Comparing the Israel–Palestinian Dispute to Australian Family Mediation

Abstract

‘For decades the Israel–Palestinian conflict has been characterized as intractable, inextricable, and the root cause of suffering and misery for many of the people who live in the Middle East region’. Whilst it would be unwise to expect that the solution to this problem can be provided by negotiation support systems, we believe such systems can provide useful advice and allow disputants to more adequately understand their goals and support them to perform the trade-offs necessary to arrive at acceptable solutions. Given our research on interested based negotiation support systems to provide family mediation advice, we pose the question about the ability of such systems to provide useful advice about the Israel–Palestinian dispute. We examine the differences between family mediation and international conflict resolution and reflect upon whether results from the former can provide useful advice in the latter. After identifying the issues in dispute and each of the disputant’s goals, the data is fed into the Asset Divider system. The system allows users to engage in testing the potential outcome of their dispute given their beliefs and goals. The system hence outlines to users the consequences of insisting upon their stances. The outcome proposed by the system given trial data, is similar to the successful Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt, where Israel gave up territory for recognition and security.