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A politics of empathy: Encounters with empathy in Israel and Palestine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2015

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Abstract

This article starts from the premise that empathy is an inherent part of social and political life but that this is not sufficiently theorised in International Relations (IR). Building on the burgeoning debates on emotions in world politics, it argues that the study of empathy should be developed more rigorously by establishing an interdisciplinary and critical framework for understanding the experiences and processes of empathy in IR. The central contribution of the article is twofold: firstly, it highlights limitations of the dominant perspective on empathy in IR, and secondly, it argues that a range of meanings may be attributed to empathy when examined within the sociopolitical conditions of particular contexts. Drawing on research on the conflict in Israel and Palestine, the article identifies and articulates two such alternative interpretations: empathy as non-violent resistance and as a strategy of normalisation.

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Articles
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 95 - 113
Copyright
© 2015 British International Studies Association 

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Footnotes

*

Thanks must go to the anonymous RIS referees for their discerning and constructive comments. I would also like to thank the Adam Smith Research Foundation at the University of Glasgow and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland for the funding that supported the research in Israel and Palestine. My thanks to all interviewees who shared their narratives, thoughts, and experiences with me and to the Kenyon Institute in Jerusalem. Thanks to those who have provided comments on various drafts of this article: Katherine Allison, Marcus Holmes, Cian O’Driscoll, Ty Solomon, David Traven, Nick Wheeler, and participants at HINT sessions and the Sussex Research in Progress seminar.

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54 Author interview with Nava Sonnenschein; expressed similarly in author interview with Zoughbi Zoughbi, Director of the Wi’am Center for Conflict Resolution, 5 May 2014.

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59 This was a perspective which a number of Palestinian and Israeli practitioners self-identified with in interviews.

60 Pedwell, ‘Affect at the margins’, p. 19; Paolo Freire, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (London: Continuum, 2000 [orig. pub. 1970]).

61 The same applies to Palestinians and Israelis occupying different socioeconomic positions within their societies.

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65 Author interview with Abdelfattah Abusrour, director of Alrowwad, Aida refugee camp, 5 September 2013. While some groups may continue with intergroup dialogue others currently focus on intra-group dialogue. This depends in part on how individual/organisational positions intersect with the narrative of normalisation.

66 Author interview with Bassam Aramin, 4 September 2013; Interview with Lucy Nusseibeh, 13 May 2014.

67 Author interview with Abdelfattah Abusrour.

68 Author interview with Zoughbi Zoughbi.

69 For example, see activities run by Holy Land Trust, MEND, Wi’am Center, Combatants for Peace, CARE, MachsomWatch.

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76 Examples of this might include: the Israeli organisation Zochrot, the PRIME initiative, and intergroup encounters which address political and historical issues.

77 Interview with Bassam Aramin, Combatants for Peace, 4 September 2013.

78 Adwan et al., Side by Side, p. x.

79 Ibid. p. xiv.

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88 Allport recognised the importance of equal status between the parties during contact along with other criteria. This condition has not adequately addressed the broader asymmetrical relations of power which have framed contact encounters in this conflict.

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