Good afternoon and welcome, everybody. I'm delighted to present to you our speaker today, Dr. Guy Burton,
who is currently a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics Middle East Centre and adjunct professor at Vesalius College in Brussels.
Dr. Burton's research interests involve the politics and international relations of the Middle East,
and specifically that the role of emerging outside powers in in the conflict.
He is currently studying the role of China in its response towards conflict in the region.
The title of his talk today is also the title of his recently published book, Rising Powers and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Since 1947.
Professor Burton, thank you so much. Thank you. And thank you for so many people showing up because normally I don't get this many number of people.
So really appreciates it. And it makes it makes it coming out coming over talks so much will worth much worthwhile.
So I've got I've been told, you know, that normally these things run for about 35 minutes or so.
So I'm just going to give you sort of the bare bones of the of of of the of the book itself, which will give which is really a historical accounts,
but trying to sort of fit, situate or fix it in sort of the theoretical frameworks or associated with international relations and conflict management.
And so I won't probably won't get into the detail of individual country cases here, but I'm certainly willing to talk about that.
You know, after the of after the after my sort of allotted time is up because it is an interesting and,
you know, interesting account of each of these countries that that I've been looking at.
So we talk about the rising powers and really the when I talk about rising powers,
I'm talking about five in particular, the so-called BRICS countries.
So Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. And just sort of give you a little bit of an outline of what I'm going to be talking about.
I want to start first by saying a little bit about what brought me to two to study this particular subject.
Because, you know, when you go along to, you know, conferences and assemblies or Middle Eastern studies,
it's a little bit out there when you start saying you want to talk about China or India, but I hope hopefully it will.
You know, it'll start become more sort of mainstream.
And I'm going to give you a little bit of sort of the my thinking might of what is a rising power as well as what do we mean by conflict management.
Because then I want to by doing that, then I want to sort of talk, you know,
basically summarise effectively about 70 years worth of of history of these different countries in relation to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
And then maybe sort of towards the end points point towards where we might go from here,
sort of where are the sort of the gaps that could be set, could potentially be developed, studied further.
I see a number of students here. So, you know, this is a potential potential opportunity for you to think about your dissertations.
So so just to sort of say a little bit about, you know, what brought me to this a number of years back,
I was based in Birzeit University where I took where I worked at the Centre for Development Studies,
and we were very much interested in the role of the aid industry.
We were interested in what did development mean for Palestine and for Palestinians.
And so I was very much looking at things from that particular perspective during the course of that.
So I had the opportunity to look sideways and see other areas that were of interest.
And it was around the time that I first arrived, you know, to work in Palestine in, in February 2010,
that President Lula, then President Lula of Brazil had just made his second visit to the region.
He had been feted in the streets of Ramallah.
They had they had created that that's created a new roads and put a new road up called Brazil Road, which was right next to the MacArthur.
So, you know, there was a lot of sort of an interest in attention at the time.
So what does this all mean? And, you know, actually, I should confess that I started off as a Latin American and comparative to myself.
So when I came to Palestine, I was very intrigued to find that, you know, Lula had been sort of running around all over the place.
So that sort of prompted me to start looking. I started looking at the role of Brazil.
And at the time, you know, Venezuela under Chavez was very active, especially in the context of the 2008 nine Gaza Gaza war.
So I started looking at these these these countries on the side,
and that sort of led me to looking at the BRICS as a group, both individually as well as collectively.
It was also a time around then that people were thinking, Oh, the BRICS are a new doing.
They offer a new way of thinking about global politics.
So what does this mean for contact? You know, conflicts like the Arab-Israeli conflict,
maybe that's changed a little bit since especially given sort of the economic crises
that have happened in Brazil and the lower growth rates in south South Africa.
But I think it's important to bear in mind that there was this interest,
but very much a lot of the international relations of the Arab-Israeli conflict,
especially in the last 20 odd years, has been very much framed around the role of the.
It states the Europeans. So I was interested in seeing who else is involved in all of this.
I also think it's important to to to give you this sort of background, because it also shows you the perspective from which I was working.
I was primarily based, living and working amongst Palestinians.
So I'm perhaps a little bit stronger and more familiar on sort of the on the on the agenda and the interests on that side.
It's also important to know those sort of things,
because I know that this is a particularly this can sometimes be quite a polemical conflict and people have the particular positions and views.
So it's useful to set those out.
So, I mean, we talk about objective scholarship, but I think people bring their own interests to this particular conflict.
And hopefully what I'm going to talk is more about the role of these international powers rather than the conflict itself.
But we can discuss that as well afterwards, if you wish.
Also, it's important to say something about the nature of the conflict,
because a lot of the frame framing around the conflict, especially the use of the Oslo peace process,
is that of sort of two relatively equal equidistant parties, you know, Israel and Israel on one side and the PLO on the other.
And yet, you know, there is a critique to that which says that this is not a balanced conflict.
This is not two, two powers. The two groups are coming to the two coming to the table in an equal position.
We're talking about a situation in which Israel has significantly greater material resources.
And we're talking about if you if you're familiar with Jeff Helper's work on the matrix of control in which he talks about sort of the
the whole infrastructure that has been built up in the context of the West Bank and Gaza that this is an imbalanced relationship.
So it's important to bear that in mind when lists, when, when,
when considering sort of the rhetoric that goes on with regards to the emerging powers and their position.
So setting that out, I want to talk a little bit about what are rising powers and and the BRICS and broadly, I mean,
if you think about if you look at the international relations, I mean,
often there's most focus is interest is on that of great powers and superpowers.
So what about these other powers that sort of are in between these so-called middle powers or regional powers or in the context what I'm using here,
rising powers? Broadly, there seem to be about, you know, three different ways we can define them.
One is to look at them in terms of their their, you know, sort of in an objective way, in terms of their resources,
in terms of sort of the size of their economy, the size of the population, the military resources that they have.
Another way is to look at them in a subjective way. And I think that's quite what's quite important in thinking about the role of rising powers.
And in the case of this conflict, how are they perceived by others?
Because a lot of this is about, you know, I want to be seen to be doing something or not doing something, but it's important how others perceive me.
It's I can do something myself, but I want to know how others see me.
And that brings me to the third way that you can think about rising powers that of their behaviour or statecraft.
So what kind of things do they actually do? And broadly there are sort of two types of behaviour.
I mean, I'm going to be quite crude here,
but between these two ends of the spectrum there is what we might consider those who are sort of good international citizens
wanting to uphold the international institutions and the structure of the international system in which they find them.
And then there are those what you might call spoilers or challenges to that to that system.
I mean, we can think about, you know, you know,
some some obvious examples I alluded to in it's a Chavez in Venezuela back in when he was alive, you know,
he was very much seen as sort of, you know, challenging the established order of things and in Latin America,
whereas, you know, Lula was never really doing that.
So you kind of seen more as a sort of international good citizen, or at least that was the way that they they frenzel.
Now, of course, it's not as crude as that. You know, actors can sort of swing back and forth between these two, two, two, two poles.
But it's useful to have that as a sort of a framework framework to think about.
Now, secondly, the other thing we can think about in terms of of of rising powers is their position in relation to the international system,
not just their behaviour, but their stance.
And so if we if you go back and look at the literature on middle powers from sort of soon after the Second World War, you see them,
you see a lot of discussion about countries like Australia and Canada who recognised and associate themselves with the Western order,
supported the international systems that been set up, the Bretton Woods system,
the UN system and and actually interestingly enough, now there's a bit of a debate going on,
you know, regard it for in the case of Canada, which has always portrayed itself as,
you know,
upholding these upholding the international system as being sort of challenged by what's been by some of its relations with with regard to China.
So there is those established bodies,
but then there is and this is where I think the interest in the BRICS came about those the emerging sort of non-traditional actors who people said,
do they really see themselves as part of the international system or are they challenging it?
The BRICS themselves were just the sort of. Provide some context to those who don't know.
It was never it was never a name that they took on themselves.
It was actually ident. It was gold.
Jim Jim O'Neill of Goldman Sachs, who first wrote about them in the in an in the context of economic developments and growth.
In about 2001, he was talking he wanted to write about where are these emerging markets, not powers, but emerging markets coming from.
And he pointed to four neatly, basically Brazil, Russia, India and China as the BRIC.
It's interesting that from about 2008, around the time of the financial crisis, you start to see these these actors,
the leaderships of these countries starting to take ownership of that that phrase, that term.
And they started to organise their own meetings initially on the side of the UN General Assembly meetings in September.
And then subsequently from about 2009, they started to organise regular annual meetings where they would sit down and and
try to put forward sort of their vision of what the world order should look like.
Initially, that was primarily about the the global economy.
It was about and I think the most substantive output outcomes that have come from from the BRICS.
South Africa joined in 2011 with. But the most substantive kind of outputs we've seen from that is the establishment of a contingency reserve
fund to factor in sort of in financial difficulties and also the establishment of a new development bank.
Both of those coming out in 2014. But in terms of anything more more substantive in terms of sharing or pooling sovereignty, we haven't seen that.
And that sort of also echoes the fact that these countries, although they can work collaboratively on some things,
they have internal tensions and conflicts between them, say, for example,
China and India on one hand, China and Russia and, you know, the predecessors on the other.
So it's a minimal amount of work that they can do.
So then this raises a question. So why am I looking at these these particular countries, you know, from 1947, why particularly look at, you know,
the Arab-Israeli conflict since and in the case of, you know, the BRICS, which we can do from a collective.
But why why bring it back to 1947? And this is actually brings something about the debate that goes on as to when did the conflict start.
I mean, often there's there's been sort of a I guess for some on the Israeli left, there's a sort of a talk about, well,
if we you know, we talk about 1967 as the point at which things are are the are the starting point for this conflict.
But actually, from a Palestinian perspective, it starts from 1947. And so I wanted to try and situate where these countries sit,
have sit and position themselves in relation to the conflict since that period
also in 1947 is the period at which the conflict became internationalised.
It was put forward to the United Nations, you know, for debate and discussion as under under the partition plan.
So I think from those from that perspective, it makes sense to talk about 1947 as as as the moment at which the conflict became internationalised.
And what is the role of these different countries in relation to that?
Yes, I also look in the book, you know, what the BRICS themselves have been saying since they started to organise themselves collectively.
But it's also quite useful to look at what they were saying individually as well.
And it also gives us sort of some insights into different sorts of different voices from different parts of the world.
Because if we think about, you know, the Russia and its predecessor, the Soviet Union,
sort of as one of the leading powers on in the communist world as opposed to China,
which also sometimes identified with the global south, which is also where you would find, you know, Brazil and India.
You get these different voices that emerge.
Right. So talking having thoughts about the rising powers, let's say a little bit about the nature of conflicts and conflict management.
I've summarised here in the table above some this distinction between, on the one hand, conservative conservative peace and liberal peace.
This is something that has been drawn up by those who are who who work in the peace studies field.
Very, very simply, very simply the distinction between conservative peace and liberal peace.
Conservative peace is that where we sort of see an absence of violence.
So, no, no, no, no fighting, no violence.
Then we've got peace. But those more critical views from the peace studies community have said, well,
just because there's no no violence doesn't mean that there is no conflict.
You know, the conflict has deep roots, and that might actually require doing more than just removing physical violence.
It might means actually building peace.
It means, you know, getting involved in various activities that might involve development assistance or, you know,
incorporation of particular communities, you know, reducing discrimination and marginalisation as a way to resolve the potential for conflict.
So putting it at either end. We can see there's this distinction between, you know, different forms of peace, this conservative versus liberal.
And with it, I suggest that there is this the type of conflict management processes and practices can be those between broadly active versus passive.
So if we're just looking to try and prevent violence from breaking out, that's somewhat passive approach to to it's a conflict management.
Whereas if we want to engage in a, in resolving the, you know,
sort of the underlying tensions and causes of that conflict, that's a much more active approach.
But also along with that comes the idea that in some cases, you know, active conflict management may be more coercive.
It means if we think if we think about piecemeal peacekeeping, for example, peacekeeping is simply keeping two sides apart.
But if we're talking about peacebuilding, it might mean actually going into the community and actually addressing some of the different,
you know, the tensions that exist there that might actually require, you know, taking sides.
It therefore, it's it can be a potentially more coercive approach.
And this is one of the things that I sort of try to break down in terms of the different ways that
we can you can sort of analyse conflict management in the context of international relations.
But from the I've broken it down from sort of the political and diplomatic through to the strategic, legal and social, economic.
Now, the main argument I'm going to take is that and this is sort of where it comes, I come back to sort of international relations.
Is that rising powers? We would tend to think that rising powers are going to be more likely to act
and perhaps take a more active role where there is space for them to do so.
So if we think about an international system where there is, you know, more competition or more space,
there's going to be more opportunity for these type of actions to take place,
these type of actors to to operate on the other hands where the international system is more closed,
there's more there's fewer opportunities for rising powers to express themselves,
to carrot, you know, to pursue these type of these type of conflict management activities.
And so this is the sort of the main argument that was put at the front of the book.
Now, the rest of the book then goes through studying this, but from a historical perspective.
So it's broken down into a number of chapters. I look at the conflict and these different countries response to this from 1947 to 67.
Then from 1967 to 93. Then from 93 to 2000.
And then after the second second intifada. And also, it's also useful to bear in mind, sort of very broadly, the nature of the conflict itself.
And from the first period for the 47 to 67, it's it can probably be characterised more as a conflict between states.
Right. The Palestinian dimension of the conflict is is somewhat reduced.
It's overshadowed by the role of the actors that go to war with Israel in 1947, 48.
But after 1967, we see that we see sort of the rise of the Palestinian ness of the conflict and sort of the,
in effect, the downgrading of the other states in relation to the conflict.
It's also in that periods, I think what's interesting is that 1967 is also the moment at which we have resolution 242,
the framework on which subsequent negotiations are built.
And it's but it's also a very ambiguous, you know, ambiguous resolution.
It's it says, you know, is it never actually says what should go first.
It talks about is Israeli withdrawal from from from from occupied territory.
And, you know, sort of ends and peace peace agreement.
But it doesn't talk about which goes first.
It's very it's very for it has to be ambiguous for it to pass in in November 1967, in the in the UN Security Council.
But it's also created problems because how do we move the negotiations on.
Now with 1947.
So 1947, 67 is this period in which we sort of prioritise I guess the states two state interactions, 1967 to 93,
we see the rise of sort of the Palestinians and the PLO as sort of the primary actor in in the in the in the conflict.
The third chapter, which I'm which I'm talking about, 93 to 2000, obviously, is the high points of the Oslo process.
And then from the second intifada onwards, we sort of have effectively seen sort of a well, look, the process is effectively collapsed.
It's not it's not it's not developed any further.
However, what is interesting and what I sort of try to draw out in the chapter is the emergence of a different form of engagement.
And it's that of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement after 2005.
And now you have a different kind of form of engagement.
There you have the emergence of this kind of grassroots civil society movement that's that has quite a lot
of consensus in Palestinian Palestinian in the Palestinian community trying to influence governments,
but on a transnational basis. So you see this kind of the.
Building of transnational relationships between civil society groups in the Palestinian community,
with civil society groups and solidarity groups outside as a form of way to try and sort of put pressure.
So almost a third way, third sort of pattern.
Now, thinking about all of this on sides, this is where this is where I sort of broken it down by by chapter.
Broadly, what we see I mean, I would possibly argue that in this earlier period of 47 to 67,
you know, you can see examples of both active and passive conflict management at work and certainly,
you know, sort of attempts to try and sort of actually resolve the conflict because it's seen as sort of a state based conflict.
Partition will be the solution here. And pretty much most of the most of the most of these states, you know, sign up to that.
We also see attempts at sort of peacekeeping. I mean, obviously, with hindsight, we look at peacekeeping now and say, okay, it's limited.
It's not going to solve, you know, the causes of conflict.
But, you know, this is us looking looking at it today, whereas in the period of 47, 67, you know,
peacekeeping could have been seen as a way to actively resolve, resolve, resolve the conflicts.
And we have the Brazilians and the Indians both contributing to peacekeeping in the in the Suez in the Sinai area prior to the 1967 war.
We also see, you know, well, and this is where it might.
Whereas what we find in the 1967 to 93 and actually subsequently after we see much less active conflict management.
And I guess my argument to that,
the reason why I would suggest this is because just as the point I made about if the international environment is more open,
we would expect to see more more efforts by rising powers to influence the process, the process.
And if the international system is more closed, then there's less opportunities.
I would argue that actually in this period, in the Cold War period, from 47 to 93, we do have.
Space for, you know, for these rising powers to pursue different approaches.
This is it's not it's not a simple, you know, United States versus Soviet Union conflict that's going on there.
There is with the context of détente and the emergence of the Third World and nonalignment,
I think there is space for these some of these actors to try and pursue alternative routes.
By contrast, the end of the Cold War is the high points of American power, the union.
And it's the the moment of union polarity. There's really very little space for inter for for other actors to become involved in the peace process.
So broadly, what we find from, you know, with with the signing of the Oslo Agreement is all of these countries pretty
much agreeing with with the rhetoric and agree and and and saying in public,
we support the process. So then what about after to after, you know, after 2000, 2005, after the Second World War,
it's the second intifada and the the emergence of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement there, I think is more interesting.
We find with you know, there is there is still this rhetorical support for the Oslo peace process.
You'll find that all five of these countries talk about the importance of both sides
getting behind the table and resolving their their differences through negotiations.
But we've also seen is the emergence of the BDS movement.
How has that played out in relation to these these BRICS countries?
What is interesting, I think, is when that the that the BDS prime initially focussed a lot of its attention and work on, you know,
civil society movements and solidarity groups in the West, in North America, in Europe, because that's primarily had a lot of that.
That's where there's been a lot of interaction points of contact with Israel.
So when I was doing this work and asking be a BDS campaigner, what is the, you know,
sort of what is the status of of BDS is engagement interaction with countries,
with civil society groups in the BRICS countries, it was more of an afterthought.
And what you find is that actually there's greater sympathy in the more democratic countries.
So countries that have a democratic, democratic process like Brazil and India and South Africa, as opposed to in,
you know, countries like China and Russia, where the space for independent civil society is a lot more restricted.
And at the same time, of course, you find that, you know, the BDS,
which has been building these kind of ties with with, with, with different groups in Brazil,
India and South Africa has been doing it primarily with sort of politically left groups, trade union type movements, social and and solidarity groups.
So in a way, it's it's has much more sympathy and it's more inclined to be heard when it when
it when it's engaged with sort of subnational actors that are of of its ilk.
So you see a number of achievements, at least from the BDS perspective,
in the cancellation of contracts at at state level in Brazil and also in India.
But this is primarily by sort of state governments that are run by the left.
And of course, South Africa as well is, you know,
stands out significantly in the context of BDS because it is also sort of the model and the framework for for apartheid on which,
you know, the BDS movement has built itself. So there is that.
So there's a much closer link and closer tie between BDS and South Africa than there is with these other two,
you know, BRICS countries, which which may be considered democratic.
So in some ways, that sort of brings me very brief.
It's a very sort of sweeping, you know, observation about, you know, the the periods that I'm looking at.
I'm happy to talk in more detail about individual countries, if you're interested in that.
But in terms of thinking about sort of, well, okay, so, so conclusions and where do we go from here?
And I would just break it down by, I think, the first points to make that.
And there's there's the earlier period and the later period and the earlier period, as I said,
was one when we when we think about the Cold War, we tend to think of it as quite closed.
But actually there was space an opportunity for, you know, the role of other outside,
outside non us non Soviet actors to become more and more involved.
There was competition as well going on between some of these actors.
So, you know, there is the Sino-Soviet tensions,
which meant that the Chinese were actively trying to cultivate ties with the PLO as a way of sort of, you know,
pushing the Soviets to one side and and using them for as a way as a tool for,
you know, claiming leadership of of of the Communist or the National Liberation World.
Whereas the later period, I think after 1967, you know, the nature of the.
It's become sort of confined to historic Palestine.
So the mandatory territorial space of Palestine.
It means it's also a period in which effectively the Americans become increasingly dominant initially in the 1970s.
And we see that most notably with the Camp David talks, which pushes the Soviets out of the way.
The Soviets whose who are what, who are Egypt's main sponsor, suddenly lose the Egyptians and Egypt sort of enters the American orbit.
I think that's that sort of all that points to the fact that when it comes to the Oslo process, you know,
from the from from from the early nineties onwards, there is no sort of peer to the Americans.
And in that respect, none of these BRICS powers seeks to to challenge that.
And it is also, you know, it can very much be based on a cost benefit analysis.
Do you really want to, you know, to challenge the American position, take over mediation, you know,
control of the of the peace process and have it fail because that, you know, it would be an uncomfortable place to be.
I think also that's the that's that's also quite notable that when you look at today, since 2005, you know,
the number of times that BRICS countries have sort of put themselves forward as potential mediators under Lula,
he often said, I'm willing to to mediate.
Russia, including under Putin, has often put himself forward as a potential, you know, unifier of Palestinian and internal differences.
So back in 2006, after Hamas won the legislative elections, he said, I'm willing to talk to Hamas, just as you know, I mean,
just as well, at the same time that people were concerned that Hamas was was was was considered to be a terrorist organisation.
More recently, in the last couple of weeks in the in the last month, Putin has talked about, you know,
putting Russia forward as a as a as a as a as a as a broker for talks between Fatah and Hamas to
try and resolve this the the national differences that exist in the Palestinian national movement.
But a lot of this is rhetoric. It's not really followed up by anything.
And we see this as well in the Chinese position as well.
2013, the Chinese put forward a four point plan saying and they received quite a bit of coverage at the time about trying to say.
But again, it was very much following the same same language of of the Oslo peace process of saying we can mediate,
we're willing to bring the Israelis and Palestinians together, but they didn't follow through on that.
And that 2013 proposal was then, you know, overshadowed by, if everyone remembers this,
John Kerry's attempts at shuttle diplomacy for about nine, ten months, which fell apart, collapsed.
The Chinese revisited it again in 2017. So in July, they went in the space of about a month.
You had Netanyahu in Beijing, followed by Mahmoud Abbas.
And of course, both times the Chinese said, we're willing to, you know, to be here, we're willing to sort of broker talks.
But they didn't push forward and everyone kind of forgot about this until December.
So December 2017, the Chinese hosted a seminar between a group of of delegations, one from the Israeli Knesset,
actually led by the Knesset, the head of the speaker of the Knesset, and also some representatives from the PLO.
This happened, I think, to two or three days just before Christmas,
and it was just about a week or so after the Americans had said they were moving the embassy to Jerusalem.
So this times were not propitious, propitious for this.
But at the same time, what was really striking is that even though they they found it very difficult,
the Chinese, to get the two sides to even agree to a non-binding resolution.
So eventually they managed to broker some kind of communique, but they've not followed up on that since.
And I think this also highlights the, you know, sort of the the tensions at work here, because on the one hand,
you know, it's actually a really difficult conflict to actually make any meaningful headway.
I mean, the fact that the Americans haven't been able to do much over the last few years highlights that.
So what you find, though, but what's really interesting to see how the BRICS,
both individually and collectively, have critiqued and challenged the Americans and said,
you're not, you know, we need to expand, open up this this, this conflict to international negotiation, mediation.
We're willing to be sponsors.
But at the same time, when it comes to, you know, push comes to shove of the very wary about actually becoming actively involved in that process.
So that's sort of the the essence of things.
But the question is then where do we go from here? And I mean, you can probably break this up into sort of two different two different ways.
So if you're thinking about this from a policymaking point of view, obviously the question is, you know, do we keep Oslo?
Do we keep this this this peace process as the model for for future negotiations?
Or do we try and find something different? And where where does it end?
And does what leverage do BRICS countries actually have in trying to get these parties behind the table?
Again, you might ask, well, if you you know, China with its current belt and road proposals and initiatives in the in primarily in central.
Asia, but increasingly reaching the Middle East. What influence,
what leverage can the Chinese make by using their belt and road projects in
Israel in the and with the Palestinians as a way of incentivising negotiations?
My argument to that is probably unlikely because the Chinese tend to say that we like to not interfere in internal affairs.
But but the nature of of setting up a project,
of signing a contract with with with a business to do work in a country is going to necessarily necessitates taking a side and.
From the Russian perspective.
I mean, what's been interesting is, you know, from from its position in Syria, where it's obviously had influence over the last few years,
it's been striking to see how much how it's trying to leverage that influence in relation to
Israel in order to sort of coordinate action over Syria but also in the wider Middle East.
So at the moment we talk about, you know, Putin's efforts in relation to the conflict as more as theatre,
but is there a is there a way is a scope for him to actually leverage his position in the Middle East into something more substantive?
And then in the case of sort of Brazil and South Africa, I mean, we have Jewish communities.
Are these communities that could be influenced in relation to the conflict?
I think that's one of the things that I think is missing. And now it points to where do we go in terms of scholarship.
I think one of the limits, the limitations of this of of the work so far that I've done is that I've primarily
sort of focussed on sort of the high level sort of state to state interactions.
I think what might be quite interesting and this is this could be potential future work is to look at the nature and role of, you know,
solidarity groups or sort of Jewish and Arab populations in some of these countries and the inter and the
and the impacts that they may or may not have in relation to the the politics of of of the conflict.
So one of the things I found quite striking is that when I was interviewing for this book,
when I asked the the Israeli one of the Israeli diplomats who were responsible for Latin American affairs,
you know, what they thought about sort of Lula's influence and involvement in all of this?
They said, well, one thing about Lula is that he thinks that, you know, yes, he comes from a trade union background.
He's so he's used to sort of, you know, brokering agreements between sort of employers and employees.
He sort of said he sees this as sort of a way of just getting people into the room together and saying,
yeah, you know, I've had in Brazil, we've got experience of we've got Jewish Brazilians and Arab Brazilians.
So we can get them together and we can yeah, they can they can resolve the differences.
But as the diplomat said to me, this is not at what's what's missing from that is that actually this is you know.
There is something that holds those Jewish, Brazilian and Arab Brazilian populations together that Brazilian does Brazilian ness.
There isn't this in this particular conflict, and he's missing that.
So that does sort of raise this interesting question about sort of what is the role of these diaspora groups in relation to the conflicts?
Which I think would be quite interesting to explore and especially in the in the in the case of of of of Israel.
And I also think, you know, in terms of sort of other work that could potentially be done in relation to this,
it's not to just limit this to to these five countries, these BRICS countries.
There are other middle, middle powers out there that could could certainly be examined and explored.
And I'm also doing that, doing this myself.
One of the things that one of the papers that I'm now working on and I should be presenting at Christmas and in the at the Middle East Studies
Conference in a few months time is on the role of Muslim majority sorry governments from Muslim majority countries in relation to the Middle East,
primarily Malaysia and Indonesia.
I'm quite interested in their interaction and engagement with the middle, with the with Middle East politics more generally,
but also specifically that of Israel-Palestine, because Israel-Palestine maintains a very highly symbolic dimension and elements to this.
So how much of this sort of plays out in terms of their domestic politics, but also in their foreign policy?
And I think also finally, you know, there is the the role of the BDS in all of this.
I've pointed out that this is kind of a new new ish sort of elements of civil society, you know,
relations on foreign policy, transnational groups, activities, and their impact on foreign policy.
Certainly, I think there's much more scope to do work there.
The role of the BDS, not just in the most obvious places that we've that's that's tends tends to be looked at in North America and Europe.
But in these other parts of the world that have significant, you know,
Israeli markets and significant, you know, sympathy or solidarity with with the Palestinians.
And so I would probably leave it at that. So thank you very much.
Thank you so much.