Intractable conflicts are marked by pain and loss, and when we meet for the purposes of reconciliation, we must examine how we remember the pain and loss we have suffered without allowing the emotions that accompany them—anger, resentment, bitterness, hurt—divide us.
“Forgiveness means to release from liability to suffer punishment or penalty; to let go; release or remit; to cancel a debt in full. To cancel a debt means that you absorb the liability someone else deserves to pay (i.e. liability to punishment). Forgiveness also means to bestow favor freely or unconditionally that is undeserved and cannot be earned.”
In this article we examine power and try to define it, looking at different kinds of power and how they appear in our lives. Different sources of power are also discussed, and we explore how power relates to people in conflict with each other, especially concerning the imbalance of power.
This article will discuss some of the obstacles to reconciliation, including physical, emotional, psychological and ideological obstacles. The information provided is by no means comprehensive, and will primarily focus on the obstacles we find most common in our work.
When we look at the dynamics of conflict, there are a number of important factors which can contribute to the continuation of a conflict, but can also contribute to its resolution and reconciliation between the two sides.
Conflict can be most simply defined as disagreement between people. To expand on this a little more, “Conflict is an expressed struggle between at least two interdependent parties who perceive incompatible goals, scarce resources, and interference from others in achieving their goals.”(1)
In Musalaha’s second stage of reconciliation, Opening Up, the first thing we encounter is the issue of identity – both our own, and that of the other.
Over the past several months we have been working to update some of the chapters in our curriculum of reconciliation Some of the issues we have been researching further are the meeting of justice and reconciliation (there can be no reconciliation without justice, and not justice without reconciliation), and how forgiveness relates tot eh public and political spehres. I have been going through Donald Shriver, Jr.’s bookAn Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness in Politics.
This past week, as America commemorated the tragedy of 9/11, much was said about the gap between the Western world and the Muslim world.
The current conflict between the Israeli military and the Hizbollah has been escalating in the past weeks, seen not only in the growing number of casualties, but in the displacement of many Israelis and Lebanese and in the destruction of infrastructure.
