Foreword by William A. Gamson
Preface
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Twelve Organizations
Chapter 3: Political and Social Context: Three Environments
Chapter 4: The Challenge of Asymmetry
Chapter 5: A Dance of Legitimacy
Chapter 6: Maintaining and Distributing Resources
Chapter 7: Managing Internal Conflict
Chapter 8: Maintaining Commitment: Organizational
Considerations
Chapter 9: Commitment, Community, and Collective Identity
Chapter 10: Conclusion
Afterword
Appendix A: Organizational Updates
Appendix B: Israeli Peace NGO Forum Statement on the Gaza War and
Palestinian Peace NGO Statement on the Gaza War
Michelle I. Gawerc is assistant professor of sociology and global studies at Loyola University Maryland.
Prefiguring Peace: Israeli-Palestinian Peacebuilding Partnerships
is a lucid, beautifully written, and important contribution to the
literature on grass-roots peace-building and peace studies. In a
richly textured analysis stretching over ten years of research in
the region, Gawerc offers a nuanced in-depth analysis of Israeli
and Palestinian “people to people” partnerships, showing that their
ultimate success depends on contending with serious micro and macro
power asymmetries. Her scholarship sets the standard for a
conflict-resolution paradigm linking peace and justice.
*Charles Derber, Boston College; author of Welcome to the
Revolution: Universalizing Resistance for Social Justice and
Democracy in Perilous Times*
Courageous private individuals, both Israeli and Palestinian,
struggled through the long years of the Middle East "Peace Process"
to create mutual esteem and cooperative work among themselves while
governments apathetically let the opportunities for peace slip
through their fingers. Terrible disparities of power imperiled all
their efforts. Many, for all their devotion, found themselves
simply broken by the burden. Most often, they understood the
nature of the conflict in sharply different ways. Michelle
Gawerc, of a family of Holocaust survivors who understood the
suffering of another displaced people, studied the relations of
these pioneers of peace over a long period of years. She had
to win the confidence of people who lived under constantly daunting
pressure from one another's and their own communities and no
one knows this heroic scene better than she. Hers is a true
work of the transformation of conflict, recognizing that the human
relations between conflicting parties constitute the most critical
element in the healing of the society.
*Raymond G. Helmick, Boston College*
Michelle Gawerc opens a window into the world of Israeli and
Palestinian activists striving to build partnerships of equality
and respect, while struggling to maintain legitimacy in their
polarized communities. Prefiguring Peace is a compelling chronicle
of Israeli-Palestinian peace advocacy in an era of escalating
conflict.
*Ned Lazarus, George Mason University*
Michelle Gawerc has written a captivating, well researched and
accessible study of peacebuilding in Israel-Palestine. She provides
an insightful analysis of how peacebuilding organizations overcome
internal conflicts in order to affect the conflict at large. The
book documents the peace camp's ability to survive in some of the
darkest moments of the conflict without minimizing the challenges
facing the existence of these organizations. In doing so, the
author presents a clear model for how peacebuilding organizations
can adapt to a fast-changing environment. Gawerc's book is proof
that the path for peace is paved with education and cooperation,
without which all peace agreements are doomed to failure. Overall,
the book is a convincing and engaging tale of the vitality of the
Israeli-Palestinian peace movement.
*Aziz Abu Sarah, George Mason University*
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