Uses and Abuses of ‘Not Wanting Peace’ in the Context of the Israel/Palestine Conflict

Abstract

Since its inception, peace has eluded the modern state of Israel and while peace can be presented as an ideal aim, talk about peace has been shown to justify further conflict and harm in and beyond Israel and Palestine. The current analysis focuses specifically on online activity, where the aim of peace is shunned as it is deemed to be not wanted. A discursive analysis of interaction on the social media website Twitter (now X) shows that (1) opponents are presented as not wanting peace, often on the grounds that (2) Palestinians, or Muslims/Arab people more generally are too hateful to want peace, which means that Palestinians can be blamed for this lack of peace. Occasionally Israelis are also presented in this way. This argument (3) presents peace as something for Israel to offer and for Palestinians to accept or not, where they are deemed responsible if they do not accept terms that are presented to them. Together, these findings show that there is a move away from the interactional requirement to be in favour of peace, where not wanting peace can be used to support ongoing violence and conflict and, in this case, justify the status-quo of ongoing violence and oppression of Palestinian people.