Can Peace Threaten Ethnicity? Adversarial Allegiances and the Appropriation of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in Northern Ireland

• In Event: 378 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session II
  In Refereed Roundtable: B. Table 02. Race, Culture, and Conflict

Abstract

While much of the violence that characterized the Troubles has subsided in the post-peace agreement era of Northern Ireland, Unionist and Nationalist communities continue to compete for influence in the contested construction of a ‘just peace’. In an effort to halt moral and tangible concessions that the post-peace agreement era demands, each community adopts legitimacy from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its global reception. The predominantly Protestant Unionist community adopts the Israeli struggle to reiterate the importance of state sovereignty, security, and the threat of terrorism to the nation-state. The mainly Catholic Nationalist community resonates with the Palestinian experience of colonization, state sponsored violence, and international human rights expectations. Unionists and Nationalists make universalist rights claims in order to bolster local intra-ethnic narratives. I argue that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not only an analogous political situation, but also an important tool used to reinforce distinct ethnic boundaries between Unionists and Nationalists.

Author

• Rawan Mazen Arar, University of California- San Diego