Israel and Palestine: Conflicts within Democracy

Israel and Palestine: Conflicts within Democracy

escrito por Dini Harmita

 

Abstract – 

We know the cases of Israel and Palestine could be called as amicable conflicts. Following Netanyahu who declared a war, this paper is aimed at exploring the possible next right thing to do including the study itself. Using the concepts of power, party, and party system institutionalisation, the author tried to understand the both coins of Israel and Palestine. Simple solutions to complex problems will never come easy but there’s always a door to start either surviving, guarding, or rebuilding the democracy.

Keywords: Israel, Palestine, Conflict, Democracy, Power, Party, Party System, Institutionalisation

 

Conflicts as We All Know

Conflict in Israel and Palestine is a conflict as we all know it must be between the Arab groups and Jewish including Bagaini and Casal Bértoa(2019) who wrote about with political party perspectives. Haugaard (2021) analysed it with four concepts of power including Bourdieu’s basing on the argument where a democracy is not a consensus thus it has a power element as energy in natural science.

After a horrific significant attack in 2006 because the Palestinian winning over parliament was not respected, the Arab groups decided to attack again on October 7 this year. This time the reason is suspected to be in line with the Russian attacks on Ukraine. This time Netanyahu calls it a war. One of the differences is that they cut the electricity access in Gaza again, where step by step gained by the Palestinian for decades. Power and energy sound like two sides of coins indeed. This paper is aimed at answering both sides.

 

To See the Conflicts from Both Sides

To see the conflicts from both sides, means to see the power of both sides. Since to solve and prevent the conflict seems impossible still thus what we could do is to at least understand both sides. As researchers, to put ourselves out of the boxes this time seems preferable.

In both points of view, Jerusalem is a holy place they called home. Despite the fact that the Palestinians have been staying there as the native, the Israelis came with their unforgivable scars too. Thus, it’s inevitable that even the parents in Israel and Palestine plant on their children's heads that Israelis should hate Palestinian for contesting their rights and land, and vice versa. It doesn’t only stop there because almost all parents from all over the world who support their ideologies also plant the same thing on their children. The children sometimes even played games where they became Israeli and Palestinian.

The Jewish are well known to be geniuses while the Arabs are well known as terrorists; but the Putin war has opened a perspective where the ideology institutionalisation that leads to radicalism doesn’t only happen in certain religion or belief.

As an empirical researcher for decades, I didn’t actually know that what I had been doing is part of international development. Only until I took a master study at a school of international development by taking the major of poverty and social policy because I genuinely want to empower the poor and write scientifically a little bit more, I knew that it is framed in a term of ‘development’. But I learned Bourdieu’s capitals since I took my bachelor's degree almost two decades before.

If Fukuyama mentioned the order as state building, economic development, democracy, of course inevitably after that there will be the end of the history. Israel is the case where the orders are not necessary to be in such a way. They tried to build all at the same time simply because they wanted to cure their wounds as fast as possible in a tiny country in an effort not to repeat the history. Interestingly, both Israel and Palestine are actually owned by communities all over the world simply because the Jewish and Muslims are everywhere.

 

Understanding Bourdieu’s Power

Despite the fact that Bourdieu is very abstract and structural at the same time, Harmita (2007) perceived his classification of capitals as the most comprehensive one. Since she studied social capital for her bachelor thesis in which after the viva was called as the doctoral thesis by one of the examiners, she needed to compare related scholars. If not because of her supervisor at that time, she wouldn’t know Bourdieu.

Since Bourdieu is very abstract, she treated the reading as if she was dating him. She read one by one including the interpretation of other scholars towards his theories, concepts, courses, and discourses.

It is not surprising at all if we found many discourses on his writings. Perhaps indeed it will be more suitable for academia to put his literature as Literature instead of scientific articles, papers, or books.

Coleman (1988, 1990) emphasized the social capital in social structure, social relationship, and institution. Despite the fact that Harmita (2007) did the research qualitatively with collective cases, she put the social capital as an independent variable. In Coleman's case, the independent variable is institutionalised in the forms of functions comprising responsibilities, hopes, trustworthy, channels, norms, sanctions, networks, and organisations. Its dependent variable is actor action especially in the legalised agencies.  

The social capital of Putnam (1993) lies in social institutions with similar independent variable keywords as Coleman’s mainly named network, names, and trust. Its dependent variable is economic development and democracy. While the essence of social capital mentioned by Fukuyama (1999) is actually religion and philosophy with trust and values as the independent variable elements of social capital. Nonetheless, its dependent variable is economic development. Since she studied collective cases in Indonesia and realised the necessities of involving scopes from micro to macro, Harmita (2007) took the consideration of social capital defined by Lawang (2004) who focused on that including the mezzo one. On the independent variable side, he put the social power of community along with other concepts. As dependent variables, he put efficiency and effectiveness in handling problems.

Only Bourdieu (1986) mentioned that social capital is institutionalised in the forms of exchange of knowledge and acquisition. Only he stated that cultural capital is institutionalised in the forms of education. While economic capital is institutionalised in the forms of as mainstream as ownership, symbolic capital is interestingly becoming one of the foundations of political capital or power.

 

Understanding Israel and Palestine

In political party point of view, Bagaini and Casal Bértoa (2019) mentioned that even decades ago no one would predict Netanyahu would still lead Israel but he is. Mair (2005) characterized popular democracy with an electoral system. Nevertheless, at least Ukraine and Israel cases have proven that democracy is not only about elections.

Casal Bértoa (2017) did the exact same thing as Harmita (2007) to the social capital. He summarised party institutionalisation and party system institutionalisation and concluded that stability is the main indicator of party system institutionalisation. States with relatively stable party system institutionalization tends to survive democracy. In micro levels, rootedness and routinisation become the main indicators of party institutionalisation. Given that the party system comprises parties, those two institutionalisations interact each other. Exchange of knowledge and acquisition become the parts of the rootedness and routinisation. Understanding Israel and Palestine with this point of view means understanding the roots of both.

A good book to read to understand the roots is written by Tolan (2006) titled The Lemon Tree. As countries who want to have their independence, both Israel and Palestine also share the same history and dream. The only difference is that Israelis used to be scattered while Palestinian have been there since they were born. The book talked about a story with a lemon tree in the backyard of a Palestinian house. A political turmoil happened all over the world including Palestine itself around that time. The Jewish need homes. That particular house had a family of rebels where at some points they needed to leave the house, and a family of one of the Jewish afterwards lived there. The new owner of the house wanted to know the Palestinian who used to stay there. The book tells us about typical politics happening in the world nonetheless with a very beautiful perspective to solve the conflicts and prevent it from happening again, by education. 

Education has been a cultural capital that is feared by authoritarianism and populism who support dictatorship at the same time. The main reason why education could help is simply because it increases and improves knowledge, reduces anxiety, and develops empathy. Nonetheless, since the authoritarians and populists are afraid of it, they create new fake realities with their disinformation, including through education itself to maintain the status quo of mainly the oligarchs. 

Conclusion

The current war between Israel and the Arab countries is not something new. It may trigger all of us to ask why and also not to ask why. Perhaps indeed it is because the rich people are too greedy; they want to keep receiving profits from such conflicts and wars. Nonetheless I believe we all have a moral obligation at least to ourselves to do the next right thing.