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The main purpose of this paper is to propose a strategy to promote the culture of peace in the Palestinian‐Israeli struggle. The Bangladesh approach to peacemaking offers a dual strategy: conflict management in the Israeli‐Gaza situation and conflict resolution in the Israeli‐West Bank case. The first is designed to reduce the level of violence in intensified conflict. The second intends to build the foundations of a peaceful social order.

The paper develops and elaborates the second part of the Bangladesh approach. It offers a strategy to build the foundations for a peaceful social order in the Israeli West‐Bank situation. The paper includes theoretical background, examples from other cases of intractable conflict, and lessons from the “Minds of Peace Experiment” – a simulation of a potential Palestinian‐Israeli public negotiating congress – which was conducted at the University of Missouri‐St Louis.

The paper presents two competitive models of peacemaking and proclaims them complementary: the political élite and the public assembly. The first intends to reach a peace pact through interactions between political élites. The second intends to prepare the people for a reasonable peace process through the establishment of a major institution for conflict resolution – a public negotiating congress.

The public‐assembly model is new in the Palestinian‐Israeli experience. The paper offers a program to create the conditions for establishing a major Palestinian‐Israeli public assembly: a public negotiating congress. It is the first time in the history of the struggle where ordinary people are intended to be substantially involved in the negotiating and the peacemaking process.

How can we account for patterns of mobilization undertaken by ethnic movements? What leads ethnic collectives to shift between mobilization strategies? Addressing the general lack of attention in the ethnic conflict literature to the diverse political strategies employed by ethnic minorities – particularly those in democratic and semi-democratic contexts, this chapter accounts for mobilization as developing along an institutional spectrum of ethnic contention. I argue that the internal dynamics of ethnic movements shape patterns of mobilization. Utilizing literature from new institutionalism and employing the approach advanced by the study of contentious politics, ethnic movements are theorized as developing through the interplay of three causal mechanisms, which combine to form processes of institutionalization and deinstitutionalization. The process of deinstitutionalization is explored through the case of the mobilization of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, tracing the development of the three causal mechanisms and their influence on the collective’s mobilization pattern. The chapter concludes by considering the range of movements that can be explored along the institutional spectrum.

This article aims to analyse the Israeli negotiation strategy in reference to the theoretical frameworks of reconciliation and settlement. It focuses on the Israeli‐Palestinian negotiation experience over the past three years, or since Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister of the Israeli Government in 2009.

Theoretical literature provides two hypothetical frameworks for resolution of conflicts: a political settlement; and reconciliation between parties to the conflict. This article argues that Israel's vision of conflict resolution effectively attempts to integrate both hypothetical frameworks by proposing a political settlement for Palestinians in return for obtaining reconciliation from them. To analyse this strategy, this article explores the Israeli political discourse over the past three years, as well as Israel's vision of the conflict resolution as is manifest in this discourse.

The article argument is based on the indication that willingness of a party to reach a settlement is met with reconciliation from the other party to the conflict. A party's insistence on offering a settlement and attaining reconciliation is associated with power relations between both parties. To maintain its powerful position, the stronger party usually demands reconciliation from the weaker party, at the same time presenting a settlement that implies a political, not moral, recognition of the weaker party with a view to dispossess it from its moral logic in the conflict.

An assessment of the Israeli political discourse over the past three years indicates that Israel is implementing a compound negotiation strategy to resolve the conflict. The strategy entails settlement and reconciliation components. Israel wishes to deal with Palestinians through a political settlement. On the other hand, Israel wants the Palestinians to deal with it through the reconciliation process.

Wars and conflicts have caused millions of people to seek asylum outside their homelands and the issue of refugee camps has become a pressing subject in international policy discussions. Conflicts continue to escalate in different parts of the world, especially in Middle Eastern countries. In 1948, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict forced displacement of many Palestinian people. The resulting camps have developed into cluster camp shelters of three to four stories in the West Bank, Gaza, and other regions around historical Palestine; some are perceived to be like gated communities. Being self-sufficient environments, refugee camps have rarely been approached from the perspective of urban psychology. This research deals with sensory perceptual analysis of Balata, the largest refugee camp in the West Bank of Palestinian Territories. Balata is situated in Nablus and has raised four generations of refugees since its establishment. In order to explore the spatial characteristics of such specific environmental experiences, the research adopted a mixed-method approach – systematically evaluating the related literature on sensory perceptual spaces and applying content analysis methods. The study modified the sensory slider tool of Malnar and Vodvarka according to the framework matrix based on the content analysis. Moreover, the case study analysis consisted of observation of the chosen area and 30 in-depth interviews with refugees who were forced out of their homes and settled in the camp as well as some who were born in the camp. The research results show that investigating what camp residents perceive of the five senses can capture meaningful sensory perceptual experiences and can generate a holistic mental image of the refugee camp. Particularly, perceptions of the built environment reflect the difficulty of life experiences. The study concludes that the characteristics of camps in this seventy-year-old conflict environment may not be found in other parts of the world.

The study aimed to investigate how Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and others from around the world present their views on boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). The quality of discourse was examined along with the implications of the rhetoric for social-justice and conflict resolution frameworks.

This qualitative study analyzed 257 texts (newspaper articles, opinion pieces, YouTube videos, emails. Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, campaigns and websites) for content and quality of discourse and for their implications for social-justice and conflict resolution work.

Most texts divided into those in favor of the boycott and those opposed. The content was also polarized − most pro-BDS texts saw Israel as a settler-colonial enterprise, and emphasized issues of social-justice, whereas opponents perceived Israel as a legitimate nation and were skeptical of the human rights angle. The main types of discourse discerned included: ethnocentric talk, attack and intellectual discussion, regardless of national/ethnic origin of the writer or stance toward the boycott.

Different types of texts were analyzed, which did not always fit easily into the discourse categories. Because this was the first study of its kind and looked at limited years, results should be approached with this in mind.

The rhetoric leaves little place for dialogue between those in favor and those opposed. Specific suggestions for combining social-justice work and conflict resolution work are offered.

BDS discourse in its present form hampers finding a solution to the conflict and abuse of Palestinian rights. A new approach is needed to try to resolve these issues.

Because there are few systematic studies on BDS, this article provides insight into how people discuss the strategy and how it connects to frameworks for resolving conflicts.

Social movement scholarship convincingly highlights the importance of sharing the same risks for building solidarity, but it often unintentionally conceals the reality that certain risks cannot be fully shared. Using interviews with activists involved in Combatants for Peace (CFP), a joint Palestinian–Israeli anti-occupation organization, this article illustrates how radically risks can differ for activists in relation to their nationality, as well as make clear the tremendous impact asymmetrical risks can have for movement organizations and their efforts to build solidarity. I argue that for movement organizations and joint partnerships working across fields of asymmetrical risk, solidarity is not about sharing the same risks; rather, it is about trust and mutual recognition of the risk asymmetries. Moreover, that solidarity building across risk asymmetries involves three general measures: a clear commitment to shared goals, a willingness to defend and support one another, and a respect of each other’s boundaries. In the discussion, this argument, which was developed through an in-depth analysis of CFP, is applied to the joint struggle in the Palestinian village of Bil’in to indicate generalizability.

Purpose – To answer two related questions, namely, why women in general are excluded from peace-building processes and why women in Israel are excluded from peace-building processes and have to create their own organizations?

Methodology/approach – This is narrative prospective research paper. First, the research focuses on international gender theories regarding participation of women in peace-building processes, and then on the particular situation of women in Israel and their need to form peace movements and organizations of their own.

Findings – The research revealed that Israeli women's absence from the official negotiations with the Palestinians as well as women's exclusion from other peace-building processes is part of a global phenomenon. Given the fact that women have been missing from the Israel's official negotiations with the Palestinians since 1987 when the first Intifada began, and their plight is not addressed, women need to create their own peace movements and organizations for voicing their unique value for the benefit of society at large.

Research limitations – An update of the research should be conducted every two years to check changes in findings.

Value of the paper – The chapter highlights the significance of women's inclusion in peace building. It describes women's exclusion from the peace process in Israel although they have been extremely active and were recognized internationally and stresses the need for a gendered society to end the Palestinian–Israel conflict.

The purpose of this paper is to explore women’s resistance to the religion of civilising missions abroad through empathetic feminism.

Conceptually, this paper explores three thematic tools for transnational activism in the interwar period: empathy for silent history, intersectionality of race and class, and empowerment through advocacy within power structures. With the theoretical backdrop of Winifred Holtby’s activism inspired by the philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft, this research compares the political involvement of Frances Emily Newton to Blanche Elizabeth Campbell Dugdale, and how their transnational activism contributed to post-colonial self-determination and the convolution of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict in the rise of the twentieth century nation-state.

These three feminists provided alternative narratives of human rights activism during the first wave of British feminism that both enabled transnational activism and planted seeds for empowering self-determination amidst colonial mandates and rising nationalism.

These women worked at the dovetail of colonialism and self-determination towards the twentieth century nation-state, and as the twenty-first century evolves with greater global integration and interconnectivity, imaginative insight in the transnational context evokes greater opportunities for empathy and compassion across intersectional identities, which in effect enables the mobilisation of positionality to confront structural violence perpetuating silenced voices.

By contextually evaluating transnational activism in a narrative of nuanced complexities, this research exudes opportunities for propagating universal human rights while maintaining the sensitivity to post-colonial sentiment for empowerment with the support of transnational networks.

This paper outlines a framework for engaging international business in the Palestinian‐Israeli peace process, based not on traditional profit models but on corporate social responsibility (CSR).

A crucial ingredient to Middle East peace is an economic development process providing jobs, stability, and growth in the West Bank and Gaza. This paper reports on a 26 member consultation at Windsor Castle, England, convened by the Institute for Global Ethics (IGE) in September 2002 to bring together Palestinians and Israelis from the region with business leaders and professionals from Europe, the US, and Canada. The consultation was preceded by an IGE research paper and followed by a published report.

A discussion of the arguments for CSR engagement in the Middle East, along with two key documents agreed by the participants, are reported here. A “statement of principles” identifies six traits of successful CSR activities in the region. The second, listing 21 “practical steps for promoting economic development,” identifies potential business interventions listed in descending order of risk, complexity, cost, and long‐term commitment, including such items as “create micro‐enterprise opportunities for local entrepreneurs, and commit to purchasing their outputs,” and “help create management and/or skills training programs within the region.” The participants strongly agreed that the global business community, acting within a CSR framework, could significantly advance the prospects for Middle East peace.

This paper will interest business executives, CSR proponents, diplomats and economists, and leaders within the region seeking ways to jump‐start the currently stalled peace process.