A Palestinian protestor sticks a sign on the gate of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO) offices during a demonstration marking the anniversary of Balfour Declaration organized by Intifada Youth Coalition, Palestine, in Gaza City, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013. Picture by Adel Hana AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.Everyone is interested in peace, but very few are interested in what type of peace. Peace became almost equivalent to sustaining the status quo, to compromises, to security concerns and needs, but hardly ever about lasting justice and equality. The notion of peace became one of those ‘slippery’, if not ‘dirty’ concepts, and for many people, peace is just a long and complex process that will deliver very little if at all, and will mainly benefit the political and business elite.
This ‘pessimistic’ take on peace is driven by a failure after another in putting an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict, which remains a key issue for the world (dis)order. It is also based on my real-life experience as a human being who grew up and lived under a brutal Israeli colonial occupation for 30 years, and my experience of living in the shadow of failing peace and failing state building processes. Multiple levels of tension at this intersection can be explored as far as peace is concerned, but fundamentally, for the right world order, it is crucial to ask and answer the right questions such as: What peace?
Going beyond Palestine-Israel, and as far as the global (dis)order is concerned, could a real global political inclusive agenda shape the new world order, or is it too late and are we just moving in the other direction, towards further fragmentation in the global political scene? The answer could be that if we had effective and inclusive state and non-state structures in place, structures that would provide a space for everyone and accommodate different views, then the Islamic State would most likely not be here today. If we had functional global accountability mechanisms and institutions focussing on ‘checks and balances’, maybe the invasion of Iraq and its political ramifications that we are seeing today would not have taken place either. These two indicators point out to the argument that there is an utmost need to reinvent global governance institutions that ‘run’ or dominate the global order, such as the Security Council, in order to address the structural deficiencies in our world order today.
