Researchers Brendan Browne and Elaine Bradley published a research article entitled: “Promoting Northern Ireland’s peacebuilding experience in Palestine–Israel: normalising the status quo.” The two researchers argue that the transposition of a Northern Irish peace model to Palestine/Israel serves to reinforce and embed the ‘conflict’ by promoting its own discourse of ‘peacebuilding’, a silent discourse on the language of colonialism, which in turn marginalizes the legitimacy of Palestinian anti-colonial resistance and prioritizes westernized notions of ‘peace’ over international obligations to promote ‘justice’. The researchers’ argument rests on what is essentially a marginalized critique, namely that viewing the Northern Irish Peace Agreement as “successful” depends on how one understands the agreement itself; Either as a tool to end ethnic conflict by promoting better relations between societies through a process of consociationalism that leads to reconciliation; or as a carefully constructed bureaucratic means of providing a ruse of ‘peace’  whilst appeasing claims to self-determination and ignoring broader colonial history. For further details, click here