Changing discourses and mediation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict : towards the Declaration of Principles 1993.

This thesis focuses on the role of mediators in the process of discursively constructing the dominant narrative erecting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In seeking to concentrate on specific mediation processes in the conflict, culminating in the Declaration of Principles, research reveals the highly interactive nature of changing discourses, underpinned by a complex, political process of textual interweaving and overlap that defines the conflict. Much of the literature addressing mediation theory builds on a positivist epistemology which separates fact from value and unquestioningly proceeds from the premise that words mirror the world they describe. Within such a context, mediators remain external to the conflict either arbitrating or facilitating negotiations between the protagonists, but never becoming part of it, contributing to its construction. The application of discourse analysis to the study of mediation challenges this core premise, arguing that any intervention necessarily involves a process of reinterpretation or re- definition of the conflict, engendered by the mediator him or herself. Underpinned by a process of change, the conflict is impinged upon by a plethora of external as well as internal parties to the conflict. These interventions generate a new discourse which interacts with other narratives within the same discursive realm or domain. In this thesis, the term `discourses' refers to those narrative structures in place which enable or constrain political movement in a particular direction at a particular moment in time. Identifying a highly interactive discursive process removes the spotlight away from a narrow and exclusionist conceptualisation of mediation as pertaining to the immediate forum in which negotiations between protagonists and a third party unfold, towards a broader, more inclusive understanding of what the process entails.