Israeli Negotiations Research Articles

Missing the Spoiler: Israel’s Policy with Regard to Hamas during the Oslo Talks and the First Stages of the Implementation of the Oslo Accords

ABSTRACT The article examines how Israel related to the threat that Hamas posed to the peace process, both during the talks that led to the signing of the Declaration of Principles (December 1992–September 1993) and then until the signing of the Oslo 2 agreement (September 1995). The Israeli negotiators and leaders were locked into the idea that the PLO would “deal with Hamas” because of its clear interest to do so. During the talks, however, there was no detailed discussion of the matter. Instead, the negotiators focused—and with full justification—on the important achievement of an accord with the PLO and its agreement to refrain from terrorism. This, reinforced by the assumption that the PLO would suppress Hamas, paved the way for the signing of the Declaration of Principles without any concrete attention to Hamas. Thus Hamas terrorism proved to be a major obstacle to the fulfillment of the Oslo Accords. Hamas bomb attacks killed many Israelis and undermined Israelis’ faith in the process. In parallel, the IDF activity to thwart Hamas, which involved major operations on the ground, as well as the accords’ failure to produce an economic upturn for the Palestinians, diminished their support for the agreement.

أحزاب اليسار واليمين والوسط الإسرائيلية والتسوية السياسية مع الفلسطينيين = Left, Right and Center Israeli Parties and the Political Settlement with Palestinians

المفاوضات | المفاوضات الفلسطينية - الإسرائيلية | الأحزاب السياسية الإسرائيلية | مؤتمر مدريد للسلام | حزب العمل الإسرائيلي | حزب الليكود الإسرائيلي | حزب كاديما الإسرائيلي | Negotiations | The Palestinian - Israeli Negotiations | Israeli Political Parties | Madrid Peace Conference 1991 | Israeli Labor Party | Israeli Likud Party | Israeli Kadema Party

Giula Daniele, Women, Reconciliation and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, London : Routledge, 2014, 179 pp.

One of the many transformations brought about by the Oslo Peace Process was the creation of Israeli-Palestinian projects that crisscrossed Israeli-Palestinian civil societies. At the time, these joint projects sought to establish a “peace from below” to complement and support the supposed “peace from above” that Palestinian and Israeli negotiators promised to their respective peoples. With the collapse of the peace process, the expansion of Israeli settlements, and the ever-growing polarizati...

An account of the 2008 Syrian–Israeli negotiations in Turkey

This article examines the indirect negotiations that took place between Syria and Israel in 2008. The five rounds of talks were hosted under the auspices of Turkey, acting as a mediator between the two countries which had not held talks for eight years. The discussions focused on the status of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, as well as issues including borders, water and Syria's alliances with Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and others. Although it seemed as if a peace agreement could be reached with benefits to both Syria and Israel, political obstacles and the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip eventually led to the talks being suspended in December 2008.

The gender–culture double bind in Israeli–Palestinian peace negotiations: A narrative approach

This article investigates structural conditions for women’s inclusion/exclusion in peace negotiations by focusing on the linkage between acts of gender stereotyping and cultural framing. Through a narrative analysis of semi-structured interviews with Israeli negotiators and administrators who participated in official negotiations during the Oslo peace process, I link two recent claims about how gender may affect negotiators’ understandings of strategic exchange: the gendered devaluation effect and the gender–culture double bind hypothesis. Building upon postcolonial feminist critique, I argue that narratives about women and cultural difference (a) demonstrate and engage with Israeli essentialist and Orientalist discourses about Arab culture and masculinity; (b) manifest how ideas about strategic dialogue and negotiations are gendered; and (c) convey how policymakers and negotiators may use cultural claims to rationalize women’s exclusion from diplomatic and strategic dialogue. Furthermore, the study implies that dominant framings of Israeli–Palestinian negotiations as a binary East–West encounter need to be replaced by a more nuanced conceptualization of cultural identity that captures contextual aspects of difference, including the existence of military power and masculine dominance.

Al Jazeera’s Palestine Papers: Middle East media politics in the post-WikiLeaks era

Shortly after WikiLeaks published thousands of confidential US diplomatic cables, Al Jazeera released hundreds of classified documents pertaining to the Palestinian–Israeli negotiations. Known as the ‘Palestine Papers’, these documents are noteworthy not only because they provide insights into the stalled negotiations and rekindle the debate over the Middle East conflict, but also because they offer a glimpse into the complex interpenetration between media, geo-politics, and state interests in a conflict-ridden region in the post-WikiLeaks era.

Gender and “Peace Work”: An Unofficial History of Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations

Unlike earlier attempts to theorize Israeli women's peace activism in civil society, this article examines the involvement of women in backstage roles of formal negotiations during the Oslo Process. On the basis of a qualitative analysis of the organizational structure and gender division of labor in Israeli negotiating bodies, I find that women were placed as midlevel negotiators and professional and legal advisors, and also served as spokeswomen and secretaries. This pattern of participation reveals 1) that the “security logic,” developed by Israeli negotiators led to, and reinforced, a structured gendered division of labor, providing a rational justification for gender inequality; 2) that the ability to control administrative capacities and women workers generated symbolic masculine power and assisted in maintaining asymmetries between Israeli and Palestinian delegations; 3) and that midlevel Israeli negotiators' narratives reveal the extent to which conceptual confusion and self-contradictory approaches toward the Oslo Accords reinforced women's overall invisibility. I conclude that patterns of rigid gender roles in official negotiating structures not only minimize women's meaningful inclusion in peace negotiations but also affect the production of public historical narratives about gender, peace, and war.

Palestinian–Israeli Negotiations: An Objective in Themselves

Despite the efforts put into negotiations, they have created a self-perpetuating cycle of disappointment, frustration and empty dialogue. With contradictory Palestinian and Israeli agendas – Palestinians negotiating for an independent state, an end to occupation, etc., and Israel negotiating primarily over security concerns – one must question the reason behind prolonged negotiations. Is US mediation, accused by many of extreme bias towards Israel, to blame? Or are negotiations an Israeli objective to execute a particular political agenda? In spite of the international community's recognition of establishing an independent Palestinian state, the current reality on the ground undermines any creation of one. This reality was allowed only by the strategic prolonging of negotiations. A particular focus on the proceedings following the Oslo Accords explains how Palestinian--Israeli negotiations have been used to pursue a specific objective.

From Taboo to the Negotiable: The Israeli New Historians and the Changing Representation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem

In the last round of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks at the Taba Conference (January 2001), Israeli negotiators went where no Israeli officials went before: they considered the right of return of Palestinian refugees, and a quasi-statement that acknowledges the Palestinian tragedy and Israel's share of historical responsibility. This paper argues that at least in part this shift in the negotiations' framework can be traced back to the public debate instigated by the work of Israeli New Historians.Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (michal@mit.edu). She thanks Boaz Atzili, Naomi Chazan, Orit Gal, Eran Kaplan, Daniel Levy, Ran Levy, Gil Merom, Clair Moon, Melissa Nobles, Jeremy Pressman, Stephen Van Evera, Amos Zehavi, and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments and suggestions. She also thanks Kezia Avieli-Tabibyan from the Center of Educational Technology (MATAH, Israel) for her valuable assistance with Israeli history textbooks.

A1. Syrian and Israeli Negotiators, Unofficial Blueprint for Israeli-Syrian Peace, n.p., 29 August 2004

A1. Syrian and Israeli Negotiators, Unofficial Blueprint for Israeli-Syrian Peace, n.p., 29 August 2004

The Camp David summit -- what went wrong?: Americans, Israelis, and Palestinians analyze the failure of the boldest attempt ever to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict

Messsage from President Bill Clinton. OPENING PRESENTATIONS -- The Enigma of Camp David The Failure of Camp David: Four Different Narratives There Could Have Been Another Way Camp David in the Context of US Peace Strategy. ISRAELI NEGOTIATORS -- Background, Process and Failure The Roles of Barak, Arafat and Clinton Factors That Impeded the Negotiations Lessons from the Camp David Experience. PALESTINIAN PERSPECTIVES -- Wrong Assumptions The Israeli Proposals Were Not Serious The 'Blaming Game is Wrong. AMERICAN PARTICIPANTS -- The Effects of the 'Syria First' Strategy Sins of Omission, Sins of Commission American Mistakes and Israeli Misconceptions. THE BARAK VERSION -- The Myths Spread About Camp David Are Baseless The Lines of 1967 Should Have Been the Basis for Negotiations The Strategy of Creating Facts on the Ground Impeded Negotiations. THE INPUT OF EXPERTS -- Planning for Jerusalem The Role of Informal Talks Track II Plans. ACADEMIC PERSPECTIVES -- An Irresolvable Conflict or Lack of Ripeness? The 'End of Conflict' Obstacle The Pitfalls of Summit Diplomacy Psychological Barriers to Negotiations. ROUNDTABLE -- Past, Present and Future -- A Political Debate.

Rashomon in Jerusalem: Mapping the Israeli Negotiators' Positions on the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process, 1993-2001

To understand the complexities and dilemmas of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict this paper maps the divergent Israeli positions along the route of the “Oslo” peace process of 1993–2001, including the negotiations at Camp David (July 2000), and Taba (January 2001). This paper is based upon a qualitative content analysis of 20 in-depth interviews conducted in 2002 and 2003 at the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a broad range of Israeli negotiators, including senior politicians, foreign ministry officials, senior military officers, former members of the security services, and political aides. This paper tackles the question of how Israelis who were directly involved in the peace process now evaluate it, offering a portrait of how sharply at odds were the various perceptions of what happened and who was responsible for the ultimate failure.

The Taba Negotiations (January 2001)

Three months after the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifda and several weeks before the Israeli elections brought Ariel Sharon to power, Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak gave the green light for a last-ditch Palestinian-Israeli effort to reach a peace agreement. The negotia——following tens of meetings between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, mostly in Jerusalem, almost from the collapse of the Camp David summit in July 2000——took place at the Egyptian resort town of Taba on the Red Sea from 21 to 27 January 2001. In contrast to the talks at Camp David, where the Americans played a preponderant role, no outsiders participated in the Taba talks. The Israeli delegation, led by Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, included Yossi Beilin, Israel Hassoun, Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, Yossi Sarid, and Gilad Sher. The Palestinian delegation was headed by Ahmad Qurai' (Abu Ala'), speaker of the Palestinian Council, and included Yasir 'Abid Rabbuh, Hassan Asfour, Muhammad Dahlan, Saeb Erakat, and Nabil Shaath. The talks, in which the Israelis moved considerably beyond the positions they had presented at Camp David as "red lines" beyond which they could not go "without jeopardizing the state," were nevertheless largelybased on President Bill Clinton's parameters of 23 December 2000 (see JPS 119, Doc. D1). The negotiations were called off by Prime Minister Barak on 27 January, on the eve of the Israeli elections held on 6 February 2001.Compared to the Camp David summit, which produced a number of accounts from members of the Israeli, Palestinian, and American delegations (see special documents in JPS 118 and 121; Docs. D3 and D4 in JPS 121), little has been written about the Taba talks. The most comprehensive account was perhaps that of Alain Gresh in Le Monde Diplomatique of September 2001, which also reproduced the official Israeli and Palestinian position papers on the issues discussed (see Doc. B4 in JPS 122 for the Israeli and Palestinian position papers on refugees). The following two texts are the only documents on the Taba talks accepted by both sides.The Israeli-Palestinian joint statement at Taba was released on 27 January 2001 and published by the Jersualem Post the following day. The document as presented here is from Le Monde Diplomatique's Web site at MondeDiplo.com/focus/mideast.The Moratinos "nonpaper" was compiled by the special envoy of the European Union to the Middle East, Miguel Angel Moratinos, at the request of the two parties——"not just for history, but because sooner or later there would have to be more talks" (Le Monde Diplomatique, September 2001). Moratinos, the only outsider present at Taba, though not at the meetings themselves, interviewed the negotiators after each session, according to Akiva Eldar in Ha'Aretz (14 February 2002), and prepared the document on the basis of their reports. The final document, successive drafts of which were sent to both sides for comment and correction, was completed and approved by both sides in summer 2001. It constitutes a kind of minutes, a summary of the positions of each side at the time the talks ended. The document, which was not to be published, was leaked and published by Ha'Aretz on 14 February 2002.

Peace and the Palestinians

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are supposed to produce a 'framework agreement on the final status' of the Occupied Territories by 13 February 2000. Both sides face difficult choices, but Israeli military occupation, economic domination and US support leave Israel better placed to achieve its chief ends: the annexation of most Israeli settlements; retention of most of Jerusalem; and no return for Palestinian refugees to Israel. This leaves the Palestinian Authority and its president, Yasser Arafat, in a difficult position. Corruption and authoritarianism are making Arafat's rule increasingly unpopular among many Palestinians, and failure to achieve Palestinian goals will add to his problems. There is a danger, therefore, that neither the Palestinian state nor the settlement it signs will prove stable in the long term.

When the Weak Confront the Strong: Justice, Fairness, and Power in the Israel-PLO Interim Talks

AbstractMost international negotiations involve asymmetrical parties, and raise issues of justice and fairness at different stages. This article is an empirical analysis of the role played by ethical conceptions and stark power inequalities in the Israel-PLO interim talks from 1993 to 1997. It focuses on the negotiations over water resources and economic relations. Israel's superior bargaining strength ensured that the country's security interests and notions of fairness influenced the process substantially. However, the negotiations cannot be understood merely in terms of the distribution of power between the two sides. The costs of failing to reach an agreement meant that Israeli negotiators had to concede to certain Palestinian demands and conceptions of fairness. The serious charges of injustice and unfairness have emerged in the implementation phase, owing more to developments on the ground than dissatisfaction with the terms of the interim agreements per se.This case challenges two dominant approaches to justice and fairness in negotiation: the idea that parties define negotiated agreements as just irrespective of their power relations and the notion that there can be no role for ethical considerations when the weak must confront the strong. It demonstrates moreover that conceptions of justice and fairness can serve as both external referents which guide the negotiations and be subject to bargaining themselves.

The Arab‐Israeli mixed armistice commissions of yore. Relevant today?

The first public, direct talks between Arab and Israeli negotiators after the 1948–49 war produced agreements signed by Israel and Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, and these created the Mixed Armistice Commissions. A key element of these negotiations was the face‐to‐face, human factor, a feature which was excluded openly for three decades thereafter. This element reasserted itself in the Egypt‐Israel peace treaty and has become acceptable ever since. While the MACs fell into disuse because of their limited and dated mandates, they left the legacy and precedent of direct negotiations between Arabs and Israelis of all parties and states in the region. These have been vital in contributing to mutual recognition and peace agreements.

Israeli negotiations with Syria

Israeli negotiations with Syria