ABSTRACT

Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, international actors such as Canada, the European Union, European member states and the United States have played a leading role in building a Middle East Peace Process (MEPP) meant to drive Israel and the Palestinians towards conflict resolution. However, their efforts appear to have reached an impasse. Western MEPP policy at present represents both an analytical and a policy failure. While Western governments have been able to sustain this failed policy for years, developments in the Israeli-Palestinian arena could shift the nature of the conflict and therefore, shatter conventional Western policy towards the region. This article posits that the MEPP’s failure may be tied to structural-cognitive weaknesses in the international community’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These weaknesses, which simultaneously undermine both the Palestinians and Israel, include a failure to confront false and misleading collective assumptions in donor policy, a main contributor to the failure of the MEPP. Meanwhile, changed realities on the ground and a paradigm shift brought on by the apparent demise of the two-state solution present challenges and opportunities for the international community as it struggles to remain relevant in conflict resolution in the Israeli-Palestinian arena in the coming years.

摘要

自1993年《奥斯陆协定》以来，加拿大，欧洲联盟，欧洲成员国和美国等国际角色在建立中东和平进程（MEPP）中起着领导作用，该进程旨在推动以色列和巴勒斯坦人解决冲突。但是，他们的努力似乎陷入僵局。目前，西方的MEPP政策既代表分析失败，也代表政策失败。尽管西方政府多年来一直能够维持这一失败的政策，但以色列-巴勒斯坦舞台上的事态发展可能会改变冲突的性质，因此，西方的传统政策会向该地区瓦解。本文认为，MEPP的失败可能与国际社会处理以巴冲突中的结构性认知弱点有关。这些弱点 这同时破坏了巴勒斯坦人和以色列人，其中包括在捐助者政策中未能面对错误和误导性的集体假设，这是MEPP失败的主要原因。同时，由于现实情况的改变和两国解决方案的明显消亡所带来的范式转变，给国际社会带来了挑战和机遇，因为国际社会在未来几年内仍难以在解决以色列-巴勒斯坦舞台上的冲突中保持重要地位。