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In the early years of the twenty-first century, two peace processes that were deemed promising came to a halt. In Cyprus, the Annan Plan was rejected by the majority of Greek-Cypriots and in Israel/Palestine, the Oslo Peace Process collapsed in the second intifada. This chapter provides a comparative exploration of the roles the refugees played as individuals and as groups in the eventual failure of various peace processes as well as the political issues that have contributed to such failure. It focuses on the Greek-Cypriot refugees and the Palestinian refugees as the treatment of the rights of these groups of refugees were deemed the most controversial issue in the peace processes. In this chapter, the historical conditions, legal statuses, access to political representations and the geopolitical factors that have influenced the manner with which the conflict and refugees are dealt with are explored and examined. The various sections of the chapter are devoted to the rationale behind the failure of the Annan Plan and the Oslo Peace Process and the role of the refugees in this failure. The chapter concludes with some suggestions about the implications of refugee issues in order to settle long-term conflict.

This chapter examines the Oslo peace process as the first attempt to introduce the liberal peace framework in the Middle East, and the later, more limited engagement with the construction of a viable peace between the Israeli state and the Palestinians. It argues that the ‘thin’ liberal peace model employed in the Middle East peace process is problematic due to its exclusive nature. It builds states for liberals, and thus excludes and indeed, often simply ignores non-liberal others. Indeed, it may also be the case that some of the obstacles to a viable framework for peace stem, not just from local political and cultural dynamics, but also from the liberal peace paradigm's engagement with the region itself.

This chapter discusses the legal status of the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, from both the point of view of international law and that of Israeli municipal law. As this status was intertwined with major peace processes that took place in the region, such as the Camp David Accords and the Oslo Peace Process, as well as other unilateral actions such as the Israeli settlements project, disengagement from the Gaza Strip, and the building of the Separation Wall/Fence, and Palestinian statehood, the implications of these processes on the status of each of these territories are also laid out here.

This chapter examines how the mediation dilemma might play out more strongly in civil wars through a number of illustrative case studies. The case of Rwanda shows that greater vulnerability in intrastate conflicts, where former combatants must coexist, can make mediation particularly precarious in the long run. The Haiti case demonstrates that third parties have the potential to interfere with the mutual dependence between the governed and those governing that must exist in stable polities. The Oslo Middle East peace process shows that third parties can affect the contest for legitimacy that often occurs in civil wars and can create the incentives for spoilers to emerge. The Sri Lankan conflict reveals that the nature of insurgency can generate incentives to use mediation for insincere motives and derail any post-mediation peace. Finally, mediation in Aceh is a potential example of a case in which the bargaining environment and the mediator techniques were conducive to reaching both a short-and long-term peace.

This chapter first discusses eight major world developments that affected the outbreak of large-scale conflicts and how they were conducted. These developments relate to global integration, communication, social norms, inequalities, the status of women, and the global environment. Features of President Bill Clinton’s administration and American society are examined and their foreign adversarial relations analyzed, relating to al Qaeda, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. Mediation efforts relating to the Oslo peace process between Israel and the Palestinians are critically examined. Interventions in the wars in Yugoslavia are also analyzed. Finally, evolving constructive conflict ideas and practices are discussed. These pertain to conflict escalation, peacebuilding, and assessing practice.