The Construction of Identities in Protracted Conflicts

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the concepts of identity and conflict. Drawing from many others who place identity as the central factor explaining the mutually reinforcing dynamics of protracted conflicts and protracted peace processes, this chapter suggests that the processes of identity building in protracted conflicts bear specific characteristics due to the multigenerational aspects of these contexts. The argument developed is that peace processes in this kind of conflicts tend to become protracted themselves, turning into a structure of their own that impact perceptions about the ‘self’ and the ‘other’, thus influencing the negative dimension of identity—the detachment or difference from others—and, therefore, the very behavior and interests of actors involved in the conflict. For this reason, identity and violence must be read as mutually constituted in the cases of historical conflicts, making it impossible to discuss conflict transformation without addressing the main categories of identity and violence, as well as their interconnectedness.

The construction of identities in protracted social conflicts (PSC) (Azar 1978, 1979, 1986) is a process that bears specific characteristics. Identity is a product of memories, myths, collective stories, shared values, traditions and common projects (Smith 1997: 28–30). Nevertheless, it has also to do with both the identification with some and de-identification from others (Weldes et al. 1999: 10). Although most literature give more attention to the positive dimension of identity—the feeling of belonging or how people are identified and identify themselves—in the case of protracted conflicts, its negative dimension¹—the detachment from others or the difference from the ‘other’, what Herbert C. Kelman refers to as the “negative interdependence” between identities (Kelman 1999: 581)—assumes a greater role.

Edward Azar defines protracted social conflicts as “identity-related conflicts” that focus on “religious, cultural or ethnic communal identity, which in turn is dependent upon the satisfaction of basic needs such as those for security, communal recognition and distributive justice” (Azar 1990: 2 [the italic is mine]). This is the case of the conflict between Israel and Palestine, one of the most relevant examples of protracted conflicts, in which the narratives that define both national projects are often expressed by political elites and leaders in terms of the relationship with the ‘other’, that is depicted as an intruder in a supposedly indivisible territory of the historical Palestine (Khalidi 2010; Sand 2010: 188). Both discourses place the ‘other’ as a central aspect of one’s identity, since they are strongly related with opposing the enemy and denying the rights of existence to this ‘other’ identity (Kelman 1999). The relationship between identity and violence in these contexts then assumes the form of a continuum insofar as they are co-constituted through time. Therefore, understanding the historical processes of identity building and, more specifically, of the negative dimension of identity construction in protracted conflicts is central to understand what can be called the cycle of protractedness.²

Within a constructivist framework, reality is considered to be produced through meaningful action, implying that both structural continuities and processes of change are based on agency, which in turn is influenced by historical, social and spatial contexts (Fierke 2013: 187). This perspective renders a great deal of importance to ideational matters such as the (re)shaping of identities and the construction of perceptions for the simultaneous and co-constitutive processes of continuity and change. Following the constructivist ontology, the interactions between discourses and practices result in the establishment of dominant narratives and intersubjective meanings that define individual and collective identities and behaviors (Lynch 2014: 17–19), leading to the construction of social structures that simultaneously condition and are influenced by agents and their interaction. By emphasizing the role of constantly evolving shared understandings—or intersubjectivity³—to the process of rendering meaning to the social world, constructivism allows for an exploration not only of material but also of ideational structures. This is the case of the Israeli-Palestinian protracted peace process, which material existence through time is definitely a matter of dispute while its constant symbolic influence on the conflict is well documented and easily demonstrated. Therefore, by highlighting the concrete impact of non-material structures and ideational matters on conflict and its prospects of change, a constructivist approach contributes to a deeper understanding of the root causes of conflicts, by focusing on historical dynamics in light of identity formation processes that create the context for some violent structures to exist—and persist—in specific situations. It also allows for an investigation of the conditions that favor change in the form of the development of dynamics of de-identification that focus on a constructive dimension of identity, thus contributing to positive conflict transformation.

Building on these perspectives, this chapter aims to provide the theoretical and conceptual basis for addressing the impact of protracted peace processes on identities in conflict. Firstly, it explores the theoretical literature on identity and conflict from a constructivist perspective that is complemented by insights from Peace Studies. The following section presents the dynamics and characteristics of protracted peace processes, exploring the impact of time and continuous processes on the structure of the conflict. The third section of this chapter deals with the mutually constitutive nature of identity and violence—and, therefore, also of identity and peace—in protracted conflicts, drawing a categorization of identity and violence subtypes in order to provide a basis for mapping the policies, discourses and narratives that impact identities in conflict. Drawing from many others who place identity as the central factor explaining the mutually reinforcing dynamics of protracted conflicts and protracted peace processes (Bar-Tal 2000a, 2000b; Kelman 2001, 2004; Slocum-Bradley 2008; Ghazi-Bouillon 2009; Strömbom 2013a, 2013b; Lupovici 2015; Rumelili 2015, 2020; among others) this chapter concludes that peace processes in this kind of conflicts tend to become protracted themselves, turning into a structure of their own that impact perceptions about the ‘self’ and the ‘other’, thus influencing the negative dimension of identity—the detachment or difference from others–and, therefore, the very behavior and interests of actors involved in the conflict. For this reason, identity and violence must be read as mutually constituted in the cases of historical conflicts, making it impossible to discuss conflict transformation without addressing the main categories of identity and violence, as well as their interconnectedness.

1 Framing Identities in Conflict: A Constructivist Perspective

Inserted in the context of what some call the “fourth debate”,⁴ constructivist approaches share an emphasis in the non-material dimensions of International Relations (IR), such as the role of social meanings, beliefs, norms, rules and language to power and politics as well as the possibility of change, highlighting the importance of historical and cultural circumstances to the constitution of the world (Fierke 2013: 188). Generally speaking, agents are seen to act in a world that is not only material but also social, since material structures are understood only in terms of the meanings attributed to them by the social context (Hopf 1998). The structural environment then provides agents with the conditions for understanding and defining their interests, meaning that “it can ‘constitute’ them” (Checkel 1998: 325–326). Therefore, in this framework, the role of ideas, norms and processes of identity building, both in the collective and systemic levels, are considered to be of central importance for understanding the world.

In the words of Nicholas Onuf (1989), international politics is not constituted as an objective reality, as it is a “world of our making”. This quote reflects constructivism’s critical bias since the “sociological turn” in IR gains strength precisely as an opposition to mainstream rationalist approaches. The latter privilege the explanatory power of “observable attributes” within the international system, theorizing that pre-existing structures constrain the choices of agents through the distribution of capabilities (Kurki and Wight 2013: 20–25). Those perspectives share an epistemological concern with the explanation of social phenomena through what they consider to be material, observable facts, what ultimately implies considering that actors and concepts are exogenously given. Consequently, as summarized by Maja Zehfuss, “actors act in this pre-given world according to the demands of instrumental reason” (Zehfuss 2002: 3).

Constructivism refuses this view by arguing that “actor’s interests and preferences cannot be treated as exogenous or fixed in a theory of International Relations. Rather, they originate and change during processes of social interaction” (Risse-Kappen 1995: 502). In a constructivist framework, relationships are seen as a product of historical processes and interactions over time (Wendt 1992: 404–405). Interests, therefore, are connected not to rational choices—defined in terms of material interests—but to the identities of the subjects—socially constructed and, therefore, subject to change. By relating the construction of interests and identities with the interaction between agents and structures across time and space, rather than to a rational choice conditioned exclusively by a balance of material power, constructivists give emphasis to the role of agency and the possibility of change (Karacasulu and Uzgören 2007). In sum, “individuals and groups are not only shaped by their world but can also change it” (Klotz and Lynch 2007: 3). This ultimately means that there is no ontological precedence between agents and structures, as they are mutually constitutive (Wendt, 1987: 356, 1992).

Thus, for constructivism, agents are located within a social structure that simultaneously constitutes them and is constituted by their interaction (Carta and Morin 2014: 300). This means that structures are created by the actions and interactions of people through time while, at the same time, these very structures “create people” through a process that constructivists call co-constitution (Barkin and Sjoberg 2019: 61). As put by Alexander Wendt, social structures correspond to “a set of internally related elements […] [such as] agents, practices, technologies, territories—whatever can be seen as occupying a position within a social organization” (Wendt 1987: 357). Those structures create the conditions, or the ‘rules of the game’, in which agents (either states, society or individuals) act and interact. However, those “social structures are only instantiated by the practices of agents” (Wendt 1987: 359) insofar as “the nature and configuration of the internal relations that comprise a social structure […] define a set of possible transformations or combinations of its elements” (Wendt 1987: 357). Altogether, structures in this view not only constraint the actions of agents, they also constitute agents’ own identities because norms and shared understandings of legitimate behavior guide their choices and provide with some kind of institutional identity (Sending 2002: 449).

For the purpose of this study, such framework is important because it provides a better understanding of how some practices, norms and discourses—for instance, related with peace initiatives developed through time—become so ingrained that turn into structures in conflict situations. Since these structures influence the (re)definition of interests, actions and identities of actors involved in the conflict, it is of utmost importance to develop a full account of the role they have played in the course of a protracted conflict. As will be further explained in the next section, protracted peace processes act as both material and symbolic structures in conflict situations, alternating between phases connected to conflict developments and the evolution of the international peace architecture. However, this does not mean that the reactive, discontinuous and, sometimes, even uncoordinated efforts that are developed toward building peace in a protracted conflict before the formal establishment of a peace process should not be read in their whole as part of a process with different phases and changing dynamics. From a teleological standpoint, this reading allows for the expansion of the concept of peace process insofar as it highlights how the mere notion of its existence—despite the obvious changes in its formulation and design connected with circumstantial factors—has influenced conflict, the actions of agents and their identities. It also points to how protracted peace processes in intergenerational conflict become a structure on its own. Accordingly, this approach allows for a better understanding of the place the protracted peace process has occupied within the cycle of protractedness, by providing a pathway to explore its impact on identities in conflict.

This book draws from several others who have already explored the interconnectedness between identities and conflict, as well as their mutually reinforcing dynamics (Bar-Tal 2000a; Kelman 2001; Slocum-Bradley 2008; Ghazi-Bouillon 2009; Lupovici 2012; Strömbom 2013a, 2013b; Rumelili 2015). In the field of International Relations, identities are usually approached either as the condition of the human and social being, an individual or collective feeling, the motivation for collective action, the consequence of collective action and/or the product of power relations and dominant discourses within a society (Brubaker and Cooper 2000: 6–8). For constructivism, identities are a product of interaction and can be formed in conflict as a consequence of self-understanding and interests associated with it (Fierke 2013: 191). According to Finnemore and Sikkink (2001: 391), “human interaction is shaped primarily by ideational factors, not simply material ones; the most important ideational factors are widely shared beliefs […] and; these shared beliefs construct the interests and identities of purposive actors”. Put differently, identities are not material facts, nor do they exist per se, as they are the product of social and historical constructions (Anderson 1983). They are what Searle (1995: 5–7) has called “social facts”, things that have no material reality and whose existence depends upon people collectively believing that they exist and thus acting accordingly.

Identities in this framework are not considered to be exogenous or pre-given, but endogenous and constructed as a function of the intersubjective dynamic of reality (Hansen 2006: 17). This means that they are unstable and constantly evolving due to the interpretation that is made of them through time (Browning 2008: 21; Slocum-Bradley 2008: 5), pointing to the importance of comprehensive historical analyzes as a method for studying the process of identity construction. Constructivists perceive this process as foundationally linked to the ‘other’ insofar as the production and reproduction of practices of othering—representations of the ‘other’—are a central part of the processes of construction of the ‘self’ (Taylor 1994: 32). According to Cerutti (2003: 27), the recognition of the narratives that define one’s identity has to do not only with the internal process within a community but also with the external process that relates with the representations that the ‘others’ make of ourselves. This characterization of the ‘self’ that constitutes one’s identity is, then, a process with a positive and a negative component. On the one hand, there is the perception of common features and projects of a group or community that leads to the feeling of belonging—what ‘we’ are—and, on the other, there is also the sentiment of de-identification and opposition toward the ‘others’—what ‘we’ are not. In cases in which long-term conflict is the only known scenario for generations, with a normalization of everyday violence toward segments of the population, the latter tends to have an increased importance in the process of defining one’s identity since “the relationship with the other is the very site where its original identity takes shape” (Epstein 2011: 337).

Wendt perceive identities as what constitutes interests since actors define their interests in the process of defining situations (Wendt 1992; Fierke 2013: 195). This process of defining identities and interests through intersubjective constitution implies that shared norms, values and rules impact the way an actor defines him/herself and its possibilities of action. Therefore, identity is a product of interaction and context and is constantly evolving through time. This interaction produces not only self-definitions but also definitions of the ‘other’ that, in situations such as the Israeli-Palestinian case analyzed in this book, might create and reinforce intersubjective meanings of enmity, conflict and, ultimately, dehumanization. Moreover, if identities constitute interests, the perceived identities of each actor in a conflict are directly connected with his/her positionality within the conflict, meaning that identities might reinforce conflict.

The relationship between identities and conflict has been studied from various perspectives. Scholars drawing from social psychology frameworks have explored the processes of identity construction in intractable conflicts, suggesting that identity change is necessary for conflict transformation (Northrup 1989; Rouhana and Bar-Tal 1998; Bar-Tal 2000a; Kelman 2004). Nikki Slocum-Bradley identifies the processes through which people form perceptions about themselves and the others as the most important root cause of conflict, pointing to the double potential of identity to promote peace or conflict. For the author, understanding the processes through which certain meanings that define actor’s identities are constructed in a specific context, examining the pathways that enable the development of peace-promoting identities, is the key for conflict transformation (Slocum-Bradley 2008: 1–5). On the other hand, others have discussed the impact of conflict on identities by proposing that the prospects of change (e.g., conflict transformation and peace) create a social anxiety that is connected with a sense of losing identity due to the necessary reconfigurations of the self-identifications, narratives and stories that have formed in the course of conflict (Rumelili 2015; Lupovici 2015). This view points out that the relationship between identities formed and transformed in conflict leads to conflict being a source of ontological security (Mitzen 2006; Rumelili and Todd 2017; Rumelili 2020), while peace processes and peace itself might be considered a drive for insecurity in identity terms.

This book pushes this argument further by dealing with the protracted nature of peace processes in intergenerational conflicts. Through the aforementioned constructivist framework, it is possible to argue that symbolic structures such as protracted peace processes influence the conditions, actions and interests of agents in conflict, thus impacting identity, perceptions and representations of the ‘other’ and the possibilities of change. As will be further explained in the next section, a teleological approach allows for a renewed reading of several initiatives that aim at promoting peace as being part of a wider process on its own, which gains existence through a symbolic construction and narratives that sustain it. In this sense, protracted peace processes also become a source of ontological security and an obstacle to peace.

Next section will develop further this idea by discussing the evolving meanings of peace and processes in the context of protracted peace processes through time. The importance of analyzing these dynamics in light of the peace process between Israel and Palestine has to do with the role of context to the production and reproduction of violent practices toward the ‘other’, as well as with the impact of the peace process to the recognition and legitimization of identities and national identity narratives. While peace processes are supposed to transform the conflict in a positive way, the contradiction between the existence of a protracted peace process and the perpetuation—and even deepening—of conflict through time must be addressed. Constructivism helps us tackle this contradiction in the perspective of the impact of some discourses and practices on identity, interests and actions of some actors, providing an explanation for the radicalization of policies and of violence in the context of a long-term peace process.

2 Protracted Peace Processes: Definition and Characteristics

The concept of peace process lacks a critical (re)appreciation by scholars in the field of IR. Although the idea of peace process is well established in its technical usage and in the common language, being extensively referred to in academic literature and in the media, there is no consensual definition for it and the attempts to do so usually lead to imprecise labels (Darby and Mac Ginty 2008: 4–6; Richmond 2006). This is not just a technical issue, as conceptual developments encompass practical implications and might highlight some aspects and policies while hiding others. This reflects directly on the epistemic, normative and ideological understandings, rules and discourses that allow for some practices of peace, and for promoting peace, to prevail instead of others through time. As explained in the previous section, according to constructivist ontology, the social world is constituted by “intersubjectively and collectively meaningful structures and processes […] [and it is] in the context of and with reference to [those] collective or intersubjective understandings” (Adler 2013: 121) that individuals act. This means that the conditions, meanings and characteristics of a peace process provide the context or background in which agents position themselves, thus creating a series of conditions or possibilities that enable them to act upon the world (Gould 1998: 81). As this section shows, this is particularly so when the peace process is prolonged in time and becomes a feature of everyday actions at all levels.

Conceptually, most Peace Studies literature points out that peace processes, although frequently based on liberal universal assumptions that lead to the implementation of liberal ideological frameworks, constantly differ in each context (Howard 2000; Richmond 2005; Chandler 2010; Campbell et al. 2011; Mac Ginty and Richmond 2013). Accordingly, each definition corresponds to an ethos of thinking and acting, different theorizations and empirical practices which, in turn, promote specific understandings of peace. A definition of peace process is complicated to achieve, as transitions toward positive transformation of conflicts are usually non-linear, and long-term processes might fluctuate between agreements and cease-fires. According to Jonathan Tonge (2014: 29), peace process has become a catch-all badge for both episodic and sustained attempts at resolving conflict, as this label generically covers all sorts of operations toward the possible ending of a conflict. John Paul Lederach (2008: 31) defines them as persistent initiatives toward reaching a peace agreement involving the main antagonists in a protracted conflict. It might also mean the whole set of tools that are used in order to intervene in conflict scenarios such as the United Nations Agenda for Peace’s (1992) preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding.

The evolution of the term and its practice introduced a diversity of variables and objectives, thus placing it into a more complex framework. According to John Darby, the term ‘peace process’ replaced former approaches to dealing with conflict that encompassed ideas such as mediation, resolution or management since the construction of a peaceful society is necessarily a process, which includes a cycle of diverse activities and policy initiatives (Darby 2001: 10–11). Although the diversity of variables involved in those processes complicates the attempts of definition, Darby and Mac Ginty advanced a generic conceptualization that can be considered as a starting point. For the authors,

Peace initiatives can be formal or informal, public or private, subject to popular endorsement or restricted to elite-level agreement. They can be sponsored by the United Nations or other external parties, or can spring from internal sources. (Darby and Mac Ginty 2008: 3)

Nevertheless, it is most usually referred to as institutional, deliberate and sustainable initiatives taken by opposing parties in a conflict, represented by political elites and/or influent organizations, toward a written consensual agreement that aims at resolving the dispute (Wallensteen 2012), followed by other initiatives aiming at consolidating the recently achieved peace (defined in negative terms). It is, thus, a sequential process that follows predetermined steps and counts on specific tools that are deployed in each phase of the conflict.

In contexts of prolonged conflict, it is possible to observe the development of what can be called protracted peace processes. As noted by John Paul Lederach, long-term peace processes are characteristic of protracted conflicts since the paradigm of crisis inherent to that kind of conflict requires actions that are continuous, prolonged in time, and that recognize opportunities for constructive change in the midst of crisis (Lederach 2008: 33). Nevertheless, those protracted peace processes are frequently characterized by a changing meaning of the process through time, due to the normalization of conflict and the consequent lack of perspectives for peace.⁵ For Rashid Khalidi, when this happens, the idea of process gains primacy over the objective of constructing peace (Khalidi 2010: xx). In those cases, the peace process might function as another arena for conflict instead of a forum for its transformation, thus running the risk of freezing conflict into a negative peace and failing to address its root causes. In addition to the effect of normalizing conflict and violence, protracted peace processes have also the potential to directly contribute to deepening the conflict and its motives. According to John Darby and Roger Mac Ginty,

many contemporary peace processes fail to address the underlying causes of conflicts. Instead, they concentrate on the manifestations of conflict and often deflect attention away from the real business of peacemaking. There is a danger that the protracted conflict gives way to the protracted peace process in which the original causes of the conflict persist and are joined by the new grievances sparked by the peace process. (2003: 3) [italics are mine]

This observation points to the need to explore the impact of protracted peace processes on the relationships in conflict through time. On the one hand, this new set of grievances produced by the protracted nature of the peace process, which are still insufficiently explored in the literature, contribute to social detachment since those processes are developed mainly by political elites, thus promoting a gap between society and elite initiatives. On the other hand, failures and successes of peace processes also have an impact on identity building insofar as they reinforce structures and intersubjective meanings such as war and peace, dehumanization and reconciliation. For those reasons, peace processes that become protracted share different characteristics and impacts that influence not only the activities developed within its mandate but also might have unintended consequences on peace and the maintenance of the conflict. Literature review on this matter reveals that it lacks works that focus on treating this kind of processes as differentiated and that explores their impacts on conflicts. It is thus mandatory for this section to take a detour and fill this gap.

As explained in Table 2.1, protracted peace processes concentrate on the present and, as a consequence, deal mainly with urgent matters in a way that facilitates the normalization of structural violence and never-ending dependency. Their mandate is usually extrapolated due to the need of responding to everyday needs of populations in distress. The main consequence of this is the development of peacebuilding-like actions during the ongoing conflict and before the signature of a final agreement. An example of this is the construction and maintenance of UN schools in Palestine that explain why Palestinians are among the most well-educated Arab populations in spite of the protracted conflict and lack of formal statehood. Nevertheless, those schools have the difficult task to develop and apply a curriculum that educates a highly politicized population while not conciliating historiographical narratives and/or transforming them in a reconciliatory manner. It also takes back the responsibility of the occupying power (Israel) to deal with the Palestinian population, promoting social detachment instead of contact. This helps dealing with social injustice and some of the perverse impacts of long-term conflict, but without performing structural reforms, this might lead to a normalization of the conflict instead, as frequently pointed by Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank.⁶ The development of policies of liberal statebuilding that often clash with the reality on the ground also reinforces cultural violence and, therefore, structural and direct violence (for more on this, see next section). This is just one example of how the protracted peace process might contradictorily promote conflict and dependency instead of emancipation, reconciliation and, ultimately, peace.

Table 2.1 Protracted peace processes

Another feature of protracted peace processes is leaving the past for later. Due to the difficulties inherent to long-term conflict and the fatigue generated by decades of what are usually back-and-forth negotiations, the past becomes a bad word. In order to avoid touching deep wounds that could compromise the already unstable relationship between the parties, a protracted peace process fails to address root causes of conflicts, considering that reconciliation should be dealt with at the end of the road instead of facing an everyday process. An example of this is contained in the United Nations Agenda for Peace (UN 1992), in which reconciliation is defined as a final step of peacebuilding processes that should only take place after the signature of a formal agreement. A main consequence of this sequencing is that it maintains and can even increase mistrust.

Nevertheless, what is in fact observed in reality is that the order of activities developed within a peace process is not without problems. By leaving the past behind, those processes also push the future for later. This means that what is left to be done is a minimalistic approach to peace that does not correspond to the immense set of activities developed on the ground simultaneously by a real industry of humanitarian enterprises that ranges from local and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to civil society and even individual initiatives, government agencies and other types of charity workers. While at the higher level the basis to end direct violence is being developed through negotiated agreements between political elites, this often takes place without considering the correspondence of those initiatives with its acceptance at mid-range and grassroots levels of societies (Lederach 1997). At the societal level, however, all sorts of unarticulated and sometimes even contradictory peace initiatives are being developed without considering the transformation of those societies in a reconciliatory manner. The consequence of this is a continuous feeling of lack of consideration and disregard for the past, collective histories and memories that are the basis of the identity narratives of those societies in conflict.

Accordingly, in those contexts, the peace process itself might also contribute to the protracted nature of conflicts through the deepening of a culture of violence. Cultural violence relates with identity and representations of ‘the self’ or ‘the other’ in the sense that it refers to symbolic aspects, such as ideology, language, religion, art or history, that can be used to legitimize violence in its direct or structural form. According to Johan Galtung (1990: 291),

Symbolic violence built into a culture does not kill or maim like direct violence or the violence built into the structure. However, it is used to legitimize either or both, as for instance in the theory of a Herrenvolk, or a superior race. […] Cultural violence makes direct and structural violence look, even feel, right—or at least not wrong.

In terms of its effects, the concept of cultural violence is very similar to what Herbert C. Kelman (1973: 36) calls “violence without moral restraints”, which leads to—or is translated in terms of—dehumanization. Those new sets of grievances, then, also contribute to creating new meanings, practices and intersubjective understandings regarding the conflict and the ‘other’. They influence identity not only in terms of the construction of the ‘self’ but also, and mainly, regarding perceptions of the ‘other’, influencing directly in the dimension of negative interdependence between identities (Kelman 1999: 581).

Even in contexts of formal peace, the emergence of processes of dehumanization that can be connected to the protracted nature of the conflict and the peace process impact identity, hence reinforcing the potential for cultural violence to operate. When those meanings become stable, they create violent structures that contribute directly to what can be called the ‘cycle of protractedness’, conflicting with the objectives and aims of the very peace process. The cycle of protractedness⁷ is a graphic representation of the circular dynamics that sustain conflict (or, read backward, its transformation) over time. It is characterized by the interactions between violence and peace, dehumanization and reconciliation, expressed in terms of fluctuations in the identities of societies. Those elements—and their (in)balance—are portrayed in this context as the root causes of conflict. As we shall see in the next chapter, the elements of the protracted peace process outlined in Table 2.1 unintendedly collaborate to the reinforcement of dynamics sustaining dehumanization, thus placing protracted peace processes in the center of this cycle. According to Darby and Mac Ginty,

Indeed, in certain cases, peace processes have become so ingrained that they provide useful avenues for conflict protagonists to stall, prevaricate and deflect attention away from genuine peace initiatives. Under such circumstances, peace processes, once institutionalized, stymie opportunities for real political change, and instead channel energies in preordained directions that often reflect international rather than local opinion. (Darby and Mac Ginty 2003: 4)

In other words, the protracted nature of peace processes tends to reinforce the maintenance and deepening of status quo, thus benefiting the stronger side of an asymmetric conflict (Khalidi 2013: 37) and this in turn reinforces violent structures and constrains the actions of agents, leading to a tendency of continuity, instead of opening paths for change.

As outlined in the previous section, for constructivists, not only material but also social and ideational factors constitute and shape interests and identities (Fierke and Jørgensen 2001: 42). Therefore, social structures, institutions and other interactive settings, such as long-term peace processes, have an impact on identities and interests that can ultimately contribute to their definition and transformation. Constructivist approaches help to unravel how the perpetuation of peace processes in time can be both a stabilizing and a destabilizing factor, contributing to continuity and change in a specific context of conflict. As a constantly present initiative, even though sometimes cyclic, peace processes have an impact on the imaginaries of societies, in political discourses and identity narratives. The representations of success and failure of those processes, as well as the way the main actors in such processes are depicted (e.g., their willingness or not for peace, their perceived roles as either—or both—victims or victimizers, or even if they act as spoilers of those processes), are ways through which peace processes influence the identities of societies involved in conflict (Khalidi 2013: 37). As an almost present reality of protracted social conflicts, it is then important to analyze their impact, especially because by losing the very meaning of process through time, protracted peace processes act as a structure of their own.

Taking as an example the conflict between Israel and Palestine, Barnett discusses those effects by arguing that the peace process for Israel has never been just about withdrawing or not from territory. Instead, it should be seen as constitutive and a reflex of Israeli national identity insofar as it challenges either its liberal or its Zionist features (Barnett 1999: 6). Additionally, Herbert C. Kelman points to the twofold potential of peace processes for both fostering peace or escalating violence, insofar as the representations of success and failure of such processes impact the relations between societies involved in conflicts, therefore being able to promote some sort of political and societal reconciliation or, to the contrary, radicalization and social detachment:

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process that began with the Oslo accord in 1993 broke down with the failure of the Camp David summit in the summer of 2000 and the onset of the second intifada in the fall of that year. Relationships between the two communities have deteriorated steadily over the ensuing years and have often been marked by high levels of violence on both sides. (Kelman 2007: 287)

Understanding the dynamics of the protracted peace process that constitutes an important part of this conflict and, therefore, analyzing its characteristics—that is, asymmetry, impunity, lack of success, loss of credibility, questions of legitimacy of the negotiators, and so on—and the positionality of main actors within this process helps to understand the state’s performance and practices toward the ‘other’ and the conflict. This also allows for an understanding of the definitions and practices of peace that derive from such process, as well as of the discourses that influence society, identity and behavior.

Next section develops further the relationship between identity and violence, by unravelling the practices and mechanisms through which dominant meanings are created and reproduced in the context of a protracted conflict.

3 The Co-constitution of Identity and Violence

Broadly speaking, the effects of protracted violence on the identities involved in protracted conflicts have been explored from various perspectives in IR literature (Galtung 1969, 1990; Azar et al. 1978; Young 2006; Bar-Tal 2000b; Sen 2006). Scholars and practitioners concerned with positive conflict transformation have also analyzed the effects of peace to identities in post-conflict societies, serving as an interesting basis for this analysis. Peace sometimes might generate reactions that could be unexpected. As everything that produces change, in cases of protracted conflicts, peace might cause an “identity dilemma” as people need to reshape their own identity that was expressed for a long time in terms of the enemy, changing their very perception of who they are (Lederach 1997; Rumelili 2015). Following this idea, others have argued that peace can even be considered “ontologically difficult” in a sense that people learn to routinize and cope with violence during the conflict but after a cease-fire or after a so-called settlement, all they perceive is a contradictory feeling of grief (Lupovici 2015; Rumelili and Todd 2017). Using the example of testimonies from truth and reconciliation commissions, Brewer explains that those feelings can become then part of the identities of the victims and their families, who are now immersed in an environment of forgiveness and amnesty that comes along (negative) peace and moves away from resentment and the willingness for revenge. In the author’s words, these situations “bring a particular price to peace” (Brewer 2010: 36). The other way around is also true insofar as violence and conflict constitute the identities of societies and will impact their representations, narratives and discourses about the self and, most importantly, regarding the ‘other’.

This process is not developed in a static way due to the simultaneous character of processes of co-constitution. As explained before, identities are shaped and reshaped over time insofar as changes in the social setting, defined in terms of historical, cultural, and social values and shared meanings, are continuously being performed through changes in social practices and structures. Processes of identification are not only related with the ‘other’, but they are also reciprocally related with the ‘other’. This means that the consolidation of an individual or communal identity impacts other identities in the making, which in turn may feel threatened and respond by consolidating their own identity (Mouffe 2005: 3). A practical example of this can be found precisely in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which both the Palestinian and the Israeli identities were simultaneously impacted and transformed by the representations of the ‘other’ and the representations of them made by the ‘other’.⁸ Practices and discourses of othering constitute, then, both the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ (Epstein 2011: 336). Since protracted conflicts are strongly rooted in historical and cultural grievances, identities formed and transformed within those settings are influenced by narratives and discourses of legitimization of the ‘self’ and marginalization/dehumanization of the ‘other’, contributing to the cycle of protractedness by reinforcing and normalizing violence toward the other.

Johan Galtung’s conceptualization of cultural violence, that is explained as “those aspects of culture and symbolic elements that can be used to justify and legitimize direct and/or structural violence” (1990: 291), is useful in order to understand the consequences of the processes of othering in protracted conflicts. According to Nikki Slocum-Bradley, “while many factors contribute to fomenting violent conflict, violence between social groups (…) necessarily entails the construction of a certain perception of one’s own group and that of the ‘other’” (Slocum-Bradley 2008: 1). Practically, this concept highlights how the material and symbolic effects of cultural violence on the conflicts are more important than it would seem at first sight. While it is usually regarded as the less important dimension of violence, cultural violence in societies involved in conflicts is actually what creates the ideological rationale behind the conflicts, directly allowing for the legitimization of direct violence and a perpetual state of war against the ‘other’. Dehumanization of the ‘other’ can be identified as a type of cultural violence that tends to become an important part of the identities involved in protracted conflicts, thus reinforcing the very nature and persistence of violent conflict against the enemy over time. It is used in this framework as the relationship between identity and violence, as will be further developed in the next chapter.

In summary, dynamics of otherness can create violent structures that insist and persist within a conflict scenario. Insofar as we can relate identity with violence, we need to examine the connection between their dimensions and the perpetuation of conflict. In order to do so, as well as to draw a framework to map and analyze how the peace process has dealt with this over the course of history, this section proceeds with a categorization of subtypes of identity and violence, arguing that the co-constitution of identity and violence presupposes also that identity and peace are mutually constituted, what allows for an exploration of dynamics of reconciliation.

3.1 Categories of Identity

As mentioned in the introduction of this chapter, the process of identity building is twofold. On the one hand, there is what this book refers as the positive dimension of identity, which is the feeling of belonging, the identification with a group of people. On the other hand, there is the negative dimension of identity, being de-identification, the detachment from others, the difference from others. This process of identification with something, and the corresponding processes of de-identification, is simultaneously developed in many instances of community life. For example, people can identify themselves with others due to shared past or memories, because they live in the same territory or region, as a product of collective social action and mobilization, and/or for ideological reasons such as being rightist or leftist. To each form of identification exemplified above corresponds at least one category of identity: cultural identity, national identity, class identity, political identity, and so on. Put differently, identity is not a plain and homogenous concept, as it unfolds in a set of subtypes or categories.

Although national identity is, for obvious reasons, usually referred in IR literature as the most relevant manifestation of identification processes in the context of conflict, there are several types of identification and many other practices connected to them. According to Lederach,

Cohesion and identity in contemporary conflict tend to form within increasingly narrower lines than those that encompass national citizenship. […] In today’s settings that unit of identity may be clan, ethnicity, religion, or geographic/regional affiliation, or a mix of these. (1997: 12–13)

Following this perception, this book identifies five main categories of identity that, approached as a whole, form the core of the processes of identity building in protracted conflicts and, more specifically, in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian case (Table 2.2). First, there is cultural/historical identity, which relates with language, memory and traditions. Geographic/regional identity on its turn is connected to the feeling of belonging to a place. Both ethnic and religious identities are related with family ties and/or cultural considerations. And, finally, national identity is a category that can encompass some or all of the latter.

Table 2.2 Categories of identity

It is important to note that although Table 2.2 draws a schematic distinction between those five categories of identity and their corresponding manifestations, reality proves that those distinctions are rather blurred. For instance, people can identify themselves with a group or collectivity due to shared myths and memories. In some cases, those shared myths and memories have also to do with religion that appears as a central aspect of culture for certain ethnic groups. Connecting the historical past with geographical and/or ethnic considerations leads to the constitution of national identities that, in some cases, might also be sustained by religion as a cultural feature. In other words, both categories and manifestations of identity overlap. The graphic representation of Table 2.2, therefore, is not supposed to be mistaken with rigid or clear-cut processes. As argued by Paul James (2015: 175), “categorizations about identity, even when codified and hardened into clear typologies […] are always full of tensions and contradictions”. Nevertheless, Table 2.2 does place the category of national identity in the same position of the others due to what is considered to be its transversal character for this conflict.

Identities and their dimensions are manifested in common language, narratives, official discourses, values, traditions, education, historical approaches, social practices and, more generically, the individual and/or collective feeling of belonging. They might have political as well as legal impact translated in citizenship and the corresponding personal documentation (a.k.a. birth certificate, an ID Card or a passport). In this sense, identity might be connected with civil rights and legal protection. Although the very distinction between categories and manifestations of identities is definitely blurred by design, in cases in which the recognition, legitimization and even the existence of an identity are threatened, this proximity within dimensions of identities and their impact becomes even more visible.

A practical example of this statement can be found in contexts of consolidated modern national identities. The construction of modern national states in Europe—and therefore, the construction of modern national identities within European countries—is a process that has been developing for at least the last 500 years, ever since the transition from the period of History called Medieval to the Modern Age (Smith 1997). In those countries, generically speaking, the very definition of what it means to be Portuguese, Spanish, French or English is well consolidated and does not constitute a case of dispute.⁹ Nevertheless, in the case of Israel and Palestine, national identity is simultaneously related with territory, ethnicity, religion and cultural/historical backgrounds (Khalidi 2013; Pappé 2010; Sand 2010).

As pointed by Rashid Khalidi in his book Palestinian Identity (2010), although the Palestinian case—and I might add, the Israeli case—presents certain specific circumstances,¹⁰ the process of constructing those national identities shares similar features to other cases. Perhaps a very important point of distinction to be made at this point is that both the Palestinian and the Israeli national identities have not been able yet to fulfil their purpose of coinciding the cultural and political communities that compose them in time and space. In the case of the Palestinians this is even more important as their national aspirations have not yet been translated into the establishment of a state of their own, although they did manage to create a proto-government for a state-to-be type of territory, in which part of their national groups live and claim to construct their state.

In the case of the State of Israel the very idea of citizenship has to do with ethnicity/religion. It can be considered, as contradictory as it might sound, a transnational national identity with strong legal implications in terms of nationality and documentation. More precisely, being a full citizen of the State of Israel does not depend on ever living—and even with ever having the intention to live in—the Israeli territory nor being born in Israel. The citizenship in this case is connected with the ascendency, meaning with ethnic/religious considerations. In the case of Palestine, although the national identity is not legally recognized within the international community (the dispute over the existence or not of a Palestinian state and the dispute over its hypothetical jurisdiction is the main reason for this), it would be related with geographic and ethnic considerations, being the latter more and more relocated due to more than 70 years of Occupation. For this reason, what would be today a Palestinian citizenship is not connected to the territory either, as the displacement of the Palestinian people has led more than five million people to become refugees in neighboring countries and around the world. The specificity of this case makes it impossible to deal with identity as a compartmentalized concept.

Due to the necessity of creating categories of analysis that allow us to examine the impact of conflict to the negative dimension of identity and how this is translated in processes of dehumanization or reconciliation, Table 2.2 was drawn as a way to provide a clearer assessment of types, dynamics and manifestations of identity. The important question here is similar to the one proposed by Arjun Appadurai (1999: 318): “how can forms of identity and identification […] become transformed into instruments of most brutally intimate forms of violence?” In order to answer this question, it is also necessary to define, categorize and explore the dimensions and impacts of violence in the context of protracted conflicts. Next section is dedicated to this task.

3.2 Categories of Violence

Defining and analyzing categories of violence is an important effort for exploring the causes of conflict (either protracted or not) and the means for its transformation. The centrality of war in IR literature as an object of study instead of violence leads to a narrow understanding of conflict, peace and the transition from one to another. This observation has a practical impact on the policies and initiatives in the context of peacemaking efforts such as peacekeeping, statebuilding, peacebuilding, peace negotiations and accords, as well as other types of peace processes, either official or not, institutional or informal. According to Lynda Smith (2004: 505–506), IR’s maintenance of war as its defining focus obliterates and makes invisible other forms of violence that might be related with war but that are not directly provoked by war. Similarly, the centrality of direct violence connected to the primacy of the state for peace processes leads to a marginalization of main causes of conflict and promotes continuity rather than change in conflicting and ‘post-conflict’ societies.

As noted by Roberta Maschietto (2019), even the literature on post-conflict violence emphasizes expressions of direct violence, failing to address or even ignoring its structural and symbolic dimensions. While acknowledging rare efforts to integrate those two dimensions both in the literature and practice of peacebuilding, she also recognizes that there remains a tendency of marginalizing symbolic or cultural violence, what is symptomatic of what she refers as the state bias¹¹ in the literature on violence. Sílvia Roque (2016: 39) also suggests that this mainstream literature on violence focuses on the instruments and strategies for dealing with violence rather than on the contexts that allow for the production and reproduction of violence and its representations. For this reason, it can be argued that most literature on violence and conflict still deals with symptomatic manifestations of war and conflict, marginalizing the importance of exploring their root causes for promoting sustainable peace (Lederach 1997).

According to Johan Galtung (1969: 168), violence is generically defined as the difference between human potential and the realization of this potential. In his words,

Violence is present when human beings are being influenced so that their actual somatic and mental realizations are below their potential realizations. […] Violence is here defined as the cause of the difference between the potential and the actual, between what could have been and what is. Violence is that which increases the distance between the potential and the actual, and that which impedes the decrease of this distance. (1969: 168)

This is a broad definition that has at least one main implication: violence is more than the direct act of attempting against someone’s physical integrity. Violence has to do with constraint, social injustice, and symbolic or material oppression too. For this reason, Galtung also proposes a broader approach to peace as the absence of violence. In his famous triangle (Galtung 1990), the author conceptualizes three main categories of violence: direct, structural and cultural, which correspond to identical dimensions of peace. Although two of them are considered ‘invisible’ due to the impossibility of pointing a subject that directly practices the act of violence against someone, they nevertheless have an important impact in fueling direct violence and/or creating the conditions for it to exist and operate. Therefore, structural and cultural violence are key dimensions for conflicts and their transformation.

The first category of violence identified by Johan Galtung (1969: 169–172) is direct violence. Direct violence is the easiest one to identify as it is observable, since there exists a subject that exerts violence against a clear recipient. The most common manifestation of direct violence, according to the author, is war. Direct violence corresponds to a type of peace that is called negative peace. When direct violence is absent, there exists a context of formal or negative peace, which does not necessarily mean that a sustainable and just peace was achieved. At this point it is necessary to define peace. For Galtung, if violence is the product of the difference between people’s potential and its realization, a state of peace is achieved when people can fulfil their potential. For this to happen, there must exist more than the absence of war declared by means of negotiated accords among political elites in the realm of state affairs. Structural conditions such as social justice, a fair distribution of resources, access to education and health systems, and the reduction of inequalities are essential to provide the conditions for people to fulfil their potential. This idea leads Galtung to propose that there exist other categories of violence that impact the construction of a positive or sustainable peace. For peace to be built it is important to tackle those other dimensions too.

The second category of violence that is conceptualized in Johan Galtung’s work is structural or systemic violence. This is not necessarily new as Marxist approaches have already touched this dimension of violence in a similar manner. The lack of the subject-action-object formula makes structural violence into one of the invisible categories of violence (Galtung 1969: 171). Put differently, it is not necessary to exist a subject that inflicts violence against the other, turning it into what Hannah Arendt calls a “faceless violence” (1970). This type of violence is therefore considered to be produced by the social structure through the imposition of unnecessary and avoidable deprivations and suffering. According to Galtung, although there is not a direct act of violence against the body, structural violence can have as a consequence both physical and psychological effects. It can in fact be observable in social injustice and unequal access to resources and power, thus impacting not only the potential of oneself but, in extreme cases, also the person’s very survival. One concrete example given by the author is the lack of access to medical resources that could cure a disease and causes an avoidable death (1969: 168).

Structural violence is not only connected to war and conflict since it can be a product of a highly unacceptable social order that is not compatible with peace, even though direct violence might not be present. Nevertheless, in protracted conflict situations such as the Israeli-Palestinian, in which direct violence is not the most important manifestation of everyday violence that characterizes the conflict in the long term, structural violence can be perceived by looking at social injustice, economic inequalities, labor exploitations and restrictions of movements, just to point a few. On the other hand, the atmosphere of constant fear due to the possibility of terrorist attacks, and the associated felling of insecurity and paranoia that is fueled by simulations of such attacks and everyday drills that include the participation of children on how to handle with them, are also examples of structural violence within the Israeli society. The important point here is that, by looking at the big picture, this form of violence has the potential of producing and reproducing direct violence, and resistance to it can even be associated with the maintenance of the conflict (Lederach 1997; Galtung 1969).

This leads us to the third and final category of violence present in Johan Galtung’s triangle. Although cultural violence has been approached from various angles before, being even referred as “symbolic” violence in other works (Bourdieu 1977), it is a category of violence that has continued to be underexplored in policies and practices of peacebuilding. Failure to address this very important component of violence has been proven to have deep effects on conflicts since it legitimizes the other two categories of violence by operating in the realm of ideas and impacting identities. According to Farmer (2004: 312), when either direct or indirect violence affects a specific social group due to gender, social class, ethnicity, religion, political preferences or nationality, it is connected with identity. Moreover, the impact of violence on identities or, put differently, the co-constitution of violence and identity in conflict situations is an important dimension of the legitimization and reproduction of violence. This is why cultural violence is a key category for analyzing protracted conflicts and the reasons for protractedness.

Galtung’s definition of cultural violence emphasizes precisely this transversal aspect that makes it central in the analysis of violence and conflicts:

By ‘cultural violence’ we mean those aspects of culture, the symbolic sphere of our existence—exemplified by religion and ideology, language and art, empirical and formal science (logic, mathematics)—that can be used to justify or legitimize direct or structural violence […] [thus making] direct and structural violence look, even feel, right—or at least not wrong. (1990: 291)

In this definition, Galtung refers to the power of cultural violence to create and maintain conflict, by showing how one’s identity—and, ultimately, the feeling of threats to it and the need for its preservation—might serve as a justification for violent actions (either structural or direct) against the ‘other’. In other words, the author emphasizes the importance of symbolic aspects that are inserted in the identities of societies to the maintenance and deepening of direct violence and, therefore, the protracted conflict. For this reason, one of the arguments of this book is that analyzing the mutual constitution between identity and violence is central to understand the cycle of protractedness, expressed in terms of the dehumanization of the ‘other’. On the other hand, the first direct implication of this argument is that identities and peace are also co-constituted, suggesting that building sustainable peace and interrupting the cycle of protractedness implies searching for practices, policies and mechanisms that promote a positive transformation of identities instead.¹² In Galtung’s words,

If the opposite of violence is peace, the subject matter of peace research/peace studies, then the opposite of cultural violence would be ‘cultural peace’, meaning aspects of a culture that serve to justify and legitimize direct peace and structural peace. (Galtung 1990: 291)

This book considers that the process of transformation of a culture in protracted conflicts is a process called peace-less reconciliation.

Looking back at Table 2.2 it is possible to analyze the impact of cultural violence on the very manifestations of identity, thus creating and reproducing structural and direct violence against the other. Cultural violence acts within the categories of identity by denying their manifestations. For example, within the institutional realm, the mutual denial of the ‘other’s’ right of existence in terms of a state and the consequent denial of the rights to the land relates with the category of national identity. Similarly, different and opposing narratives about the past that are expressed in representations and roles of victims and victimizers impact both cultural/historical aspects of identity and ethnic and religious perceptions about the ‘self’. In concrete terms, all this creates violent structures that allow for the denial of access to basic services (education, health and state infrastructure) and resources (water, energy and, ultimately, the land) due to ethnic or religious differences.

Those and other empirical examples will be further developed in the analysis of Chaps. 4, 5, 6 and 7, pointing to the co-constitutive character of identity and violence in protracted conflict situations. Symmetrically, and considering Galtung’s triangle of violence and peace, the co-constitution of identity and violence implies necessarily that identity and peace are also co-constituted. As this book will show, this understanding opens new avenues for conflict transformation that operate in the realm of peace-less reconciliation.

4 Conclusion

This chapter discussed the specificities of processes of identity construction in the context of protracted conflicts. Drawing from the constructivist ontology of mutual constitution of agents and structures, identities were defined as dynamic, as “social relationships that change over time and across contexts” (Klotz and Lynch 2007: 65). Nevertheless, not only identities, interests and values are impacted by context and structures, they also transform and perform changes in those very structures. As follows, this approach shows how structures are not exogenously given, they are created by human action and interaction inside the context of collectivities, social groups and political organizations (Wendt 1987; Checkel 2011; Adler and Pouliot 2011; Adler 2013: 125). These interactions might produce and reproduce dominant meanings such as dehumanization, enmity and conflict, creating the idea of historical ‘facts’ and unavoidable ‘reality’, thus fueling the cycle of protractedness.

Drawing from the constructivist view about reality, this chapter has discussed how violent or conflictual environments can play an important role in defining agents’ identities, interests and behaviors, as well as the other way around. Concretely, this approach enlightens analyses aiming at addressing the relationship between identities and conflict, by providing tools for the examination of the mutual constitution between beliefs, norms, rules and language to power and politics. As shown, the co-constitution between violence and identities in conflict tend to impact identity construction in a negative way. Moreover, peace processes that arise within those conflicts might become protracted themselves, risking assuming an important role in processes of continuity through the normalization of, or continuous failure to transform, violent and conflictual meanings and practices in those contexts. As has been argued, this view allows for framing the several diverse initiatives promoted toward building peace in Israel and Palestine in different periods during the history of the conflict as part of an overall process in its whole.

Methodologically, this implies that the investigation of the impact of protracted peace processes on the identities of societies requires a historically based analyses, informed by the identification of continuities and change, to trace how some practices and intersubjective meanings became so structured that they develop into a constitutive part of the very identities of societies and thus inform interests and shape actions, impacting the position of actors within the very peace process. The postulate that behavior is determined by interests defined in terms of identities also brings about a new reading about peace: its construction is also determined by agents’ interests and identities—that might change. As we will see in the next chapter, constructivism offers a contribution to the debate about peace by taking seriously the role of the ideational in International Relations (IR), providing the possibility of a positive epistemology of peace through its social construction (Richmond, 2008: 82). In this sense, processes of dehumanization, which are a dominant feature of protracted conflicts, are accompanied by less visible and diametrically opposite processes of reconciliation. Their parallel dimensions point to the coexistence of these processes, leading to the interest to examine the conditions that allow for one to prevail over the other in the context of protracted peace processes.