ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the peacemaking attempts and the simultaneity of timing point to significant similarities between the three societies (South Africa, Israel/Palestine, and Northern Ireland), while their partial differences account for their greatly varied measure of success. All three countries are sites of colonial settlement in which the consolidation of the homogenous post-settlement societies remained incomplete and self-contradictory, leading to twisted, partial, and belated decolonization. The peace processes in South Africa, Israel, and Northern Ireland, as the chapter demonstrates, are in fact decolonization processes, and their agonies are closely related to that very fact. The chapter highlights the combined local-global dynamic behind these decolonization drives, and also argues, that the peace processes were in fact belated processes of partial decolonization in partially successful, and by now anachronistic, pure settlement colonies. It examines the effectiveness of the late twentieth century international model of conflict-resolution which happened in varying degrees of success in these counries.
