INTL 102 UCSD History and Politics of Israeli Palestinian Peace Seeking Reflective Paper Summarize your experience in this course. Write about “Taking it h

INTL 102 UCSD History and Politics of Israeli Palestinian Peace Seeking Reflective Paper Summarize your experience in this course. Write about “Taking it home – Identity Conflict and Me: what I think, feel, and want to do about it in the world and in my life, now. And why?” (2-3 pages, approx. 750 words) 1
Resolving IdentityBased Conflict
Jay Rothman
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in Nations, Organizations,
and Communities
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The Jossey-Bass Conflict Resolution
Series
The Jossey-Bass Conflict Resolution Series addresses the growing
need for guidelines in the field of conflict resolution, as broadly
defined to include negotiation, mediation, alternative dispute
resolution, and other forms of third-party intervention. Our books
bridge theory and practice, ranging from descriptive analysis to
prescriptive advice. Our goal is to provide those engaged in
understanding and finding new and more effective ways to
approach conflict-practitioners, researchers, teachers, and those in
other professional and volunteer pursuits-with the resources to
further their work and better the world in which we live.
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Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Prologue: The ARIA Quartet Conflict
Part One: Transforming IdentityBased Conflict
1. The ARIA Framework: Antagonism, Resonance, Invention,
Action
2. Antagonism: Surfacing Differences and Analyzing Animosity
3. Resonance: Articulating Common Needs and Motivations
4. Invention: Generating Cooperative Solutions
5. Action: Setting Joint Agendas
Part Two: The ARIA Framework in Practice
6. Prenegotiation in Nations: Peace Building in Jerusalem
7. Transforming Conflicts Within and Between Groups in
Organizations
8. ARIA Tools: Lessons Drawn from Community Conflicts
Epilogue: Engaging Identity, Creating Harmony
Notes
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References
Index
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Preface
Several years ago I helped run a conflict resolution workshop in the
Caucasus region of the former Soviet Union, a region with one of the
world’s highest densities of different, and contending, ethnic groups.
About fifteen of these groups were represented at the workshop.
Each night the participants would gather for vodka and more relaxed
conversation, which often included stories of military brawn and
bravado told by a Chechen political functionary named Shamil. One
night the vodka was flowing a little more freely than usual, and this
65″, three-hundred-pound Chechen announced, “Now, I will dance!”
The group became still as Shamil began his traditional Chechen
dance. Soon he was virtually flying through the air, slapping his huge
hands against his knees and feet. The passion of his dance, of his
identity, seemed to levitate him off the ground. Six months later when
Russian troops stormed into Chechnya expecting a lightning-fast
victory, I thought, “Boris Yeltsin would know there is no way this war
will end quickly and easily if he had experienced that Chechen
dance.” The war raged on for more than three years, finally
sputtering to an end with tens of thousands of people dead and a
barely disguised Russian defeat.
Identity and conflict are passionate forces indeed. They are two of
the most engaging features of human life. When they are combined,
the result is a combustible mixture that can either destroy or create,
depending upon whether and how the mixture is handled. Identity
conflict has the potential to lead to war and destruction; it also has
the potential to generate great creativity and positive transformation.
In this book I suggest how identity conflict may be guided toward its
creative potential. The book is about making music out of deep
conflict.
In opera, singers recite long and sometimes tedious narratives of
everyday tensions, strife, and conflict. Such narration (the recitative)
works its way toward a more passionate expression and culmination
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in the aria. Such songs of spirit and passion are the intensification of
the everyday. So too with conflict. We have many small disputes
daily within ourselves and in our relationships; from time to time,
more often in some places and times than others, conflicts strike at
our core, our identities. Then we become passionate. How can this
passion be guided? How can conflict be channeled to enhance
group identity and positive intergroup relations rather than provoke
antagonism, domination, or even war?
This book defines and addresses identity conflicts that take place
within and between national, organizational, and community groups
in which individuals invest their hopes for a meaningful, safe, and
dignified life. It shows how such conflict, which often brings out the
worst in people, can also call forth the best in people.
One of the reasons identity-based conflict is so engaging is that it
is so visceral. It comes from-and hits us-in our gut. Our emotions,
identities, and bodies are often on the line. Deep conflict requires a
tremendous exertion of psychological and physical energy. Although
the philosopher William James (1910, p. 3) was on the right track
when he called on humanity to wage peace-“the moral equivalent of
war,” he did not tell us concretely how to do so. As long as we turn to
the art of war and violence to address our deep conflicts instead of
nurturing the art of peace and cooperation, the former will prevail.
Avoiding, yelling, pushing, punching, or even pulling a gun are
relatively easy reactions to conflict and may even be initially
satisfying for an aggrieved party. Finding ways to foster common
cause, to think together and solve problems for mutual benefit, to
make peace pay-all take painstaking and heroic effort. A constructive
cycle of cooperation may be even more powerful, and certainly more
creative, than the unfortunately more common vicious cycle of
violence. “Who is a hero?” ask the rabbis of the Talmud. Their
answer: “One who changes an enemy into an ally.”
Still, conflict resolution is not necessarily a polite process.
Transforming deep conflict through creative means toward a
peaceful end is not about being nice or making pleasantries with an
adversary. Nor is it about forging feelings of fellowship or necessarily
enhancing trust. Although these may be results of the peace-making
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process, they are not its engine. Transforming conflict is about
finding that even the bitterest of adversaries share common human
needs. Identity conflict is about who we really are and what we care
about most deeply. Such conflict may be creatively transformed
when adversaries come to learn, ironically perhaps, that they may
fulfill their deepest needs and aspirations only with the cooperation
of those who most vigorously oppose them. Even while cooperating,
adversaries may still wish the other side would just go away; peace
prevails when they understand that this will not happen. Through indepth encounters, even the angriest of enemies may come to learn
that just as their own needs for expression and fulfillment of identity,
safety, dignity, and meaning are like a thirst that must be quenched,
the other side’s identity needs are equally compelling.
When we push forward and engage deep conflicts-in our nations,
organizations, and communities-music can result. In the process of
engagement, our identities, which may be threatened or frustrated by
such conflicts, may be refined like gold in a smelting furnace. The
dross falls away and burns up as the precious core remains.
Although this may sound idealistic or unrealistic, in fact for the past
several decades, the emerging field of conflict resolution has seen
an evolution of theories and practices for concretely transforming
bitter conflicts into opportunities. War is more prevalent than peace,
and violent conflict is more common than cooperation, but the battle
for peace is on. By writing Resolving Identity-Based Conflict, I seek
to contribute my voice to this wealth of theory and experience.
This book results from my own study and practical synthesis of
many models of conflict resolution. It began with a journey more than
twenty years ago, when I went to Israel for a short visit. Arriving as
an assimilated American Jew, with little time or patience for ethnic or
cultural exclusivity, I put my head against the Western Wall in the old
city of Jerusalem and felt a powerful surge-a rich connection to a
people, a religion, a culture, a history. For the first time I knew what it
meant to have a passionate connection-an identity that is mine yet is
so much larger than I am.
However, I soon began asking, Must this identity be pursued and
fulfilled in opposition to that of another people, the Palestinians?
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Moreover, I wondered how I could reconcile my own universalistic
and humanistic side with my newly found, particularistic identity. My
answer to both questions came first from books. For months I
struggled with I and Thou by Martin Buber and found there a
“believing humanism” that has guided me since. Next I discovered in
the work of the father of cultural pluralism, Horace Kallen, an answer
to the question of how to be simultaneously particularistic and
universalistic in my identity as a Jew and as a man of the world. By
deeply living my own cultural and religious identity, I could gain
access to and connection with others living out theirs.
This led me to the teachings of a black Baptist preacher who, by
living his identity, changed the world for all people. At the Martin
Luther King, Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change, I learned from
a Catholic nun, Sister Anne Brotherton, about King’s work and
philosophy of nonviolence. A decade later I returned to Israel, where
I founded and for six years ran the Conflict Resolution Program at
the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem.
Even after I returned to the United States, Jerusalem in many
ways remained the central metaphor for my work, which has now
branched out to include organizational and community conflicts as
well as international relations. In Jerusalem two passionate identity
groups diametrically opposed to one another are forced to live
uneasily together. Can they do it better than they have? Will
Jerusalem be a tinderbox for the next world war or a model for living
together peacefully in the next millennium?
Conflict begs to be viewed not merely as a problem waiting to be
solved but as an opportunity for growth, cooperation, and
development waiting to be fulfilled. Toward this end I have built my
work upon some of the best ideas of the interlocking fields of conflict
management, resolution, and transformation. The theoretical and
applied framework I have synthesized, which I call ARIA, is named
for the journey through Antagonism, Resonance, Invention, and
Action. Surfacing Antagonism in deep conflict enables disputants to
express buried anger and angst. Moving past this common starting
point in conflict discourse, which is often its stopping point as well,
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the next step is to seek Resonance by articulating overlapping needs
and values that are at stake for the parties in the conflict. Through
Invention, former adversaries generate creative solutions to fulfill the
needs they seek separately but can only get, or at least can only fully
get, cooperatively; finally, planning Action and a joint agenda carries
the process forward.
The first section of this book presents the ARIA framework,
beginning with a brief metaphorical description of an identity conflict
within a musical ensemble called the ARIA Quartet, which serves to
illustrate the framework in practice. In Chapter One, I develop a
definition for identity conflict and explain why conventional conflict
management theories and methods are ineffective in solving it. The
next four chapters explain each phase of the framework in detail,
with illustrations of the process in action. Each phase of the ARIA
framework is further brought to life through the continuing story of
conflict and resolution in the ARIA Quartet.
The second section provides detailed examples of how ARIA can
function in nations, organizations, and communities. In Chapter Six I
focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over Jerusalem. In Chapter
Seven I describe organizational applications; Chapter Eight is a sort
of training guide for practitioners in which I illustrate how ARIA can
be applied to community conflicts.
A challenge I face in my work generally, and with this book in
particular, is balancing or bridging the different worlds of theory and
practice. I seek in the Lewinian action-research tradition to test out
my theory in use and to be rigorous and systematic in my practice so
that sound theory can emerge from it. Although the link between
theory and practice sounds obvious and necessary to many,
particularly in a field of conflict studies and intervention, putting them
together often creates friction. So applying my own principles, I seek
to integrate these worlds of theory and practice when possible, or at
least guide them to a more peaceful and synergistic coexistence.
I have sought to make this book as accessible to readers as
possible. The text is as jargon-free and the language as direct as I
could make it; when I have to use technical language, I explain it
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fully and simply. Also I have removed most citations and references
from the text. Extensive bibliographic notes can be found in a
separate section at the end of the book. I included these notes to
acknowledge the fact that my work is built on, sometimes in
counterdis- tinction to, the good efforts and ideas of many, many
other people; I want to set the work in its appropriate intellectual
context and to acknowledge and discuss the work of those whose
shoulders I have looked over or stood upon. Readers who are not
interested in the academic and theoretical side of this book may
quickly skim the Notes section or ignore it altogether.
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Acknowledgments
The list of people and institutions that have made this book possible
is very long, since I have been working on it for six years. It was
1991 when the late Jeffrey Rubin, a leader in the world of conflict
resolution, urged me, despite my weariness after having written my
first book, “to write the next one.” I told him I feared it wouldn’t make
much of a difference in the world but would certainly take a toll on
my life. He countered, “You never know.” When Jeffrey died in a
tragic accident four years later, I vowed to complete this for him.
Here it is, Jeffrey. I do hope it makes some difference.
A number of other people helped me to birth this book-not an
easy delivery-and I am eternally grateful to them. Cedric Crocker, my
editor at Jossey-Bass, held my hand and encouraged me throughout
with just the right amount of warm support and convincing pressure.
Karen Ivory, my development editor, is in many ways singlehandedly
responsible for coaxing this book from its previous chaos to what I
believe is now a very coherent and reader-friendly volume. My wife
and partner, Randi Land Rothman, greatly assisted me with final
editing and refinements to help make this book sing. The JosseyBass team, especially Noelle Graney, Nathalie Mainland-Smith, and
Michael Long, provided masterful assistance in final stages.
Along the way a number of colleagues read and commented on
my drafts, and I am grateful to each of them (though, of course, none
bear any responsibility for the book’s faults or limitations). Readers
included Victor Friedman, Roy Lewicki, Chris Moore, Marc Ross,
Jeffrey Rubin, and Jerry Weissman. My childhood buddy, musician,
writer, and illustrator extraordinaire, Tom Bachtell, provided me with
a story of conflict in a musical ensemble that I have adapted for this
book. He gave this gift to me just as the book was gaining steam,
providing it with added zest. It is important to note here that although
this book contains many tales of conflict that are based in reality,
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most drawn from my own practice, they have all been fictionalized
and all actors’ names and characteristics have been altered.
Over the past decade I have been blessed with wonderful
students in many different settings. I have taught at the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem; I currently teach at Bryn Mawr and
Haverford Colleges, and I have run numerous seminars and
workshops at universities and colleges throughout the United States
and for disputing parties from different “hot spots” around the world:
Cyprus, South Africa, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, the former Soviet
Union, and elsewhere. As a consultant I have worked with top
executives and cafeteria workers, superintendents and school board
members, politicians and community organizers. All have been my
teachers as well as good students. I am grateful to them all for
directly contributing to my work with their comments, criticisms,
enthusiasm, and valuable feedback.
The writing of this book began while I was at the Leonard Davis
Institute for International Relations running the Project on
Prenegotiation, funded by the MacArthur Foundation and the U.S.
Institute for Peace. My work there was continued with funding from
the Konrad Adenauer Foundation to direct the Program on Managing
Political Disputes. Upon returning to the United States, I turned my
attention to organizational conflict and am currently supported in an
ongoing project that examines the role of conflict in promoting
organizational learning. The project is funded by the DaimlerBenz
Foundation. I am also engaged in a multiyear project, funded by the
Pew Charitable Trusts, to define, promote, and assess success in
ethnic conflict resolution. I am grateful to these foundations for their
financial support, though it should be noted that the views expressed
in the book are mine and not necessarily those of the foundations.
Finally, I am grateful to Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges for
granting me an academic leave, which ultimately made the
completion of this project possible.
J. R.
Resolve-“to make (as one or more voice parts or the total
musical harmony) progress from a dissonance into a
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consonance.”
-Webster’s 3rd New International Dictionary
To my family, for helping me weave my life into a
consonance.
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About the Author
Jay Rothman is director and faculty member of the Peace and
Conflict Studies Program of Bryn Mawr and Haverford colleges. He
has worked with diplomats, business executives, opposing leaders of
embattled ethnic communities, union leaders, school boards and
superintendents, community activists and organizers, and students
from around the world. He has been a teacher, trainer, and student
of the art and science of conflict resolution: transforming normally
destructive and deeply rooted conflicts into opportunities for learning
and cooperative action.
Rothman is the author of From Confrontation to Cooperation:
Resolving Ethnic and Regional Conflict, a study of international
conflict resolution (Sage, 1992). It presents his work beginning in
1987 when, as founding director of the Conflict Resolution Program
at the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he began his career facilitating
conflict resolution workshops between Israelis and Palestinians,
Greek and Turkish Cypriots, and loyalist and nationalist leaders from
Northern Ireland. During this period he also taught diplomats from a
dozen countries, and during the transitional period in South Africa he
worked with African National Congress leaders to prepare them for
service at the new South African Foreign Ministry.
Over the past several years, with support from the Pew Charitable
Trusts, Rothman has been conducting an action-research project to
promote and articulate criteria for success in ethnic and community
conflict resolution interventions in the United States and around the
world. To this end he has been developing a systematic “actionevaluation” methodology for community development and conflict
resolution.
He is also a member of an ongoing study group project on
organizational learning sponsored by the Daimler-Benz Foundation.
His contribution to the group’s handbook on organizational learning
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is an essay on the role of conflict in transforming organizational
obstacles into opportunities for learning, growth, and sustained
change.
In 1993, in recognition of his contributions to the Middle East
peace process at the grassroots level, Rothman …
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