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Middle East Studies
Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: Patterns, Problems, Possibilities
Thoroughly updated and expanded, this new edition of Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace examines the history of recurrent efforts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict and identifies a pattern of negative negotiating behaviors that seem to repeatedly derail efforts to achieve peace. In a lively and accessible style, Laura Zittrain Eisenberg and Neil Caplan examine eight case studies of recent Arab-Israeli diplomatic encounters, from the Egyptian-Israeli peace of 1979 to the beginning of the Obama administration, in light of the historical record. By measuring contemporary diplomatic episodes against the pattern of counterproductive negotiating habits, this book makes possible a coherent comparison of over sixty years of Arab-Israeli negotiations and gives readers a framework with which to assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of peace-making attempts, past, present, and future.
- GenresMiddle East
452 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1998
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August 15, 2025Ok I learned how to do it. Now I’m gonna do it
August 22, 2018
Preferable to War
Touching first with a brief mention of the attempts of Zionists to make an accord with early Arab Nationalists to plan the future of Palestine, (the Arab Decentralization Party in Cairo and Beirut circa 1913/14), the book skims over talks with in the 1930s with the likes of Omar al-Barghuti and Musa Alami then jumps to the Sadat/Begin agreement of 1979. Chapter 2 provides a quick overview of the factions at play during Lebanon's civil war including American naivité over Syrian involvement.
With Jordan the authors note a combination of factors. For one, informal non-public discussions had gone on for years. Another was that Jordan had supported Saddam Hussein in the lead up to Gulf War I, which lead not only to a drop in US aid, but a severe economic depression (ref: Troubles On The East Bank: Challenges To The Domestic Stability Of Jordan ) due to the return of large numbers of Jordanian/Palestinian workers ejected from the Gulf States and unable to send money home. Reaching an agreement repositioned the Kingdom wrt America, and unloaded the political and financial problems of supporting the west bank.
Syria was different. Consider the diplomatic visits of 2 US Presidents and over 30 trips by US Secretary Warren Christoper to Damascus. The long winded meetings, jokingly referred to as "bladder diplomacy" wound up leading nowhere. (Add the pilgrimages by Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry during the early Obama administration.) Both Americans and Israeli negotiators hoped progress here might lead to a spillover effect in other areas. The authors feel the problem was that each side had very different goals. What Israel hoped for was peace, trade, tourism, diplomatic and cultural relationships. What Assad wanted was the Golan Heights and an agreement of non-belligerency - and nothing more, nor was there any urgent time frame. Missed was Assad's other goal of raising prestige by being able to repeatedly summon the Americans and say no.
Chapter 7-9 put the focus on Israel, the Palestinians and Oslo and IMV the insights here successfully tie the divergent views of the parties to each other and to their secondary tiers of support. Oslo rescued Arafat by legitimizing him as the focus of Palestinian leadership. Americanized Palestinian intellectuals such as Edward Said disparaged Arafat for cronyism, corruption, repressiveness and inability to plan - Arafat responded by banning Said's books; in the eyes of Rashid Khalidi he was "tarnished goods" because he had negotiated with the Israelis for his own legitimacy rather than for the needs of ordinary Palestinians, that he and the PLO had grown "old, idle and far removed from the reality of life in the occupied territories", failing to incorporate degreed professionals, many of whom spoke Hebrew, from the following generation. On the other side of the spectrum, Hamas itself is marginalized but the PLO still has to position itself to appeal to the same constituency. The point gets made that for negotiations between the recognized leaders to succeed they also have to establish a base of internal popular support, and that each population viewed the other through very different lenses. Arafat warned, no doubt remembering Sadat and Rabin, that his acceptance of the Camp David 2000 proposals would lead to his funeral (pp245). Especially interesting were the last minute negotiations in December of that year where Barak headed a caretaker government in Israel and Clinton put forward a bridging proposal with only 24 hours left in his term.
The analysis presented is fairly sound and fairly offers competing points of view, though the zero-sum mentality attributed to both sides (pp271) applies much more to the Arab position; Israelis have consistently argued that peace would be mutually beneficial - not zero-sum but "growing the pie". Constructive ambiguity allows the parties to talk and deal with some issues, but, for better or worse, mask irreconcilable differences that may or may not go away, Palestinian sovereignty being one such example where attitude movement has occurred. Warm personal relationships between negotiators may dissolve when they do not get translated to the general public for support, and here the authors grant that the Israeli media, though putting the issue to debate, was at least honest and encouraging, whereas the Palestinians were not prepared and reacted with shock and betrayal.
The book ends at the start of 2009 with the election of a new American president who began by championing dialog but as yet has been unable to make it happen (pp298). Optimism alone is not enough - the struggle is often between those who support a negotiated peace and those who do not and through violence wish to exercise a veto on the negotiating process. Nor should, as some have argued, should the US go beyond the role of mediation. The last words are left to Israeli Ze'ev Maoz who urges his people to be as daring in peace as they have been in war, and Palestinian Sari Nusseibheh who echoes his father's observation that rubble makes the best building material. Alas both observations are someone superficial but at least they offer hope that those of good will can learn to live with a negotiated result. The problem may be that the examples the book covers may not reflect the patterns of the "Arab Spring". The insights required may instead come from the era of pan-Arabism and Nasserism from the late 1930's until 1967, which are skipped over.
Recommended.
Touching first with a brief mention of the attempts of Zionists to make an accord with early Arab Nationalists to plan the future of Palestine, (the Arab Decentralization Party in Cairo and Beirut circa 1913/14), the book skims over talks with in the 1930s with the likes of Omar al-Barghuti and Musa Alami then jumps to the Sadat/Begin agreement of 1979. Chapter 2 provides a quick overview of the factions at play during Lebanon's civil war including American naivité over Syrian involvement.
With Jordan the authors note a combination of factors. For one, informal non-public discussions had gone on for years. Another was that Jordan had supported Saddam Hussein in the lead up to Gulf War I, which lead not only to a drop in US aid, but a severe economic depression (ref: Troubles On The East Bank: Challenges To The Domestic Stability Of Jordan ) due to the return of large numbers of Jordanian/Palestinian workers ejected from the Gulf States and unable to send money home. Reaching an agreement repositioned the Kingdom wrt America, and unloaded the political and financial problems of supporting the west bank.
Syria was different. Consider the diplomatic visits of 2 US Presidents and over 30 trips by US Secretary Warren Christoper to Damascus. The long winded meetings, jokingly referred to as "bladder diplomacy" wound up leading nowhere. (Add the pilgrimages by Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry during the early Obama administration.) Both Americans and Israeli negotiators hoped progress here might lead to a spillover effect in other areas. The authors feel the problem was that each side had very different goals. What Israel hoped for was peace, trade, tourism, diplomatic and cultural relationships. What Assad wanted was the Golan Heights and an agreement of non-belligerency - and nothing more, nor was there any urgent time frame. Missed was Assad's other goal of raising prestige by being able to repeatedly summon the Americans and say no.
Chapter 7-9 put the focus on Israel, the Palestinians and Oslo and IMV the insights here successfully tie the divergent views of the parties to each other and to their secondary tiers of support. Oslo rescued Arafat by legitimizing him as the focus of Palestinian leadership. Americanized Palestinian intellectuals such as Edward Said disparaged Arafat for cronyism, corruption, repressiveness and inability to plan - Arafat responded by banning Said's books; in the eyes of Rashid Khalidi he was "tarnished goods" because he had negotiated with the Israelis for his own legitimacy rather than for the needs of ordinary Palestinians, that he and the PLO had grown "old, idle and far removed from the reality of life in the occupied territories", failing to incorporate degreed professionals, many of whom spoke Hebrew, from the following generation. On the other side of the spectrum, Hamas itself is marginalized but the PLO still has to position itself to appeal to the same constituency. The point gets made that for negotiations between the recognized leaders to succeed they also have to establish a base of internal popular support, and that each population viewed the other through very different lenses. Arafat warned, no doubt remembering Sadat and Rabin, that his acceptance of the Camp David 2000 proposals would lead to his funeral (pp245). Especially interesting were the last minute negotiations in December of that year where Barak headed a caretaker government in Israel and Clinton put forward a bridging proposal with only 24 hours left in his term.
The analysis presented is fairly sound and fairly offers competing points of view, though the zero-sum mentality attributed to both sides (pp271) applies much more to the Arab position; Israelis have consistently argued that peace would be mutually beneficial - not zero-sum but "growing the pie". Constructive ambiguity allows the parties to talk and deal with some issues, but, for better or worse, mask irreconcilable differences that may or may not go away, Palestinian sovereignty being one such example where attitude movement has occurred. Warm personal relationships between negotiators may dissolve when they do not get translated to the general public for support, and here the authors grant that the Israeli media, though putting the issue to debate, was at least honest and encouraging, whereas the Palestinians were not prepared and reacted with shock and betrayal.
The book ends at the start of 2009 with the election of a new American president who began by championing dialog but as yet has been unable to make it happen (pp298). Optimism alone is not enough - the struggle is often between those who support a negotiated peace and those who do not and through violence wish to exercise a veto on the negotiating process. Nor should, as some have argued, should the US go beyond the role of mediation. The last words are left to Israeli Ze'ev Maoz who urges his people to be as daring in peace as they have been in war, and Palestinian Sari Nusseibheh who echoes his father's observation that rubble makes the best building material. Alas both observations are someone superficial but at least they offer hope that those of good will can learn to live with a negotiated result. The problem may be that the examples the book covers may not reflect the patterns of the "Arab Spring". The insights required may instead come from the era of pan-Arabism and Nasserism from the late 1930's until 1967, which are skipped over.
Recommended.
May 10, 2019
Excellent book to read as follow up to Smith’s book on ”Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict”. If you are unfamiliar with the conflict’s details that’s the place to start before heading into this one, which goes case-by-case through the different attempts at Peace negotiatons and the reasons for their successes or fails. It is fairly academic in text and structure so, maybe not the best if you’re just into the history of it all.
December 4, 2023
Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace scrupulously parses the prolific paper trail that has defined the elusive history of Arab-Israeli peacemaking, and also provides an original framework to overcome the patterns and problems that have stymied a lasting peace. Authors Laura Zittrain Eisenberg and Neil Caplan, both extensive scholars in the domain of Arab-Israeli relations, leverage a repository of primary sources and case studies – including notable successes (Camp David I, the Israeli-Jordanian peace agreement of 1994), failures (Camp David II, 1983 Israeli-Lebanon agreement, Israeli-Syrian negotiations) and mixed results (Oslo Accords) – to identify the contextual ingredients of a promising and lasting negotiated peace agreement.
The authors identify seven domains of recurring diplomatic difficulty that have contributed to a “dynamics of deadlock.” These include the negotiating experience, popular cachet, purposes and motives of key negotiators, timing of negotiations, third-party involvement (most notably the United States), proposed terms of agreement, and psychological factors such as trust and confidence among all involved parties. Eisenberg and Caplan argue that the failure of previous negotiations to align on all these paradigms has frustrated attempts to erect a durable peace. Overcoming these setbacks requires pathbreaking statesmen working in concert who are both sufficiently powerful to neutralize internal opposition and charismatic to inspire their populations to follow their leads. Only then, the authors argue, will the gaps in power and priorities that have defied diplomatic solutions for decades finally be bridged.
The authors identify seven domains of recurring diplomatic difficulty that have contributed to a “dynamics of deadlock.” These include the negotiating experience, popular cachet, purposes and motives of key negotiators, timing of negotiations, third-party involvement (most notably the United States), proposed terms of agreement, and psychological factors such as trust and confidence among all involved parties. Eisenberg and Caplan argue that the failure of previous negotiations to align on all these paradigms has frustrated attempts to erect a durable peace. Overcoming these setbacks requires pathbreaking statesmen working in concert who are both sufficiently powerful to neutralize internal opposition and charismatic to inspire their populations to follow their leads. Only then, the authors argue, will the gaps in power and priorities that have defied diplomatic solutions for decades finally be bridged.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews