On June 1, 2014, the Arab American University- Jenin (AAUJ) will host a two-day international conference on ‘Conflict Transformation and Peace-Building in Palestine: Challenges and Future Trends’ with broad local and international participation. Dr. Mufid Qassoum, AAUJ Vice-president for International Relations, stated that the conference seeks to make the Arab American University an internationally recognized platform for academic and scientific research, enabling it to reach the international public opinion and decision makers with key messages regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict. He observed, “Conflict in Palestine has consistently taken center stage in international media attention, and we at AAUJ have something to say about this. We need to make the world know about our position and how we envisage the conflict and its settlement.”
The bitter conflict between Zionists/Israeli Jews, on the one hand, and the Arabs and Palestinians, on the other, has existed for more than a century. “Yet, to date, no Arab or Palestinian institution has successfully set up an academic/intellectual platform where the conflict issues can be adequately addressed”, Qassoum remarked. He added, “We at AAUJ hope to work towards a unified academic discourse on the conflict based on an empirical methodology.” Qassoum maintained that centers for strategic policy studies or think tanks specifically designed to tackle and effectively engage with the conflict have never been established in Palestine because the self-interests of outside global and regional powers have determined that maintaining the conflict is advantageous for a variety of reasons.
The conference aims to put an end to the invisibility of Palestinian scholars and pro-Palestinian viewpoints in the academic world. While the Arab world is lacking academic platforms dedicated to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israeli and Western universities have seized the opportunity to set up a plethora of academic platforms and research centers that claim to investigate peace and conflict transformation. However, this has not always aided the plight of the Palestinian people. Qassoum critiqued many of these initiatives, “Many of these academic platforms and ‘peace’ programs have actually failed to address the conflict from a Palestinian viewpoint and have shaped global policy and discourse to serve the strategic political and ideological purposes of Israel.” He believed the conference at AAUJ will provide balance and a much-needed counterpoint.
This academic invisibility has other causes. Arab and Palestinian scholars have struggled to move beyond individual initiatives and jointly work together. Qassoum stated, “This squandered opportunity has allowed Zionist platforms to reach out to the global mainstream media and convey their view of the conflict, and keep a fabricated story of history remains alive.” This conference should serve to bring academics together to encourage increased cooperation and joint research.
Qassoum hoped that this international conference at the Arab American University would be the first stage of establishing a Palestinian-Arab school of thought that seeks to reach an all-encompassing and lasting peace in the region; a peace that brings justice to the plight of all Palestinians living in the occupied territories, in Israel, and the worldwide Diaspora.
The conference will be the seed for ongoing research work that will highlight the Palestinians as a people eager to find and maintain a just all-encompassing peace in the region. “The conference should support a widespread mobilization of society motivated by the right to self-determination, social justice, democracy and sustainable socio-economic development”, Qassoum remarked.
Qassoum pointed out that the discussion at the conference should shed light on several key underlying issues to the conflict. Several themes will be prominent in the conference proceedings - the concept of a Jewish State” and its hindrance to the prospects for peace in the region; Zionism and the myth of power; the regional and global functions of Zionism in the current neoliberal globalized global system; the roles of language, literature, art, and historical narratives in fueling conflict; key issues in the resolution of the conflict (the return of refugees, settlements, the status of Jerusalem, borders); non-violent resistance to occupation and its ability to transform the conflict; the role of media and cybernetics in both aggravating and transforming the conflict; and the failure of intergroup dialogue to transform the conflict.
Arab American University hopes this international conference will be a central feature to its plans to increasingly internationalize the university and connect it with numerous research centers across the world that specialize in the study of conflict and peace, in order that the world can be exposed to Palestinian and Arab research initiatives.
AAUJ has already received abstracts and research papers from a wide range of West Bank and Gaza universities along with the following international universities - Coventry University and the University of London (UK), Kadir Has University (Turkey), Universities of Akron and Washington (USA), Universities of Ottawa and Toronto (Canada), Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia), Universities of Cordoba and Granada (Spain), University of Vienna (Austria), Jawaharlal Nehru University (India), and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (Norway). Presentations will also be made by Palestinian politicians and civil society.