The Road to Hell Is Paved with Negotiations
As the failed Oslo "peace process" showed, the art of bargaining is hopeless when one side dreams of annihilating the other.
A memorable line from a memorably funny movie called The Hot Rock with Robert Redford and Zero Mostel is delivered by a diplomat from a make-believe African country who has hired a band of bungling crooks to recover an enormous diamond stolen by the unscrupulous Mostel. After tripping over themselves time after time in vain attempts to procure the gem, the gang that couldn’t steal straight is admonished by the frustrated African who has sunk too much money in what has become a fruitless enterprise: “I’ve heard of the habitual criminal, but never the habitual crime.”
The Oslo so-called peace process could be the 21st century’s leading candidate for the “habitual crime.” Now approaching 16 years (takes your breath away, doesn’t it?), unlike the proved process that produces American cheese, the Oslo process has produced nothing edible, but rather, it would seem, lots of poison.
One of the chief negotiators for Israel present at the destruction and a veteran legal expert for the Foreign Ministry, Daniel Taub admitted as much during a recent address to the elite of Harvard’s Project on Negotiation (PON). He is currently on a North American tour promoting an initiative called “The Culture of Peace,” launched by the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information, an initiative that, judging from his laments over a failed peace process, should probably have been the horse which preceded the cart back in 1993.
Begun in the 1980s, the PON is a consortium of academics — legal and business professionals –from Harvard, MIT, and Tufts. Taub himself attended Harvard’s PON during the 1990s. The guiding light and founder of the project was none other than Roger Fisher, the guru of conflict resolution, whose Getting to Yes has been a bestseller for decades. The “sage of the deal” was referred to a number of times during the presentation, most notably in his observation that “while there may be situations where you can’t reach agreements, there is no situation that cannot be improved by negotiation.” I’m not so sure of that observation, especially if, during the course of negotiation without resolution, one party’s cards are placed face up on the table while the other party’s cards are rarely revealed.
An overlooked and critical part of Taub’s analysis of the Oslo disaster was his incomplete depiction of the negotiating table. While correctly positioning the negotiators on either side of the table, what was missing from the diagram were the invisible negotiators — on the Israeli side, a team consisting of no one but themselves, while on the Palestinian side were the majority of the “international community” and hundreds of powerful NGOs. Whenever the Palestinians wanted to stall or divert discussions involving significant compromise or compliance, human rights issues were brought up with the implicit threat that there were thousands of “invisible” negotiators ready to back them up unconditionally.
The skills and models developed by the PON have been applied to a wide variety of situations from primarily acquisition and merger scenarios to international conflict resolution. Taub raised the example of negotiation success in the decades-long war between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. But what might have worked for the Good Friday Agreement — especially the ultimate agreement by the IRA to disarm — has proved elusive at best when brought to bear on the seemingly intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The points of difference between the Northern Ireland conflict and the Israeli-Arab conflict are significant because they are existential. The IRA and its Catholic viewpoint did not espouse a 1400-year-old history of jihad conquest. Nor was the destruction of Great Britain any part of IRA ideology or policy.
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Hillel Stavis is a writer based in Cambridge, MA. He focuses on investigative reporting on Harvard University and the Boston higher education community.
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15 Comments
1. SAF:The fact that the Palestinians want the Israelis dead is the worst kept secret on the planet which no one in the west, Israelis included, seems to want to address.
The Palestinians are behaving sort of rationally in that they have the support of many on the west in demanding unrealistic concessions while delivering nothing in return. But they are honest about wanting Israel dead.
No peace will ever be possible until someone, anyone, stands up and says to the Palestinians “Wanting Israel dead is a non-starter position.” Once that little bit of rationality hits the scene some real progress might ensue. In a more rational world the Israelis would completely blockade Gaza and starve them to death or surrender. How long do you think Belgium would last if they insisted on lobing missiles at France?
Apr 9, 2009 - 4:06 am 2. typos_R_us:SAF, quite a while. France is larger, but the Belgiums are tougher. They would just have to hold on until the French army went on strike. The the French government would declare an extra holiday and everyone within rocket range would go south, or to Germany.
Apr 9, 2009 - 6:15 am 3. Fragmentarian:Yes. There is a herd of elephants in the room that everyone is busily ignoring.
Apr 9, 2009 - 6:17 am 4. SAF:#2: typos_r_us: You are correct France was a bad example. How about Armenia and Russia?
Apr 9, 2009 - 6:58 am 5. anton:Gee, I wasn’t aware that the Olso Accords were old enough to drive.
The essential problem is that BUSINESS deals are settled by negotiation, war is settled by victory. It is the nature of human conflict that the winner imposes the terms on the loser. This is a clear lesson from history; when war is interrupted by negotiation it is suspended, not ended. When that occurs the conflict will find another way to express itself (terrorism as an example springs to mind).
Business deals and settled by negotiation because both sides come together with something to offer and a need to be filled, it is just a matter of deciding the terms of that exchange. War is when people come together to kill each other, it is settled when one side or the other has had enough and gives up or moves away. Think for a moment where we would be if the current crop of political nincompoops were dealing with the Kaiser, or Hitler, or Hirohito.
It is a current Liberal fantasy that there are no longer “winners” (BAD) and “losers” (the poor unfortunate), that everything must end with everyone feeling good about themselves and no final resolution. That is bad therapy and worse politics.
The absurdity that is North Korea can only exist because of such nonsense. The situation in the Mid-East is a similar product of totally flawed thinking.
Apr 9, 2009 - 7:42 am 6. LynnS:“No peace will ever be possible until someone, anyone, stands up and says to the Palestinians “Wanting Israel dead is a non-starter position.”
The Arab/Muslims and the Muslims believe they have good reason to want Israel to die. How can one take their good reasons away, when they stretch back in history as far back as they choose, to a time where a Jewish Person according to them lied, cheated, humiliated, scorned, and stole from a good Muslim?
So called Palestinians are fed the reasons to want Israel to be wiped from the face of the earth by the whole of the Middle East and beyond. When negotiating with them the world in negotiating with an imaginary partner who does not exist, but is very demanding, even more so than someone real. They have been made-up to make the fight seem as if it is Giant Israel against the tiny palastinians. It is not the child David against Goliath but Giant David against a child.
It is actually a clever strategy that the world has swallowed hook line and sinker. The Muslim world is just reeling us in.
Apr 9, 2009 - 7:46 am 7. robotech master:Negotiations have never fixed really any problems in the world… they simply delay war. Sometime delaying a war means that other changes(such in the case of the USSR they go bankrupt) and in it self negotiations did nothing to really create that end result other then keeping the peace until such result was reached.
Negotiations by historic means when applied to israels current problems clearly show that they will fail…. and always fail. I side wishes for something the other side opposes… IE one sides wishes to live the other side demand death. Neither side is willing to move on this core and most important issue. So we wait…and delay through the “peace-process”. This delay only helps one side gaza/west bank and hurt israel’s. Israel like the US needs to throw off the leeches and stand up and tell them they need to figure it out themselves. However if they get stupid were going to throw some salt on you and show you just how bad it can be.
Apr 9, 2009 - 9:48 am 8. TexEd:When Obama and his Eurinal pimps go to “talk” to Iran, watch Obama’s ineptness when the Iranians pull an Arafat and demand all sorts of non-negotiable preconditions.
Apr 9, 2009 - 2:08 pm 9. Oscar the Grump:Iran is already playing the US with the same type of strategy. They are willing to show the world one of their nuclear facilities. Sounds great, yes. They have 39 others hidden underground and in the mountains. Do you think that the lady Iran will give us a real look under her dress? I really don’t think so. Right now its just up to the ankle boys.
What are they really after? They want an end to sanctions. They want to be free to pursue their nuclear ambitions. They want a free hand to destroy Israel. Finally they want to control the whole region.
How are we going to negotiate with that?
Apr 9, 2009 - 2:58 pm 10. Larry J:Negotiations are all about give and take. The Israelis want to live. The Palestinians want all Israelis to die. Can’t they split the difference and have only half of the Israelis die? That would so good faith, at least until the next round of negotiations. /sarcasm
Apr 9, 2009 - 3:01 pm 11. Someone75:There are some people who are incapable of negotiation. However, that’s a very poor reason to rule it out completely. Everything has to start there.
Besides – you guys present this issue like EVERY Palestinian individual wants EVERY Israeli dead. No. Many Palestinians are against this completely. Unfortunately, there are bad bad people in charge over there.
You can’t condemn the entire country, although you can (and should) condemn the people in power and the extremists who cause all this mess.
Apr 9, 2009 - 8:40 pm 12. Chileno:So long as competing claims of sovereignty over Palestine exist, there will never be a negotiated peace.
To Palestinians, the “Occupied Territories,” are not the West Bank/Gaza, but ALL of Palestine; the occupation did not begin in 1967, but in 1948. Their goal is not compensation, or creating A Palestinian state, it’s creating THE Palestinian state, and governing over all of Palestine.
Hamas will never stop fighting Israel, as Israeli sovereignty over part of Palestine is incompatible with this goal. Quoting from their charter:
“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it…”
“… the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it…should not be given up. ”
“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”
Even moderate Arabs who espouse the “one-state” solution are essentially working for the same goal of complete Palestinian governance. The difference is that Hamas would kill the Jews, while the moderates would tolerate them as a minority (realizing that religious minorities have historically not fared well in Muslim-dominated societies).
Israelis will never dismantle their state voluntarily. Most Israelis would, however, reluctantly accept a return to the pre-1967 borders in exchange for peace. But if Palestinian expectations are not changed, ceding the West Bank/Gaza will not stop the conflict. It’ll be seen as merely one more step on the route to ultimate victory.
Unless expectations are changed, there is only one possible long-term solution to the conflict: the destruction of one of the two peoples. The Jews so far have the weapons, but not the will to do so. The Palestinians, may have the will, but not the weapons. That equation may radically change if Iran acquires a nuclear device. God help the Israelis if they do.
Apr 9, 2009 - 10:45 pm 13. Marie Claude:typos_R_us: I bet your brain hasn’t yet been washed LMAO
SAF, don’t dream the french part of Belgium has already asked to become our 102nd departement
Apr 10, 2009 - 6:44 am 14. Adina Kutnicki:Hillel, your article dovetails nicely with Miller’s, as he explains Obama’s cozy relationship with the UN, and the hand that our so called elite plays in the most pernicious hatred of all time – anti-semitism, now masked as anti-zionism – all the while aligning themselves with the most non liberal forces Your analysis though takes us into the realm of pernicious political processes, whose victims are naturally world Jewry.
IF not for the ‘efforts’ of the so called intellectuals, it would be impossible to push forward with the malignant process of negotiations.Further, the rank anti-semitism which drives most of the so called elite, then dovetails precisely with the genocidal barbarians and their ‘plans’ for Israel.
Fast forward to your own reporting beat in Cambridge, MA. Aside from Berkeley, CA, one would be hard pressed to come upon a more loony left bastion of intellectuals than in Cambridge, MA. One can hardly breathe the air at MIT without holding ones nose at the pollutants caused by the likes of Chomsky and his acolytes.
It is due to the wild ravings of so called intellectuals, perched in the once hallowed halls of academia, which our next generation of leaders are getting their (im)moral compasses.
As the parent of a recent MIT alumni you would be doing me, and I am sure many others, a distinct service if you would expose the real underbelly of Chomsky.
Aside from a few others, he has been the godfather of anti-zionism/anti-semitism, and anti-Americanism on our campuses, infecting scores of minds in the process.
I know, I know he is born Jewish, so why am I saying he is a virulent anti-semite? One can be both born a Jew AND a rabid anti-semite at the same time.
IF one really wants to understand how THAT works, I refer you to Harvard’s Dr Kenneth Levin, ‘The Oslo Syndrome:Delusions of a People Under Siege’. Read it and weep…..
Apr 11, 2009 - 6:38 am 15. ahad ha'amoratsim:Israel’s obligations were verifiable and were met, but that did not defend Israel from repeated charges that Israel was violating the “spirit” of the accords, by taking actions that the accords in fact permitted. The charges were made by the Arabs (”Palestinian” or otherwise), the UN and the EU, dutifully repeated uncritically by the press, and never refuted by the Clinton White House or by the State Department, who both acted as though the charges were true. Meanwhile, all of the usual culprits a blind eye to Arafat’s actual, verified violation of every single obligation under Oslo, and Pres. Clinton shamelessly tried to cover up the failure to recognize Israel. With friends like these?
Apr 13, 2009 - 11:50 am