The March issue of Friends Jour­nal dropped online last week (and will soon hit mail­box­es) and the first fea­tured arti­cle is from Mike Merryman-Lotze, AFSC’s Mid­dle East Pro­gram direc­tor, and looks at the Pales­tin­ian use of the con­cept of nor­mal­iza­tion. I first came across this term in a Max Carter book review in 2011 and have been want­i­ng to run an arti­cle ever since because it real­ly ques­tions some Quak­er ortho­dox­ies. Mike writes:

So as Quak­ers com­mit­ted to peace and engage­ment with all peo­ple, what should we take from this con­ver­sa­tion? First, we should rec­og­nize that Pales­tini­ans and Israelis are get­ting togeth­er and coop­er­at­ing but on their own terms. One of the key prob­lems with many past people-to-people pro­grams is that they were ini­ti­at­ed and led by out­side actors who imposed their own goals and terms on inter­ac­tions. The nor­mal­iza­tion frame­work pushed for­ward by Pales­tini­ans is a reasser­tion of own­er­ship of the terms of inter­ac­tion by those most impact­ed by the sys­tem­at­ic injus­tice of Israel’s occu­pa­tion and inequality.

I’ve won­dered how the para­dox of nor­mal­iza­tion plays into some of the issues that seem to reg­u­lar­ly stymie Quak­er process. From my intro­duc­to­ry Friends Jour­nal col­umn:

 As Friends, our first instinct has been to think of con­flicts as mis­un­der­stand­ings: if only every­one got to know each oth­er bet­ter, love and coop­er­a­tion would replace fear and con­fu­sion. It’s a charm­ing and some­times true sen­ti­ment, but many Pales­tin­ian activists charge that this process ignores pow­er dif­fer­en­tials and “nor­mal­izes” the sta­tus quo.

(if you have thoughts, feel leave them in the com­ments or reply to the dai­ly email).

When Dia­logue Stands in the Way of Peace — Friends Journal 

People-to-people pro­grams can cause harm when they don’t address struc­tur­al issues.

Friends Journal