Trust and Confidence Building in the Israeli–Palestinian Peace Negotiations

Abstract

This paper argues that trust and confidence building measures in the Israeli–Palestinian gradual incremental negotiations that started in Washington in 1990 were used as tools in the hands of the stronger party in an asymmetric conflict in order to impose conflict management in the framework of preserving the Israeli occupation as an alternative to conflict resolution. The paper starts with some queries and theoretical considerations about trust and CBM’s. It asks whether trust is necessary for reaching agreement between two parties in conflict over territory, or whether it will follow such agreement. The paper then goes on to discuss the Israeli–Palestinian negotiations, pointing out that these were built on the concept of relational trust instead of creating a trustworthy process. It demonstrates that as a result, the relational trust that was created in the 1990s between the negotiators of the two sides was destroyed. In its concluding remarks, the paper offers a framework of ideas for the creation of a principle-based, trustworthy process in order to reach peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis.