Refreshing and revealing in equal measure, this innovative volume conducts a critical/self--critical exploration of the impact of culture on the ill-fated Oslo peace process. The authors negotiators and scholars alike demolish stereotypes as they construct an unusually subtle and sophisticated understanding of how culture influences negotiating styles. Culture, they argue, did not cause the Oslo breakdown but it did play an influential, intervening role at several levels: coloring the thinking of political leaders, shaping domestic politics on both sides, and affecting each side s evaluation of the other s beliefs and intentions.After an overview by William Quandt of the history of the Oslo process and the impact of international factors such as U.S. mediation, the volume presents a detailed analysis of first Palestinian, and then Israeli negotiating styles between 1993 and 2001. Omar Dajani, a former legal advisor to the Palestinian team, explains how elements of Palestinian identity and national development have hobbled the Palestinians ability to negotiate effectively. Aharon Klieman, a distinguished Israeli analyst, traces a long-standing clash between diplomatic and security subcultures within the Israeli political elite and reveals how Israeli identity has helped create a negotiating style that opts for short-term gains while undermining the prospects for a lasting agreement. Drawing on these insights, Tamara Wittes concludes the volume by offering not only a fresh appreciation of culture s influence on interethnic negotiations but also lessons for future negotiators in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Read the review from Foreign Affairs."

This book offers a critical review of contemporary literature on the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. Its goal is to highlight the shortcomings of the methods that have been used to date to analyse the underlying causes that have led to a stalemate in the negotiation process. Further, it pursues an approach that considers the multiple factors that can influence the outcomes of the negotiation process. The book represents a substantial academic contribution to the field of conflict resolution by broadening the scope of the analytical framework that is needed to analyse the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, and bridging the gap between theory and practice. Accordingly, it offers a valuable asset for researchers and students interested in political theory, Middle Eastern studies, international relations, conflict resolution studies, political science, negotiation theory, and contemporary Arab studies and Israeli studies.

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A profoundly different way of looking the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Reporting from Jerusalem for The New York Times and Fox News respectively, Greg Myre and Jennifer Griffin, witnessed a decades-old conflict transformed into a completely new war. The West has learned a lot about asymmetrical war in the past decade. At the same time, many strategists have missed that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become one of them. This book shows the importance of applying these hard-won lessons to the longest running, most closely watched occupation and uprising in the world. The entire conflict can seem irrational -- and many commentators see it that way. While raising their own family in Jerusalem at the height of the violence, Myre and Griffin look at the lives of individuals caught up in the struggles to reveal how these actions make perfect sense to the participants. Extremism can become a virtue; moderation a vice. Factions develop within factions. Propaganda becomes an important weapon, and perseverance an essential defense. While the Israelis and the Palestinians have failed to achieve their goals after years of fighting, people on both sides are prepared to make continued sacrifices in the belief that they will eventually emerge triumphant. This book goes straight to the heart of the conflict: into the minds of suicide bombers and inside Israeli tanks. We hear from Palestinian informants who help the Israeli military track down and kill Palestinian militants. Israeli settlers in isolated outposts explain why they are there, and we hear the frustrations of a Palestinian farmer who has had his olive grove cut in half by Israel's security barrier Shows the important lessons that can be learned by viewing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an example of modern, asymmetrical war Authored by long-time reporters on the Middle East, the book provides a balanced and detailed look at the fighting based on first-hand experience and hundreds of interviews Explains how the landscape of the conflict changed and why the traditional approach to peacemaking is no longer valid With a new perspective on what's really going on in Israel and the Palestinian territories, The Familiar War is a book that will inform the debate on the Middle East and the future of the peace process, as well as our understanding of other conflicts around the world.

A major modern conundrum is how the Arab/Israel conflict remains unresolved and, seemingly, unresolvable. In this inspirational book, Rabbi Michael Lerner suggests that a change in consciousness is crucial. With clarity and honesty, he examines how the mutual demonization and discounting of each sides’ legitimate needs drive the debate, and he points to new ways of thinking that can lead to a solution. Lerner emphasizes that this new approach to the issue requires giving primacy to love, kindness, and generosity. It calls for challenging the master narratives in both Israel and Palestine as well as the false idea that “homeland security” can be achieved through military, political, economic, or media domination. Lerner makes the case that a lasting peace must prioritize helping people on all sides (including Europe and the U.S.) and that real security is best achieved through an ethos of caring and generosity toward “the other.” As many spiritual leaders have taught, problems like these cannot be solved at the same level at which they originated—one must seek higher ground, and that becomes a central task for anyone who wants a sustainable peace. Embracing Israel/Palestine is written for those looking for positive, practical solutions to this ongoing dilemma.

In The Case for Peace, Dershowitz identifies twelve geopolitical barriers to peace between Israel and Palestine–and explains how to move around them and push the process forward. From the division of Jerusalem and Israeli counterterrorism measures to the security fence and the Iranian nuclear threat, his analyses are clear-headed, well-argued, and sure to be controversial. According to Dershowitz, achieving a lasting peace will require more than tough-minded negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. In academia, Europe, the UN, and the Arab world, Israel-bashing and anti-Semitism have reached new heights, despite the recent Israeli-Palestinian movement toward peace. Surveying this outpouring of vilification, Dershowitz deconstructs the smear tactics used by Israel-haters and shows how this kind of anti-Israel McCarthyism is aimed at scuttling any real chance of peace.

One Land, Two States imagines a new vision for Israel and Palestine in a situation where the peace process has failed to deliver an end of conflict. “If the land cannot be shared by geographical division, and if a one-state solution remains unacceptable,” the book asks, “can the land be shared in some other way?” Leading Palestinian and Israeli experts along with international diplomats and scholars answer this timely question by examining a scenario with two parallel state structures, both covering the whole territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, allowing for shared rather than competing claims of sovereignty. Such a political architecture would radically transform the nature and stakes of the Israel-Palestine conflict, open up for Israelis to remain in the West Bank and maintain their security position, enable Palestinians to settle in all of historic Palestine, and transform Jerusalem into a capital for both of full equality and independence—all without disturbing the demographic balance of each state. Exploring themes of security, resistance, diaspora, globalism, and religion, as well as forms of political and economic power that are not dependent on claims of exclusive territorial sovereignty, this pioneering book offers new ideas for the resolution of conflicts worldwide.

The Missing Peace, published to great acclaim last year, is the most candid inside account of the Middle East peace process ever written.

What happens when the international community simultaneously pursues peace and justice in response to ongoing conflicts? What are the effects of interventions by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the wars in which the institution intervenes? Is holding perpetrators of mass atrocities accountable a help or hindrance to conflict resolution? This book offers an in-depth examination of the effects of interventions by the ICC on peace, justice and conflict processes. The 'peace versus justice' debate, wherein it is argued that the ICC has either positive or negative effects on 'peace', has spawned in response to the Court's propensity to intervene in conflicts as they still rage. This book is a response to, and a critical engagement with, this debate. Building on theoretical and analytical insights from the fields of conflict and peace studies, conflict resolution, and negotiation theory, the book develops a novel analytical framework to study the Court's effects on peace, justice, and conflict processes. This framework is applied to two cases: Libya and northern Uganda. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the core of the book examines the empirical effects of the ICC on each case. The book also examines why the ICC has the effects that it does, delineating the relationship between the interests of states that refer situations to the Court and the ICC's institutional interests, arguing that the negotiation of these interests determines which side of a conflict the ICC targets and thus its effects on peace, justice, and conflict processes. While the effects of the ICC's interventions are ultimately and inevitably mixed, the book makes a unique contribution to the empirical record on ICC interventions and presents a novel and sophisticated means of studying, analyzing, and understanding the effects of the Court's interventions in Libya, northern Uganda - and beyond.