Author: Tom Shacklock, MSc
August 27, 2024
War is devastating populations worldwide, with 2024 seeing the world’s highest number of conflicts since World War II. Most international attention has focused on the Israel-Gaza and Russia-Ukraine wars, which have serious global implications and have been divisive issues within global public opinion. Israel’s destructive war in Gaza, which was triggered by Palestinian armed group Hamas launching a deadly attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, has followed decades of asymmetric cyclical conflicts in Israel and the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank. Meanwhile, the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia, an imperialistic global power, follows eight years of Russian occupation in the annexed Ukrainian territory of Crimea and conflict between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists in the largely Russian-speaking Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Despite the devastation created by both of these wars, there is by no means any global consensus on how they should be framed or interpreted.
Polarized and inconsistent narratives on these wars have fallen along political and overarching global divisions between the “West” and “the rest”. Certain left-wing anti-imperialist discourses see a simplistic binary between an imperial West, including Israel, and an anti-imperialist East and Global South, including Russia. Meanwhile, Western powers have demonstrated double standards on human rights in supporting Israel and seeming to lack empathy for Palestinians while seeking to isolate Russia and its authoritarian president, Vladamir Putin. Both Israel and Russia have been accused of launching genocidal wars against Palestinians and Ukrainians respectively. Israel has also been criticized for its broader repression and dispossession of Palestinians, military occupation of the West Bank, and besiegement of Gaza and has been accused of Apartheid. Many Israelis, Israel allies, and Jewish people worldwide view such allegations as controversial or antisemitic. Furthermore, they consider the Gaza war necessary to destroy Hamas, which controls Gaza, and rescue the hostages that Hamas took on October 7. Meanwhile, South Africa, which has joined many countries in the Global South in taking a neutral stance on Russia’s war, has taken the genocide claim against Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Such polarizing and politicized narratives impede the ability or willingness of the “international community” to universally sympathize with victimized populations and unite around solutions to these conflicts. They also hinder populations affected by or involved in these conflicts from reconciling with their opposing side. This globalized and localized polarization of conflict narratives applies not only to interpretations of contemporary events but also to historical context, which informs how people make sense of contemporary wars and the moral position of each “side”. The importance of history for the populations directly impacted by certain wars often reflects the existential dimensions of these crises. One way to overcome polarizing historical narratives in the context of conflict resolution is through “bridging narratives”.
What are bridging narratives?
The concept of “bridging narratives” has been explored by several scholars of conflict, including Israeli historian Ilan Pappé and U.S. conflict resolution scholar Sara Cobb. Given the role narratives play in how people make sense of conflicts, Cobb focuses on the importance of incorporating narrative theory into conflict resolution in her 2013 book Speaking of Violence: The Politics and Poetics of Narrative in Conflict Resolution. She also explores ways in which a narrative approach to conflict resolution can ethically address issues such as asymmetric power relations between conflict-affected groups and the marginalization of certain groups with perspective, which traditional conflict resolution approaches like dialogue can downplay or even reinforce. Bridging narratives help address the issues that Cobb highlights as they are aimed at building connections between conflict narratives that seem mutually incompatible.
Such narratives are not simply a matter of recognizing the complexities of conflict but are focused specifically on the “bridging points” between polarized perspectives thereon. Cobb reiterates Pappé’s argument that, while such narratives require both sides of a conflict to be open to reconciliation, the stronger side of an asymmetric conflict particularly needs to recognize the legitimacy of the weaker side’s narrative or the incompleteness of their own. Bridging narratives should therefore be distinguished from “shared narratives”, which can downplay or enable a conflict’s asymmetries or exclusionary dynamics that marginalize certain groups. Pappé also argues that bridging narratives require a people-centered focus on the perspectives of conflict-affected civilians and not just elites or military officials. Furthermore, Cobb emphasizes that the objective of complex narrative construction in conflict resolution should not simply be to establish objectively “right” narratives in contexts of competing conflict narratives but should make sense of multiple realities experienced from different perspectives.
Bridging narratives should also help to humanize explanations for what drives certain perpetrators into violence, including structural factors, with complexity and accuracy. It should be noted that humanizing is not the same as justifying, downplaying, or apologizing for harmful violence. Rather, in recognizing a perpetrator’s humanity, we can facilitate accountability and emphasize their moral agency. Moreover, humanizing narratives can encourage conflicting groups to recognize one another’s common humanity and shared ability to experience fear, insecurity, vengeance, trauma, and a desire to potentially act on such emotions. It is also critical for conflicting groups to seek to understand where the other side is coming from with perspective, mutual empathy, and sensitivity to power relations. Furthermore, conflict narratives are not to be conflated with solutions, though the former can inform the latter in addition to supporting reconciliation, depending on context. As conflicts that have attracted significant global attention, the Israel-Palestine and Russia-Ukraine conflicts serve as important case studies on the prospects and limitations of developing bridging narratives.
The Israel-Palestine conflict
The history of conflict between Palestinians, who are a primarily Arab population, and Israelis has been long and complex. However, it is the official creation of Israel that marks the most pivotal historical episode informing the current conflict and its existential dimensions. The key idea informing Israel’s existence is Zionism, or Jewish nationalism—the aspiration for Jews to have their own homeland or nation-state as protection from persecution. Palestine became the chosen destination for many Jews from around the world as the Jewish people's ancient homeland, which was also already home to a Jewish minority. After the Holocaust (1933-45) and towards the end of British colonial rule in Palestine, the United Nations (U.N.) voted to partition the territory into the states of Israel and Palestine in 1947. Soon afterwards, a coalition of Arab countries started and lost a war with Israel (1948-49), supporting Palestinian resistance fighters. Before and during the war, around 750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from what is now Israel, sometimes following massacres perpetrated by Zionist forces, in what Palestinians call the “Nakba” (catastrophe).
Polarizing narratives on the conflict’s history are accompanied by debates on whether anti-Zionism constitutes antisemitism, which many argue conflates Judaism with a political movement, and whether Zionism constitutes “settler-colonialism”. It is not necessary to resolve these debates to bridge perspectives and bring the human experience into the conversation. The term “Zionist” is used pejoratively in certain “pro-Palestinian” discourses that overlook the varied meanings of Zionism, conflating extremist Zionists with liberal Zionists who support co-existence while feeling a deep connection to Israel. Furthermore, while it has been argued that the early Zionists understood their movement to be “settler-colonial”, at a time when colonialism was the global norm, not everyone identifying as Zionist will have shared this vision over time. A 2003 Harvard University conference report on Israel-Palestine conflict narratives provided an example of a bridging narrative in arguing that Zionism was “positive” for Jews and “catastrophic” for Palestinians. To explore this relationship in more depth, bridging narratives could create space to constructively confront the effects of Zionism on Palestinians in practice while remembering it originally promised security to a population that had faced centuries of persecution, including pogroms and genocide.
It is possible to promote the Palestinians’ rights and critique Israel’s historical and contemporary conflict narrative without disregarding the overarching existential fears shaping the Israeli perspective. While these fears, which Israeli politicians exploit, tend to securitize Palestinians and undermine their rights, they underscore the important role that Holocaust-related trauma plays in this conflict. While the existence of Hamas can be considered a symptom of oppression, dispossession, and military occupation, episodes of violent Palestinian resistance and the tendency for some pro-Palestine voices to minimize the recent abuses and broader extremism and antisemitism of Hamas are seen, by many Israelis and Jews worldwide, to confirm the perpetuity of global antisemitism. Challenges to the Israeli narrative that address historical Israeli wrongs during the Nakba are also often seen to delegitimize Israel and dwell on a settled episode of history. Expectations that Palestinians forget the Nakba are often accompanied by the erasure and denial of the historical existence of Palestinians, who co-existed with Jews before Israel’s creation. Recognizing the intergenerational trauma informing the Israeli perspective can help humanize conversations that confront injustices and human rights abuses perpetrated by the Israeli state and address the Palestinians’ own intergenerational trauma.
The Palestinians displaced during the Nakba mainly fled to Gaza, the West Bank, or neighboring countries and have been denied the right to return home. This has been considered one of multiple major injustices and impediments to peace for Palestinians. A bridging narrative that incorporates this aspiration or right of the Palestinians could encapsulate the argument that Israel’s creation was itself based on a historical aspiration of many Jewish people to return to their ancient homeland. This narrative alone would not be able to address other practical concerns with the Palestinians’ aspirations. However, it would center the very human theme of the longing for “home” that is at the heart of both the Israeli and Palestinian historical narratives. This idea may add to the deep religious connection that Jews, Christians, and Muslims all claim to the contested city of Jerusalem. Bridging narratives could focus on both populations’ shared vulnerability by emphasizing the role of Christian Europe in fostering the antisemitism that drove Zionism. One could similarly focus on imperial Britain, which made conflicting promises of statehood in Palestine to European Jews and Arabs, before it had even seized the territory from the Ottoman Empire, to gain their support during World War I.
While humanizing narratives may have a limited effect in bridging conflict narratives, they may at least counter dehumanizing discourses that reinforce polarization. While the Gaza war and increased Israeli settler violence in the West Bank seem to have diminished the prospects of Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation, perspectives can still be bridged at the narrative level. Ilan Pappé has argued that a key “bridging narrative” moment that saw Israeli historians accept parts of the Palestinian narrative on the 1948 conflict was in the 1980s, following the declassification of Israeli government archive materials. This underscores the value of establishing evidence of the effect of today’s conflict, despite the current collective denial, limited media exposure, and even justifications for destructive violence among many Israelis. These effects include the widespread suffering, death, massacres, humanitarian catastrophe, and urban and cultural destruction resulting from Israel’s systematic war crimes in Gaza and the dehumanizing and genocidal rhetoric of Israel’s far-right government ministers. This evidence can inform narratives that are sensitive to historical perspectives and demand accountability for the asymmetric impact of the conflict on both populations and, more urgently, necessitate interventions to avert the threats facing Palestinians.
Russia’s war in Ukraine
There may appear to be fewer opportunities to recognize “multiple truths” between opposing narratives on the Russia-Ukraine war. Its perceived complexities are significantly linked to Russian propaganda that relies on fabricated history, notably the belief that Ukraine does not exist and belongs to Russia, and has exaggerated the existence of divisions between Ukraine’s Russian-speaking communities and other Ukrainians. Yet, the search for bridging narratives informed by certain complexities is still warranted to reconcile existing divides within Ukraine and between the Ukrainian and Russian perspectives. Russian rulers have historically subjected Ukrainians to mass trauma, notably during the Holodomor, a Soviet-era genocidal famine. The Russian perspective also warrants empathy. Putin has exploited national trauma related to the economically destabilizing 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, which drove many Russians to support a strong leader who would restore a sense of national greatness associated with Soviet nostalgia. Different studies with varying degrees of credibility display conflicting results on the war’s popularity among Russians. Though Russian propaganda has encouraged widespread anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western sentiment and support for or denial of Russian military aggression, many Russians have responded with apathy under authoritarian rule.
Putin has claimed false aims of “denazification” and made unfounded claims of “genocide” against Russian-speaking Ukrainians, which have not reflected the opinions of these communities, as pretexts for invasion. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is himself Jewish and a native Russian-speaking Ukrainian. Nonetheless, Ukraine has recently had a neo-Nazi problem, and its complicated history of Nazism has been insufficiently addressed. Some far-right fighters implicated in past human rights abuses have joined Ukraine’s volunteer Azov battalion that has fought Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas. Reports that the Azov battalion has been largely deradicalized have been disputed, though Ukraine’s far-right remains a fringe problem within Ukraine’s diverse and, since the invasion, increasingly unified population. Nonetheless, a bridging narrative can incorporate the fear and pain that Ukrainian ultranationalists have created for vulnerable minorities. This problem, along with Ukraine’s controversial post-invasion policies of conscription and martial law, should not be equated with Russia’s urban and cultural destruction, massacres, systematic child abductions, and other processes of Russification within occupied Ukraine. It is also crucial to address the widespread genocidal rhetoric and the targeted military recruitment of ethnic minorities in Russia and the neo-Nazis fighting with Russia.
The place of Russian as one of Ukraine’s multiple minority languages, which Russia weaponizes, is itself more complex and fluid than the Ukrainian-Russian binary depicted in Russian propaganda. It is also linked significantly to Russian immigration or “settler colonialism” and the restrictions on the Ukrainian language (“Russification”) under the Russian Empire and Soviet Union but remains constitutionally protected. Yet, while Russia has repressed the Ukrainian language in occupied territories and delegitimized Ukrainian identity, Ukrainian authorities and institutions have restricted minority language and cultural rights at different points of time before and since the 2022 invasion, reflecting a tension between decolonization from Russia and a shift towards liberal pluralism. Many Russian-speaking Ukrainians have increasingly rejected the Russian language, though this development is divisive. A bridging narrative could acknowledge the asymmetric but reciprocal hardening of nationalisms between both countries, which is primarily driven by Russian imperialism. Bridge-building between both countries may rely partly on Ukrainians resisting the temptation, while seeking to protect their national identity, to conflate all Russian culture with Russian imperialism and to erase the complex historical socio-cultural relations between Ukrainian and Russian people at an identity and narrative level.
Some analysts internationally have echoed the Kremlin’s narrative that argues that the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) threatened Russian security and “provoked” Russia to prevent Ukraine from joining the military alliance through war. Additionally, one conspiracy theory alleges that the 2014 “Maidan Revolution”, which overthrew a pro-Russian government and triggered Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and conflict in eastern Ukraine, was a Western-orchestrated “coup”. Notwithstanding suspicions of U.S. meddling in Ukrainian politics, this theory negates the agency of Ukrainians to shape an organic and violently suppressed but controversial pro-democracy, pro-European, and anti-corruption movement. While narratives focusing on NATO and the U.S. can be conspiratorial, they can also be driven by concerns about the impact of risky geopolitics on ordinary people. Nevertheless, they downplay the extreme nationalism in Russian politics and reduce Ukrainians to a part of Russia’s sphere of influence. An evidence-based narrative combining a geopolitical and human rights lens could address these complexities while affirming Russia’s responsibility for victimizing Ukrainians. Meanwhile, the implications of NATO’s role can be viewed in terms of dilemmas to inform debates on viable solutions to the war, factoring in reports that most Ukrainians may wish to join NATO.
Bridging narratives can accompany people-centered debates on the fate of Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories. The war has diminished pro-Russian sentiment and separatist views in the Donbas and possibly in the purportedly more pro-Russian yet complex region of Crimea. Critically, the evolving complexities and nuances of regional public opinion on this matter over time can reflect the complex identities of people living in these areas at a narrative level. Narratives concerning these territories should address their history dating back to the Kievan Rus, a Medieval Slavic state whose territories included part of modern-day Ukraine, Belarus, and western Russia. This state became Orthodox Christian when its ruler was supposedly baptized in Crimea in the 10th century. Russian nationalist discourses cite this history in maintaining that Ukraine is part of Russia, despite the complex, interrelated but separate historical evolution of these national entities and identities over time. The historically interrelated religio-cultural connection with Crimea that Ukraine and Russia share could serve as a bridging point without negating Ukraine’s national history and the fact that Crimea is the homeland of the Muslim Tatar minority, who faced forcible deportation under the Soviet Union.
Ukraine’s recent incursion into Russia may shift the dynamics of the war and the narratives it produces. Regarding the possibility of Russia winning Ukrainian territories, consideration should be given to the potential for more of the repression witnessed in the occupied territories, including the persecution of Tatars in Crimea, which public opinion may overlook. Meanwhile, bridging narratives should emphasize the historical co-existence between generations of ordinary ethnic Russians and Ukrainians and encourage an understanding of the reasons for pro-Russian sentiment among certain eastern Ukrainians, including nostalgia for the stability of Soviet rule. Nevertheless, they should still confront the imperial connection of Russia’s claim to Crimea and other Ukrainian territories.
A global perspective on bridging narratives
The need for bridging narratives can be extended to other contexts. Post-genocide Rwanda needs more comprehensive peacebuilding narratives that address the currently negated massacres against members of the Hutu ethnic majority during the 1990s without equating them with the 1994 genocide perpetrated by Hutu extremists against the Tutsi minority in “double genocide” narratives. Mention of these past massacres against the Hutus is currently punishable as “genocide denial”. Attempts to delicately address these asymmetric experiences of victimization can be accompanied by an emphasis on the role of European colonialism in entrenching Rwanda’s ethnic divisions. In other overlooked and polarized contexts, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, and Sudan, conflicts between marginalized or persecuted groups and other communities are often linked to broader structural factors or shared traumas related to colonialism that peacebuilding narratives could emphasize.
Meanwhile, the neglect of these contexts relates to the narrow international focus on the Israel-Gaza and Russia-Ukraine conflicts. This problem, combined with the inconsistent position of many international actors on the Russia-Ukraine war and other serious human rights issues, reinforces a feeling that Israel is often singled out for criticism. Many Western pro-Palestinian voices, who have participated in large anti-war protests, may argue they are focusing on the inconsistent foreign policy of their own governments that support Israel. Bridging narratives pertaining to the Russia-Ukraine war could focus on addressing narratives related to Western hypocrisy, which Russian propaganda often exploits, through incorporating demands for real accountability for injustices, controversies, and harms connected with U.S. imperialism, NATO, and other Western powers in other contexts as well as the history of the U.S. meddling in various countries’ politics.
The examples of Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine, and various African contexts indicate that the viability of establishing credible bridging narratives depends on the degree of asymmetry in the historical experiences of persecution, oppression, colonialism, imperialism, and trauma between conflicting populations. Bridging narratives should demand both complexity and consistency in multilayered discourses involving people directly affected by conflicts and those taking an interest internationally. The construction of such narratives may appear to be a messy process that is even considered unworkable or inappropriate in certain contexts. Nevertheless, it remains worthwhile to seek opportunities to develop people-centered, evidence-based narratives that, at the local and international levels, encourage humanizing understandings of polarized perspectives on conflicts and promote a universal commitment to human rights and peaceful intergroup co-existence in all contexts.
Glossary
Agency: The ability to take action or to choose what action to take. [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]
Annex: To take possession of an area of land or a country, usually by force or without permission. [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]
Antisemitism: Hate directed at Jewish people, or cruel or unfair treatment of people because they are Jewish. [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]
Asymmetric: Involving actions or parts that are not similar or not balanced, especially because one is much bigger or more powerful than the other. [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]
Colonialism: The practice by which a powerful country directly controls less powerful countries and uses their resources to increase its own power and wealth; the practice of establishing colonies to extend a state's control over other peoples or territories; the control or governing influence of a nation over a dependent country, territory, or people. [Source (quoted): Collins Online Dictionary]
Conspiracy Theory: A belief that an event or situation is the result of a secret plan made by powerful people. [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]
Coup/coup d’état: The forcible removal of a head of government by the society’s own armed forces or internal security personnel. In a coup, the military takes action to overthrow the government with little or no involvement by the civilian population. [Source (quoted): Britannica]
Decolonization: The process of gaining independence from a colonizing state. [Source (quoted): Collins Online Dictionary]
Dehumanize: To deprive (someone or something) of human qualities, personality, or dignity. [Source (quoted): Merriam-Webster Dictionary online]
Empathy: The ability to share someone else's feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in that person's situation. [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]
Existential: You use existential to describe fear, anxiety, and other feelings that are caused by thinking about human existence and death. [Source (quoted): Collins Online Dictionary]
Genocide: An internationally recognized crime where acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. [Source (quoted): US Holocaust Memorial Museum]
Geopolitics: The study of the way a country's size, position, etc. influence its power and its relationships with other countries. [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]
Global South: The group of countries that are in Africa, Latin America, and the developing parts of Asia. [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]
The Holocaust: The systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators. [Source (quoted): US Holocaust Memorial Museum]
Humanize: To address or portray (someone) in a way that emphasizes that person's humanity or individuality. [Source (quoted): Merriam-Webster Dictionary online]
Imperial: Belonging or relating to an empire or the person or country that rules it. [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]
Imperialism: A system in which a rich and powerful country controls other countries, or a desire for control over other countries. [Source (quoted): Collins Online Dictionary]
International community: A phrase used especially by politicians and in newspapers to describe all or several of the countries in the world, or their governments, considered as a group. [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]
The Kremlin: As throughout its history, the Kremlin remains the heart of the city [of Moscow]. It is the symbol of both Russian and (for a time) Soviet power and authority, and it has served as the official residence of the president of the Russian Federation since 1991. [Source (quoted): Britannica]
Liberal: Relating to or having policies or views advocating individual freedom. [Source (quoted): Collins Online Dictionary]
Marginalization: The act of treating someone or something as if they are not important. [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]
Military occupation: Control and possession of hostile territory that enables an invading nation to establish military government against an enemy or martial law against rebels or insurrectionists in its own territory. [Source (quoted): Merriam-Webster Dictionary online]
Narrative: A way of presenting or understanding a situation or series of events that reflects and promotes a particular point of view or set of values. [Source (quoted): Merriam-Webster Dictionary online]
Nationalism: Nationalism is the desire for political independence of people who feel they are historically or culturally a separate group within a country. It is often associated with the belief that a particular nation is better than any other nation, and in this case is often used showing disapproval. [Source (quoted): Collins Online Dictionary]
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO): Established during the Cold War, NATO is a transatlantic security alliance composed of thirty-two member countries, including the United States. [Source (quoted): Council of Foreign Relations]
Norm: An accepted standard or a way of behaving or doing things that most people agree with. [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]
Objective: Not influenced by personal beliefs or feelings; fair or real. [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]
Persecution: Cruel and unfair treatment of a person or group, especially because of their religious or political beliefs, or their race. [Source (quoted): Collins Online Dictionary]
Pluralism: The existence of different types of people, who have different beliefs and opinions, within the same society. [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]
Polarize: To cause something, especially something that contains different people or opinions, to divide into two completely opposing groups. [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]
Pogrom: A mob attack, either approved or condoned by authorities, against the persons and property of a religious, racial, or national minority. The term is usually applied to attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. [Source (quoted): Britannica]
Revolution: Unlike coups and rebellions, revolutions can cause radical changes in the institutions of government and bring about basic changes in society as a whole. [Source (quoted): Britannica]
Russification: A set of policies or processes encouraging non-Russians to adopt the Russian language and culture and thus increasing Russian political domination in Ukraine and other Eastern European countries. [Source (quoted): Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine]
Soviet Union: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was formally established as a state in 1922. The Soviet Union—as it is often called—was a communist dictatorship based in Moscow. [...] Soviet territory included the countries of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (Belorussia), among others. [Source (quoted): US Holocaust Memorial Museum]
Trauma: Severe and lasting emotional shock and pain caused by an extremely upsetting experience, or a case of such shock happening. [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]
War crime: A crime committed during a war that breaks the accepted international rules of war. [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]
Zionism: An international movement originally for the establishment of a Jewish national or religious community in Palestine and later for the support of modern Israel. [Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary online]
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