The Palestinian-Israeli Peace Process in International Context with a Note on Consequences for Turkish Foreign Policy

This thesis aims to analyze the whole process of peace attempts between Palestinians and Israelis in accordance with the systemic changes in international relations. Here the focal point will be the emergence of the new world order, which has certain positive impact on the parties to the conflict toward accepting a partial solution in the end. Accordingly, the transformation of the nature of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process is firstly analyzed from 1947 until eruption of the 1991 Gulf Crisis. Then, after the evaluation of the political context and the analysis of the 1991-1996 period, it is argued that the impact of new realities in the changing matrix of power politics within the new world order constituted one of the important factors which paved the way to the launching of the last Palestinian-Israeli peace attempt. Meanwhile, in this thesis, an additional chapter is devoted to the relevance of the whole peace process to Turkish Foreign Policy.

The main conclusion of the thesis might be put as follows: Systemic changes in international relations, culminating in the end of the cold war/bipolarity, have in time clearly affected the progress in Palestinian-Israeli peace process from total refusal by both sides to acceptance of a partial solution, be it willingly or unwillingly, under the imperatives of new realities in the world order, which are of considerable relevance to Middle Eastern affairs.

(Approved by Prof. Dr. Sevket Pamuk, Assoc. Prof. Kemal Kirisçi, Assoc. Prof. M. Lütfullah Karaman )