Civil society and its actors: from historical reconciliation to hybrid bi-nationalism in Israel/Palestine

My thesis will approach the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a political theory perspective with an envisaged application through mixed methods. This integration of methods will allow me to apply my development in political theory.

The long-lasting status-quo of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might be coming to an end due to recent local and international evolutions; Its eruption would bring a radical change to the political configuration of these territories. This comes particularly as the end of the “Two-States Solution” is one of its most expected outcomes. Thus, rethinking the concept of Self-determination and the logic of Territorial Partition becomes a necessity at the core of the current reality and this will result in the normative red thread of my research. This will enable me to focus on Historical Reconciliation as an alternative to Partition on the one hand, and on Integrative Solutions (commonly called “One State Solutions”) as morally and normatively desirable outcomes of this conflict on the other. These two streams of academic thought have considerably prospered in the aftermath of the Oslo accords. Following my normative red thread through this academic literature and other theoretical contributions in democratic theory, I aim to construct a coherent and innovative normative theoretical model that could introduce a potential new roadmap to peace for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The added value of my theoretical model will consist of the central role that could be played by Civil Society and its actors. Throughout my research, I aim to show not only the potential of these actors in completing the theoretical circle of my model (through their contributions to democracy), but I will also elaborate on their implementation capability of my model for they are considered as active and renowned actors in the social reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Thus, with the help of literatures on associative and deliberative democracy that manifest their potential as vectors of change, the main question of my research is how do Civil society actors position themselves with regards to the substance of my theoretical model and to which extent could they go in participating in its implementation?

To answer this question, I will refer to a specific mixed methods approach in order to take advantage of my empirically analysable research units (secondary associations of Civil Society) both horizontally and in depth. Hence, allowing the required rigour to apply a normative model. In fact, I will be conducting a series of semi-structured interviews with associations’ representants to know how they position themselves with regard to the core concepts of my theoretical model; Subsequently and with the help of the data generated in the previous empirical section, I will design a survey to obtain a general estimation of the field.