Comment: Peace in West Asia. (1994, 20 Marks)
Johan Galtung distinguished negative peace, the absence of war, from positive peace, the removal of the structural violence that produces war. West Asia has rarely had even the first. In 1994 it seemed closer to both than at any time since 1948. Three decades later, a Gaza ceasefire coexists with war on Iran.
The moment of 1994
- Oslo (September 1993) brought mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO. The Cairo Agreement (May 1994) began Palestinian self-rule in Gaza and Jericho.
- The Israel–Jordan Treaty of Peace (October 1994) followed the Washington Declaration of July. Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize.
- Madrid’s multilateral track (from 1992) set up working groups on water, refugees, the economy and arms control. Peres’s The New Middle East (1993) imagined peace through regional economic integration, a functionalist wager.
- The fault lines were visible even then: the Hebron massacre and the first Hamas suicide bombings (1994), a deadlocked Syrian track over the Golan, and Iraq and Iran left outside the order.
Why peace has proved elusive
West Asia is better read through Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver‘s regional security complex theory (Regions and Power, 2003) as a conflict formation of overlapping sub-complexes:
- Israel–Palestine: Oslo collapsed at Camp David (2000), and settlements expanded. The Gaza war after 7 October 2023 paused only with the October 2025 ceasefire and a US-chaired Board of Peace (UNSC Resolution 2803); a year on, Israeli forces hold over half of Gaza and Hamas’s disarmament has stalled.
- The Gulf: Iran faces Israel, the US and the Gulf monarchies. Israeli and US strikes in June 2025 were followed by the US–Israeli war on Iran from 28 February 2026, which disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. A Pakistan-mediated memorandum (June 2026) broke down in July; US–Iran exchanges on a settlement continued in late September.
- Failed and contested states: Syria after Bashar al-Assad’s fall (December 2024), Lebanon, Yemen’s Houthis in the Red Sea, and Iraq.
- Regime security: rulers fear domestic and transnational challengers more than neighbours, so the 2011 uprisings produced intervention rather than reform.
Competing paths to peace
| Lens | Path to peace | Limit |
|---|---|---|
| Realist | Balance of power, US primacy, deterrence (Kenneth N. Waltz even argued in 2012 that an Iranian bomb would stabilise the region) | Balancing has produced recurrent war, and nuclear rivalry risks escalation |
| Liberal | Trade, corridors (IMEC), normalisation (Abraham Accords, 2020) | Commercial peace bypassed Palestine, and 7 October exposed the gap |
| Constructivist | Changing identities and norms; Saudi–Iran détente (March 2023) | Identities hardened by war and sectarian mobilisation |
Conditions for durable peace
- A credible Palestinian political horizon: some 157 states now recognise Palestine, and the New York Declaration (2025) restated the two-State goal.
- A regional security architecture that includes Iran, on the model of the CSCE, together with progress on the long-promised WMD-free zone.
- Great-power restraint in place of proxy competition.
India’s stake
Some nine million Indians live in the Gulf, and before the 2026 war about 45% of India’s crude and most of its LPG passed through Hormuz; IMEC and Chabahar are also at stake. Syed Akbaruddin (May 2026) describes India’s reading of the region as a Rubik’s Cube with three faces: Israel for security technology, the Gulf for economy and people, Iran for geography. Hence multi-alignment: ties with all three, calls for de-escalation and aid to Gaza.
Conclusion
The 1994 peace was a negative peace among states, built on Palestinian interim self-rule. It never reached the structural sources of violence: occupation, regime insecurity and the exclusion of Iran. Peace in West Asia will remain episodic until a regional order includes everyone it currently leaves out.