Scholarly Contributions | Middle East and Africa

CONFLICT RESOLUTION

As a leading scholar of international peace and conflict resolution, Professor Said’s approach to the conflicts of the Middle East and North Africa contrasted significantly from the traditional security approach of US policymaking circles. Said defined a cooperative and “common security” approach to conflict resolution for the area, emphasizing the role of regional actors and asserting that peace and security cannot be imposed but must be locally led. While concerned with the root causes of the various tensions and conflicts throughout the region, he was extensively engaged in peacebuilding efforts within the ongoing Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts as well as the Syrian civil war later in his career. Collaborating with peace scholars and activists from throughout the region, Said continuously urged regional actors to recognize their interdependence, common needs, and shared strategic goals.

Most conflicts today are derived from clashes of communal identity, including race, ethnicity, nationality, and religion. Yet Said found that regional actors were still operating within a traditional Western framework that assumed “peace could be secured by haggling over ‘issues’ and formal positions.” In contrast, Said argued, “real issues are not ‘problems’ to be ‘solved.’ They entail beliefs, values, and identities.”¹ While the traditional framework may have been appropriate for conflicts related to material interests within culturally homogenous states, “nonmaterial identity-based conflicts such as conflicts between Arabs and Israelis are proving to be intractable to these methods of conflict resolution.”² He noted that traditional methods sought to “manage” the status quo in order to maintain existing power dynamics or, at most, achieve a narrowly imposed settlement that is ultimately unsatisfactory to all parties. In contrast to this primarily competitive approach to conflict resolution, Professor Said instead urged cooperative, non-adversarial processes that are built on more confidence-building measures and reflect a realistic interdependence of the different actors.³

In an article with Professor Nathan Funk, Said asserts that a more cooperative conflict resolution approach in the region should incorporate three components: “first, settling the atmosphere, which gives the participant a feeling of comfort; second, developing effective conflict resolution power – shared positive power rather than ‘negative’ power – which gives the participant a sense of safety; and, finally, moving toward effective conflict resolution steps, which creates a coordinated pace.”⁴ Such an approach helps to “move beyond superficial (and often defensively articulated) positions” in order to address the underlying interests and needs of the peoples involved, such as “security, identity, self-determination, and development.”⁵

Said argued that “although outside players such as the United States could theoretically do more to bring about an agreement, the outcome of a peace process ultimately rests in Middle Eastern hands.”⁶ He identified a particularly important role for oil-rich Arab states in addressing issues of inequity that fuel conflict. As he states, “the tension between population poor but resource rich Arab Gulf states and resource poor but population rich surrounding Arab countries can only be resolved by the Arabs themselves. Otherwise, the relationship between people without resources and resources without people will result in more violent confrontations in the future.”⁷ Said encouraged an “Arab development approach” in which the substantial revenues from oil are applied to support economic and social development within the region. He envisioned the inclusion of both public and private implementing structures as well as bottom-up programs such as small loans to small businesses to help reduce bureaucracy and corruption.⁸ Said also urged countries in the Middle East and North Africa to address the connection between the region’s identity-based tensions and economic inequities. As he wrote in a 1993 chapter titled “Beyond Geopolitics: Ethnic and Sectarian Conflict Elimination in the Middle East and North Africa,” “the likelihood of widening ethnic and sectarian conflicts in the Middle East is closely related to resources … to their distribution, to processes of modernization, to development, and to prospects for political pluralism.”⁹ Said stressed the importance for leaders in the region to recognize cultural pluralism as an integral part of their historical traditions. Writing about the plight of the Kurdish community across different states, Said warns that “where Middle Eastern governments fail to provide opportunities for ethnic groups to align themselves with national institutions and policies, the region will experience the fragmentation of political life, growing recourse of governments to draconian security measures and a challenge to the nation-state system.”¹⁰

Professor Said asserted the need to pursue a “common security,” which means that “the security of a single country could be guaranteed only if everybody else is also secured. It entails mutual trust as well as concrete measures such as institutionalization of a regional arms control regime.”¹¹ He frequently encouraged local regional leaders to identify together their common needs and vision. “The likelihood of a successful transition from a relationship of competition and confrontation to one of cooperation will be greater if each affected nation is inspired by a vision of a more stable, peaceful order in the Middle East,” Said explained. “If it were possible for those nations to share a sense of a ‘good’ future that might exist 5, 10, or even 20 years from the present, it would prove a solid basis for determining the practical near-term steps that would move in the right direction.”¹² To that end, he proposed a cooperative project involving mid-career military officials and civilian authorities from across the region to develop a mutually acceptable military structure for the near future, as well as joint workshops and conferences held at regional universities on developing a common security system for the region. Even if such a system could not be developed, Said argued, the project would still be valuable to future peace negotiations by increasing mutual understanding and “reducing the likelihood of misperception of intentions and of decisions based on inconsistent assumptions.”¹³

Said maintained connections with many peacebuilding practitioners and activists throughout the region, who he advised and who in turn informed his analysis. One person who contributed significantly to Said’s thinking on peacebuilding and social justice is the Palestinian nonviolence activist Dr. Mubarak Awad. The two collaborated and worked together on numerous projects in the region, including the Israeli-Palestinian negotiation and the Syrian opposition movement. In an article in the Jewish publication Tikkun, Said and Awad wrote that “Israeli-Palestinian peace is achievable but only at a price: both sides must undergo a change of mind and spirit.” Indeed, they have “no viable choice but to live beside each other; neither can achieve peace alone. The security of the Israelis and the dignity of the Palestinians go hand in hand.”¹⁴ Said was active throughout his career in promoting peace in what he called the “Arab-Israeli-Palestinian” conflict,¹⁵ stressing the importance of acknowledging and responding to the perspectives, needs, and fears of each side. In a 2000 paper with Stephen Nachmanovitch titled, “Every Thing That Lives Is Holy,” Said writes that, “In the Jews and Palestinians we have two rejected peoples, two peoples who share the experience of displacement, the history of being not always welcome guests in other countries, and who are determined not to have that experience in the future.”¹⁶ Just as the Israelis are preoccupied with security and survival and “feel threatened and despised” on one side, Arabs “perceive a danger of being culturally, politically, and economically overwhelmed” and desire “dignity and renewal.” Said stressed that the peace process must go beyond “technical agreements and formulaic treaties” to include “deeper symbolic gestures, understandings of shared values and needs, and visions of a more consensual and cooperative future based on reciprocity and trust.”¹⁷ With Funk, Dr. Said writes that “like so many previous episodes in the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such as bombings by ’Islamic’ terrorists and the destruction of Palestinian homes by Israeli ’state terrorism,’ these ritualistic exchanges are characterized as much by their symbolism of assertion and defiance as by the direct fulfillment of strategic objectives.”¹⁸

With Mubarak Awad, Professor Said defined an eight-step roadmap to peace that includes processes of apology and forgiveness, recognition and acceptance, building a non-adversarial relationship, sharing progress and economic prosperity, recognizing rights of people and not just states, mutual religious tolerance, education and communication for peace, and lastly realizing the equal rights to Jerusalem of all religious groups.¹⁹ “This proposal is not idle dreaming,” they write. “The journey toward peace requires a great awakening.”²⁰ In a 1991 article titled “A Middle Eastern Peace Strategy,” Said asserts that “the right of Jews to settle in some parts of their holy land would have to be recognized, as would the right of the Palestinians to settle in some parts of their ancestral land. These are rights of peoples, not states.”²¹

Said’s engagement with diplomatic and peacebuilding efforts in the region continued into his retirement, particularly in response to the civil war that began in 2011 in his country of birth Syria. He was deeply troubled watching the destruction and devastation from afar. Engaged with actors on various sides of the conflict, Said urged both the Syrian government and the opposition to recognize that “tough” measures are not working and “violence is not achieving their objectives.” Instead, the way “to move forward is through forgiveness, empathy, and apology, not more violence.”²² Drawing on his work on religion and conflict resolution, he encouraged the involvement of religious leaders and pushed for civil society and track two leadership. Said also continuously asserted that the solution must come from within the country: “Syria is a rainbow so the solution needs to be supported by diverse groups … localizing peace in a Syrian context means making active use of local resources,” which can include religious and cultural value systems, historical memories, culture-specific vocabularies, and indigenous (and often informal) processes.

Professor Said’s extensive scholarship on peace and conflict resolution and his keen analysis of regional dynamics continue to impact existing and emerging peace leaders in the region. While he did not get to witness the resolution of the conflicts to which he had dedicated so much effort, his many contributions toward building a cooperative peace strategy continue.

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