Peace Deals of the Past

A cursory review of peace agreements shows that the states and non-state actors with stakes in the conflict have a track record of negotiations and peaceful dialogue. After the 1967 war, when Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula, U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s Camp David Accords (1979) resulted in an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, leading to the withdrawal of Israeli forces and civilians from the Sinai Peninsula. During Bill Clinton’s presidency, he brought Jordan and Israel together and witnessed King Hussein and Yitzhak Rabin signing the 1994 peace treaty. This agreement outlined the custodianship of settled land and water disputes and provided for broad cooperation in tourism and trade. It obligated both countries to prevent their territory from being used as a staging ground for military strikes by a third country.

From 1970 to the 1990s, Israel viewed Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as a terrorist organization and attacked PLO members in Lebanon, Tunisia, and the Palestinian territories. However, Arafat led the organization to the Oslo Accords. These interim agreements between Israel and the PLO were pivotal negotiations that resulted in the Palestinian Authority governance in the West Bank. The Oslo I Accord, signed in Washington, D.C., in 1993, and the Oslo II Accord, signed in Taba, Egypt, in 1995, exemplified a moment when the state of Israel – with the support of many international states – directly negotiated with Palestinians.

Since 2017, the Gulf States – primarily led by the United Arab Emirates – and North African Arab States have normalized relations with Israel in what is known as the Abraham Accords. The Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan have agreed to peaceful relations with Israel to advance ties in commerce, security, and intelligence exchanges and agree to advance greater cooperation in education, technology transfers, arts, and the protection of trade routes.

Hamas Attacks and the Aftermath

After the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, the world continues to express its outrage against Israel’s brutal military invasion and relentless attacks on civilians, non-governmental organizations, U.N. hospitals and schools, and the destruction of religious and civil institutions. The Israeli public is demonstrating against the war and demanding for the hostages to be released, while Benjamin Netanyahu is refusing the latest round of terms agreed by Hamas.  Experts are weighing in, saying there are often divergent negotiation approaches, including complex opposing strategies among the stakeholders.

But the key question is this: Are traditional modes of negotiation and conflict resolution fixated on state-based interests viable with a religious-centric resistance group like Hamas? To put it more precisely: Can any peace agreement be effective if it ignores Islamic approaches to peacebuilding and the religious ethical framework involved?

Limitations of Agreements

States like Egypt and Jordan, which negotiated and signed a peace treaty with Israel, were naturally fixed on state-based interests. They wanted to reclaim lost land and resolve natural resource disputes, and in return, Israel desired the protection of the trade routes and vessels traveling through the Suez Canal. These states wanted a strategic military alliance that would allow them to cooperate against enemies like Iran and its proxy groups. On the other hand, the 2017 Abraham Accords envisioned a new future with deep political, military, economic, and social ties between Israel and the Arab states where land disputes were not the focus. Instead, the multilateral collaboration would advance and create new financial investment sectors and military cooperation to isolate Iran and dampen Russia’s influence in the region.

With Israel’s insistence that “Operation Swords of Iron” (the Gaza invasion) aims to eradicate Hamas as an organization, Israel’s allies – including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Australia – maintain that the conflict in Gaza and the suffering of the Palestinian people can end with the complete surrender of Hamas. However, practically every conflict resolution entity, such as the U.N. Peacebuilding Support Office and the European Council, demands a sustainable cease-fire and open negotiations for a long-term resolution.

The broader field of conflict resolution and peacebuilding believes that the primary aim of engagement and dialogue is to ensure that violence is limited and to transform the parties’ ends from destruction to participation and dialogue. Peacebuilding negotiations require the agreement that engaging in negotiations with one’s enemy means opening the space for mitigating, moderating, and ultimately containing violence – or, at least, initiating an information exchange for proper planning in peace negotiations.

When state officials engage in back-door negotiations, they ensure the ability to keep communication channels open and active, if for no other reason than to move their thinking away from the existing framework of violence. Controversial as it may appear to the non-expert, conflict resolution experts agree that direct engagement with adversaries prevents the escalation of violence. So, the insistence on not speaking with the adversary or promoting a public diplomacy campaign to annihilate them is counterproductive because both perspectives weaken their commitment to resolving the conflict.

The current ongoing negotiations between Israel and Hamas – brokered by Qatar and Egypt – is the same framework that is often advocated by state officials and  business leaders in the famous book “Getting to Yes.” Championed by Harvard University’s Negotiating Project, professors Roger Fisher and William Ury believe the essential negotiating principles are: (1) Focusing on mutual interests, not positions; (2) Separating the people from the problem; (3) Generating gradual mutual gains as “carrots” (as opposed to “sticks”); and, (4) Identifying “the best alternative to a negotiated agreement,” which is often a hidden short-term goal by the negotiators to achieve something the parties will find acceptable. These foundational practices were not meant for advanced stages of war.

The truth is that this is an inauthentic and unimaginative approach because genuine peacebuilding does not come when a treaty is signed, or when U.N. peacekeepers are on the ground, or when political parties are capable of holding elections, or a temporary political solution is agreed upon.  Sustainable peace requires a holistic systems approach that encompasses the cultural, religious, ethical, social, and tribal factors that can transform the conflict – a process that is inclusive of civil society and government efforts. Let us recall that Hamas, as a religious-political organization, believes religion, not secularism, provides the blueprint of a liberated Palestine. Its thoughts, beliefs, and very existence are fundamentally opposed to secular processes and outcomes; they would respond positively if negotiations utilized or involved elements of Islamic peacebuilding and conflict resolution principles.  Currently, any negotiations with Hamas do not include religion, and negotiators see anything involving religious diplomacy and conflict resolution as anathema to resolving the Palestinian-Israel conflict.

Is There a Role for Islamic Peacebuilding?

The Islamic peacebuilding and conflict resolution field consists of a vast literature with diverse thought and practices on the ground, from theology to law, from applied ethics to legal studies, and from feminist perspectives to post-colonial approaches. Some think Islamic peacebuilding and conflict resolution begin with the historical scholarly writings and ulama (religious scholars) arguments about just war theories and peacemaking engagements, elaborating the parameters of war and specific rules of engagement during and after the war. These should be considered commentaries on the law, not a path to the peaceful construction of an ideal social order.

In addition to juridical interpretations of just war theory, Islam has intrinsic values, beliefs, doctrines, and practices to encourage individuals to seek nonviolent and peacebuilding solutions. For example, for interpersonal conflicts, there are abundant paradigms to follow nonviolent interventions and dialogue and seek a mediator or a respected community member to assist in resolving the dispute. The role of the mediator is to ensure that each party’s grievance is adequately understood and their case is adjudicated with impartiality.

The field of Islamic peacebuilding continues to advance the important ideal of nonviolence. Acknowledging the enormous body of scholarly literature on the rules and limitations of killings within Islamic law, the influential Thai scholar and nonviolent Islamic peacebuilding practitioner Chaiwat Satha-Anand asserts that violence is wholly unacceptable in Islam and that Muslims must use nonviolence to achieve the goals of justice and reconciliation. Satha-Anand states, “Islam itself is fertile soil for nonviolence because of its potential for disobedience, strong discipline, sharing and social responsibility, perseverance, self-sacrifice, and the belief in the unity of the Muslim community and the oneness of mankind.” By reviving nonviolent aspects of the Islamic tradition, Satha-Anand disputes the status quo perspectives on Islamic just war theories, particularly the use of defensive violence. He is among many Muslim scholars and practitioners who are critical of historical and contemporary positions justifying violence and demand an alternative nonviolent framework. In a world where Islamist parties strive to jockey for state power, and post-Islamist ISIS radicalism dominates the popular imagination, unpacking authentic practices of non-violence in the tradition is a challenging radical proposition.

Within Muslim-majority communities, there is an understanding of conflict as it is connected to the ability to change society. Muslim religious leaders view conflict as an inevitable component of life, beginning with using the creation story as an example of conflict between the divine and the angels. In the Islamic version of creation, God created Adam out of clay (earthly material) and asked the angels to bow down to the new creation. One angel, Iblis, refused to bow down, believing that man was a lesser form of creation (Qur’an 17:61). Religious leaders often refer to this narrative to argue that conflict has always existed. Still, the mandate and primary aim is to create harmonious societies without conflict. Muslim peacebuilders consistently pose the questions: Does this work bring justice to the victims? Will the principles of law morally and ethically resolve the conflict?

According to Muslim peacebuilders utilizing Islamic peacebuilding approaches, justice is the primary issue in resolving conflict. Unless conflicting parties take part in resolving the problem and simultaneously receive justice from the appropriate authoritative institutions, conflict can be expected to continue eternally. In Islamic thought, the concept and practice of justice are synonymous with peace.

The author has supervised peacebuilding programs in Iraq, Nigeria, Morocco, Afghanistan, and other countries. These programs were built upon a change theory that civil society members – youth, journalists, academics, religious leaders, scholars, imams, business leaders, and others – can learn and enhance peacemaking skills that are intrinsic to their Islamic faith. In spite of political instability, programs focused on local communities offer a process of self-examination, healthy self-criticism, and self-empowerment. Then, regardless of their dire circumstances, they can become community peacemakers. For example, one program included exercises to increase participants’ ability to show more empathy (ma’arifat alghayri) toward others needing emotional support. Extensive workshop peacebuilding topics involved dialogue skills, principles and practices of forgiveness, compassion, love, dignity, reflection, patience, solidarity, service, acceptance, tolerance, and reconciliation.

Islamic peacebuilding taps into individuals’ spiritual and temporal dimensions to serve as an educational model to retrieve, re-embody, and re-enact these customs of peacebuilding; it is not merely an academic exercise. Since peace is not viewed as an absence of conflict, nor restricted to Western notions of structural violence, nor is the understanding limited to the legal definitions by Muslim jurists, Islamic peacebuilding texts make an explicit connection between peace and metaphysics, cosmology, politics, and culture. Teachers in Islamic religious schools positioned the theology of peace by applying inner and outer peace. Texts are based upon scripture, hadiths (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad), eminent theologians and philosophers. The contributions of Sufi Masters like al-Ghazali, Ibn-Arabi, Jafar as-Sadiq, Abu Hafs ‘Umar al-Suhrawardi, or Maulana Rumi to peacebuilding were used as examples. The Islamic values of nonviolence, compassion, collaboration, justice, forgiveness, self-sacrifice, and service ethics are not divorced from the Islamic peacebuilding framework. These are not just themes with historical references to these figures, instead, teachers and students were mutually involved in the discovery of their respective contributions to remedying the ailments of inner and outer chaos. They sought to work on the roots of anger, suffering, resolving outstanding trauma, and reconciling inherited grievances.

Islamic Peacebuilding Principles and the Arab-Israeli Conflict

It is difficult to say whether such principles could bring about a resolution to the Arab-Israel conflict, given that the field of conflict resolution and current diplomats negotiating are allergic to religious principles of conflict resolution. But what hasn’t been tried should not be dismissed.

Islamic peacebuilding could aid in breaking binary fixed positions already in place by broadening the thinking and appreciation of Israel’s sovereign right to security and Hamas’ goals to create an independent Palestinian state. It would break the binary thinking of annihilating the other for the sole existence for one’s community and recognize the consequential failures of the diametric polarized living.

The field of peacebuilding advocates an engagement with groups and parties using violence and terrorism as a tactic and presses upon states to adhere to international standards of military operations. The challenge is to make the polarized parties – Hamas, the Israeli government, and all civil society members – dialogue, debate, articulate flexibility in their demands, and reshape their violent tactics into reachable reforms while opening a political process to broader participation to address the deeper problems of society that underlie their grievances.

Acknowledging that the Arab-Israel conflict operates in and still upholds religious and spiritual traditions should be used, not neglected, in developing peacebuilding and conflict resolution frameworks. It would be wise, if not practical, to consider limiting the desire to enforce and indoctrinate Western neoliberal progressive values onto local religiously diverse civil society members. The challenges in peacebuilding require practical solutions and compel practitioners, religious leaders, faith-based organizations, secular peacebuilding organizations, researchers, community leaders, and scholars to develop a critical mind toward a new, reimagined vision of peacebuilding. The multidimensional tragedy of this conflict mandates us not to retreat into atrophied frameworks and approaches to conflict resolution, but rather there is an imperative to seek new imaginative thinking about a long-term sustainable peace.

All diplomatic and civil society negotiations must be strategically designed dialogues requiring long-term commitment from the parties involved. For dialogues to have impact and be influential in society, all stakeholders must be synchronized; political parties, religious institutions, civil society, media, youth organizations, educational institutions, the business sector, and the government must have the same vision for dialogue. Stakeholders like Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Israel, and Arab neighbors need to be committed to developing formal and informal mechanisms of dialogue to break their own inner polarized thinking and envision a new model of cooperation.

Qamar-ul Huda is the Michael E. Paul Chair and Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Affairs at the United States Naval Academy. He previously served as a Senior Policy Advisor for the U.S. Department of State Secretary’s Office for Religion and Global Affairs, where he focused on civil society, religious communities, and diplomacy with non-government organizations. He is the author of “Reenvisioning Peacebuilding and Conflict Resolution in Islam” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024).