PEACEMED takes new approach to understanding an old conflict

By comparing urban dynamics in Lebanon, Israel and Palestine, this ambitious European-funded research project mapped inter-ethnic relations in contested cities throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. Its findings are intended to help policymakers understand the situation and could empower them to implement change.

Perhaps nowhere has felt the impact of intimate proximity and visceral violence more than the ethnically mixed towns of Palestine and Israel. To better understand this historical conflict, with the objective of providing new insights into conflict-resolution, the EU i-funded PEACEMED project examined the conflictual relationship arising from urban cohabitation between Jews and Palestinians within a relational framework and via ethnographic and historical research.

This approach to conflict is ground-breaking, as most prior research focused on territorial conflict between rival nation-states and regional groups. However, to gain a deeper understanding of the actual dynamics of regional conflict, PEACEMED exchanged national and regional borders in favour of intra-urban areas where multiple ethnic groups coexist within the same city.

Looking back to understand the present

PEACEMED documents how space, violent conflict and national identity have been produced in ethnically and nationally contested cities in the Eastern Mediterranean since 1918, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed.

“Since the Empire’s collapse, we witness new forms of urban violence - often resonating with contested national identities and shifting state borders,” says anthropologist Daniel Monterescu. “The reason is primarily historical, as the Ottoman dual legacy of pluralism and ethno-confessionalism [government system that distributes power between communities] was recast as religious sectarianism, colonial rule and territorial nationalism. These struggles over place and identity undermined longstanding histories of inter-communal coexistence, paving the way for the geopolitical turmoil that has persisted ever since.”

With this historical context in mind, PEACEMED studied the relations between community-building efforts in war-torn urban areas set against the backdrop of sectarian struggles between different Christian and Muslim groups in Lebanon and the historic conflict between Jewish and Palestinian national movements in Israel and Palestine. This bottom up analysis, which looked closely at how urban space, identity, and violence reconfigured throughout the 20th century, reframed the conflict not as one between coherent national projects, but as a local struggle between ethnic and religious actors in contested cities.

Shedding light

The research focused on cities like Beirut, Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa to historicise the problematic place they occupy in the popular, political and sociological imagination. The study tackled such questions as:

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  To what extent does the encounter between rival ethnic co-citizens interacting in mixed buildings and schools, in market places and in police stations, both reflect and constitute, produce and reproduce their respective positions?
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  How can one characterise sociologically the context within which the encounter between Muslims, Christians and Jews, from the beginning of French and British colonial rule, has been taking place?

The answers to these questions and others show an ongoing struggle by Jewish, Muslim and Christian citizens to define their national identity while maintaining functional interdependence.

The project’s results, which have been published both as academic papers in academic journals and as a book (Jaffa Shared and Shattered: Contrived Coexistence in Israel/Palestine), provide a phenomenal laboratory for recycling human diversity into human togetherness - and one that could have a far-reaching and long-lasting effect. As it cast a different light on both the Arab-Israeli conflict and on Muslim-Christian-Jewish differences in the Near East, its findings are helping peace-seekers and policymakers gain a deeper understanding of the long-held mistrust and could, in turn, empower them to better implement change.

“Ultimately, I hope the research will help develop adequate tools, not only for theoretical purposes, but also to formulate alternative strategies for conflict resolution, peaceful coexistence, and mutual recognition,” concludes Monterescu.

Project details

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  Project acronym: PEACEMED
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  Participants: Hungary (Coordinator)
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  Project N°: 294249
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  Total costs: € 75 000
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  EU contribution: € 75 000
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  Duration: December 2011 - November 2014