著者

立山 良司

出版者

一般財団法人 日本国際政治学会

雑誌

国際政治 (ISSN:04542215)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.2005, no.141, pp.25-39,L7, 2005

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Since autumn of 2000 the circle of violence has derailed the Israel-Palestinian peace process. In order to prevent the resurgence of violence both parties had tried to promote security cooperation and form an effective security regime between them, but failed to do so.<br>It is reported that since 1988 till 1998 thirty-eight formal peace accords were signed, and of them thirty-one failed to last more than three years. Various factors, such as security dilemma, existence of spoilers, and intervention by external parties, cripple the implementation of the peace accords, including the Oslo peace agreement. In addition, the asymmetrical relations between Israel and Palestinians have heavily affected the peace process and resulted in its failure.<br>One of the most salient asymmetrical relations is the difference in the nature of both parties. Israel is an independent sovereign state with very powerful armed forces, and has occupied The west Bank and the Gaza Strip. As such, Israel uses its armed forces under the name of invoking the right of self-defense, and has an almost excusive power to determine a future of the occupied territories. On the other hand, despite the establishment of their own self government, Palestinians are still under occupation and struggling for establishing an independent sovereign state. The asymmetrical future also results in a very wide gap between both parties' perceptions of peace. From Israeli viewpoint, a peace should bring an end of any form of violence and eliminate the threat of military and terrorist attacks. For Palestinians, a peace should realize both an end of occupation and an establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Furthermore over the peace process both parties, i. e. the Israeli Government and the Palestine Authority/PLO, have taken even conciliatory attitudes and policies toward spoilers in their own constituencies with the intention to broaden their power basis.<br>A number of proposals and suggestions for a military intervention by a third party have been made, but no international presence in the occupied territories has been materialized. Taking into consideration the asymmetrical characteristics between the two parities, however, an international presence could make valuable contributions to restoring a peace process in the following two aspects. First, an international presence could ease to a certain extent an asymmetrical feature of the relations and reduce the feeling of vulnerability on both sides. And by doing so, an international presence could narrow the gap of perceptions concerning peace. Second Israel and Palestine are no exception that political leaders manipulate security concerns to solidify their positions and extract additional resources from their society and consequently they create and intensify the security dilemma. The introduction of an international presence could decrease the possibility of this kind of manipulations.