising out of the 1991-1995 conflict that took place mostly in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Dayton Accords, formally titled a “General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” created two ‘entities’ while ostensibly maintaining the territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a single state. The western part sharing a border with the Dalmatian region of Croatia, became the ‘Bosniak-Croat federation’ and the boomerang shaped eastern entity bordering Croatia in the north and Macedonia and Albania to the east, became the Bosnian Serb Republic, or Republika Srpska, as Serbs call it. Essentially, this arrangement rewarded the main protagonists, Serbia and Croatia, by dividing Bosnia into two territorial and jurisdictional entities with linguistic, economic, and political ties to the Croatian and Serbian states. Those living in the federation to the east were allowed to hold passports for Croatia as well as for the federation “entity,” thus reinforcing dual citizenship with a potential to become a single Croatian state. A twenty-six state alliance supported the post-conflict peace by participating in a Stabilization Force known as SFOR, and following the signing of the accords, a military ‘Implementation Force’ under NATO command would supervise and keep the peace.

    The main provisions were that the three states – Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina—would respect one another’s sovereignty and maintain their borders as international borders. An annex to the accords were designated as the constitution for the Bosnia-Herzegovina state. It provides for a tripartite presidency with one representative from each of the three main identity/communal groups. Those with binational identities are excluded, for example, a Croat, Serb, or Bosniak who also identifies as Jewish would be excluded. A 42-member parliament are elected through a system of proportional representation with 28 from the Federation and 14 from Republika Srpska. A second house consisting of 15 members is elected by the Parliament with two-thirds from the Federation and one-third from the Republika Srpska. Both entities have a great deal of autonomy and each has its own national assembly, Prime Minister, and 16 ministries. There have been as many as 60 or more political parties participating in the statewide elections (Nardelli et al., 2014).

    Ending the Troubles in Northern Ireland

    On 10 April 1998, the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement ended nearly 30 years of violent conflict over the status of Northern Ireland and provided a framework for normalization and nonviolence (by ultimately decommissioning paramilitaries active in Northern Ireland was really two agreements – one between the British and Irish governments, another among the eight major parties to the conflict itself: the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), Sinn Féin (linked to the Irish Republican Army or IRA), the Alliance Party, the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) (linked to paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF)), the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC), the Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) and Labour. The agreement acknowledged two contradictory political realities – that the majority of those living in Northern Ireland wished to remain part of the UK, and that a substantial number of people in Northern Ireland as well as a majority on “the island of Ireland” wanted a united Ireland. Northern Ireland would remain part of the UK until or unless a majority of those living both in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland chose otherwise, in which case the two governments, British and Irish, would be obligated to implement a united Ireland. On the decommissioning of paramilitaries and normalization of British relations, particularly as embodied in the presence of British troops, the parties to the multi-party agreement committed to using “any influence they may have” to bring about the decommissioning while the British government agreed to reduce the number of troops there “to levels compatible with a normal peaceful society.” The agreement also created a commission to oversee policing and work to garner public support for these goals. The agreement also created a Northern Ireland assembly and a power-sharing executive utilizing a form of proportional representation.


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