World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies

Barcelona, July 19th - 24th 2010

· NOT_DEFINED institution: Jacobs University Bremen

· NOT_DEFINED organizer: Simone Heil

· NOT_DEFINED language: English

· NOT_DEFINED description: Introduction: Since German policy towards the Middle East conflict has become more active in recent years, the question whether Germans can really be ‘neutral facilitators in the Arab-Israeli conflict has sparked off many heated discussions. Within the PhD dissertation ‘Youth exchange and the special relationship between Germany and the State of Israel: Interdependency of structure and agency’ politicians, organizers and participants of tri-lateral youth exchanges between Germans, Israelis and Palestinians were questioned about their opinions to what extent German youngsters can act as mediators in the Middle East conflict. The poster will focus on presenting the different responses of politicians and youth exchange organizers concerning this issue. Methods: Overall 50 semi-structured interviews were carried out in Germany and Israel. Afterwards these qualitative interviews were transcribed fully and evaluated by conducting a content analysis. An inductive-deductive coding frame was generated for this purpose.

Results: The findings display a certain discrepancy between the answers of politicians and representatives of the grass root level. While ambassadors and mayors were mostly in favour of tri-lateral youth exchange programs between Germans, Israelis and Palestinians as a measure to underpin the peace process in the Middle East, the vast majority of the interviewed youth exchange organizers regarded the tri-lateral approach as highly problematic. They were of the opinion that the German-Israeli relationship is already very complex due to the dark past of the Holocaust and adding the Arab-Israeli relations as another layer to the exchange program would overburden the youngsters. Respondents who spoke against German youths being mediators in the conflict furthermore mentioned that the teenagers are too young, do not have enough knowledge about the Middle East conflict and that it is too complicated for them to really facilitate as both sides would try to get them on their side.

Conclusion: The results of this qualitative study show that the role of German mediation in the Arab-Israeli conflict remains a highly disputed subject between the different stakeholder groups. While on the political macro level Germans have increasingly become regarded as accepted actors in the Middle East conflict resolution efforts, on the micro youth exchange level this is less the case. The political will of using German youngsters as facilitators in the conflict is criticized by organizers of youth exchanges.