Hilde Henriksen Waage (born 18 August 1959, in
Drammen
Drammen () is a city and municipality in Viken (county), Viken, Norway. The port and river city of Drammen is centrally located in the south-eastern and most populated part of Norway. Drammen municipality also includes smaller towns and village ...
) is a Norwegian historian and peace researcher. She is Professor of History at the
University of Oslo
The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top universit ...
and was acting Director of
Peace Research Institute Oslo
The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO; no, Institutt for fredsforskning) is a private research institution in peace and conflict studies, based in Oslo, Norway, with around 100 employees. It was founded in 1959 by a group of Norwegian researcher ...
from 1992 to 1993. Waage is an expert on the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is one of the world's most enduring conflicts, beginning in the mid-20th century. Various attempts have been made to resolve the conflict as part of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, alongside other ef ...
and Norway–Israel relations.
Career
Waage took the
Cand.philol. degree at the
University of Oslo
The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top universit ...
in 1987 and the
Dr.philos. degree in 1997, both in history. She became a professor at the
University of Oslo
The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top universit ...
in 2007. Before this, Waage worked at the
Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), mostly as a researcher but also as acting director (September 1992 – April 1993) and deputy director (1996–2005).
Waage has produced foundational contributions to Norwegian scholarship on Norway's role in the Oslo process of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations during the early to mid-1990s. She has also been critical of the doctoral thesis of former Norwegian State Secretary
Jan Egeland
Jan Egeland (born 12 September 1957) is a Norwegian diplomat, political scientist, humanitarian leader and former Labour Party politician who has been Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council since 2013. He served as State Secretary i ...
, who was intimately involved with the Oslo negotiations, and has used the Oslo process to demonstrate what she calls "the limits of third-party mediation by a small state in highly asymmetrical conflicts," in contradiction to Egeland's thesis.
[''Postscript to Oslo: The Mystery of Norway's Missing Files''](_blank)
, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', Vol. XXXVIII, No. 1 (Autumn 2008)
Part of the
Oslo process
The Oslo Accords are a pair of agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO): the Oslo I Accord, signed in Washington, D.C., in 1993; involved the famous back-channel negotiations, which were mediated by Norway. In 2001, Waage was commissioned by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) to conduct a comprehensive study of this back channel. In order to carry out the research, she was granted privileged access to all relevant, still-classified files in the ministry’s archives. The MFA had been at the heart of the Oslo process, but when Waage set to work at the archives she was surprised to discover "not a single scrap of paper for the entire period from January to September 1993—precisely the period of the backchannel talks." Such documentation does exist, and has been quoted by Israeli accounts of the Oslo process, but attempts to uncover it have failed, and significant amounts of documentation held by, ''inter alia'', former Foreign Minister
Johan Jørgen Holst
Johan Jørgen Holst (29 November 1937 – 13 January 1994) was a Norwegian politician representing Labour, best known for his involvement with the Oslo Accords.
Holst was Minister of Defence from 1987 to 1989 and from 1990 to April 1993. He t ...
has been refused access to. Waage and others speculate that such documentation has been kept hidden for party-political reasons, to avoid upsetting Israeli and US sensitivities about Israel's stance during the Oslo process, and for the vested interests of the Norwegian officials involved: Waage describes Norway under the guidance of
Terje Rød-Larsen
Terje Rød-Larsen (born 22 November 1947) is a Norwegian diplomat, politician, and sociologist.
Rød-Larsen came to wide international prominence as a key figure in the 1990s negotiations that led to the Oslo Accords—the first-ever agreements ...
, his wife
Mona Juul
Mona Juul (born 10 April 1959) is an official in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and former politician for the Labour Party. Juul hails from Sparbu, and was educated in political science. She played a key role facilitating the Oslo Acc ...
,
Jan Egeland
Jan Egeland (born 12 September 1957) is a Norwegian diplomat, political scientist, humanitarian leader and former Labour Party politician who has been Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council since 2013. He served as State Secretary i ...
and Johan Jørgen Holst as "Israel's helpful errand boy."
Waage divides her country's role at Oslo into two phases. In the first, "the Norwegians played only the role of a very modest facilitator"; however, during the second, from May 1993 after the Israelis upgraded the status of the Oslo talks:
Waage also comments about the real power that Norway had in the meetings. She in the last paragraph of her paper "Postscript to Oslo" says that:
Without the power to impose solutions, and above all dependent on the stronger party, the weak state mediator in unequal contests must rely heavily on “process symmetry,” where the two sides are treated with absolute equality, provided with exactly the same accommodations, allotted exactly the same amount of time to make their case, and so on. The Norwegians went to great lengths to achieve this symmetry (as did the Americans in their mediating efforts between Palestinians and Israelis, albeit for different reasons). The problem with process symmetry is that it cannot address the power asymmetry that inevitably distorts the outcome of negotiations. Process symmetry and the entrie [sic] facilitative exercise can create a sense of equality between adversaries and the illusion of genuine communication, even trust. The Norwegians believed that through dialogue and a gradual building of trust, an irreversible peace dynamic would be created that could push the process forward to solution. The problem with this entire approach is that the issue is not one of trust, but of power. The facilitative process masks that reality. In the end, the results that can be achieved by a weak third-party facilitator are no more than the strong party will allow. Short of unusual generosity or truly far-sighted vision, such a solution can only be unbalanced and unfair, and therefore ultimately unsustainable. The question to be asked is whether such a model can ever be appropriate.
Critics
Waage was criticized both by
With Israel for Peace
With Israel for Peace ( no, Med Israel for fred, MIFF) is a Norway, Norwegian pro-Israel organisation. It styles itself as a "non-religious, non-partisan pro-Israel organisation", and has more than 11,000 registered members as of 2017. A main conc ...
and in
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
for her moderate approach of how security forces should deal with terrorists.
Selected bibliography
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* (1996): Norge -Israels beste venn. Norsk Midtøsten-politikk 1949-1956.
Universitetsforlaget
Universitetsforlaget AS (English: "The University Press"), also known in English as Scandinavian University Press, is a Norwegian academic publishing company, which publishes non-fiction literature and journals mainly oriented to Scandinavia. U ...
. (p. 30-45:
Yanuv
Yanuv ( he, יָנוּב, , ewill Come Forth) is a moshav in central Israel. Located in the Sharon plain near Netanya and Tulkarm, it falls under the jurisdiction of Lev HaSharon Regional Council. In it had a population of .
History
Before t ...
)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Waage, Hilde Henriksen
1959 births
Living people
21st-century Norwegian historians
University of Oslo alumni
University of Oslo faculty
People from Drammen
Norwegian women academics
Norwegian women historians