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Talking About A Resolution: Culture in Peace Negotiations
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security-conditioned mode of achieving it. “One fatal manifestation,” Klieman writes, “has got to be his attempt at converting a pillar of IDF strategy -- seizing the initiative from one’s opponent by moving onto the offense, concentrating upon a single objective, amassing forces, applying pressure, boxing the enemy into a corner, and then taking his targeted positions by storm – into a bold diplomatic bargaining strategy. Besides imposing a time limitation of his own on reaching a Final Status agreement with the Palestinians he put forward each of successive Israeli packaged proposals and conditions as a ‘take it or leave it’ offer.” The Palestinian response to this unexpected negotiating blitzkrieg was intransigence, with the outcome well-known.
Israeli and Palestinian Interaction: Reinforcing Each Other’s Worst Traits
Reading Klieman’s and Dajani’s accounts together, one can see how the national
security approach that dominated Israel’s negotiating style and the passivity and indecision that characterized the Palestinian negotiators’ behavior interacted in a tremendously counterproductive fashion and contributed to the conflagration during and after the summit at Camp David. The vicious cycle began after the first Oslo agreement, when publicity led domestic politics to become a larger part of the equation, and when the Israeli negotiators who embraced the “spirit of Oslo” were supplemented and in some cases replaced by professional military and intelligence officials, and the national security subculture began to dominate the Israeli side. The Palestinians’ passivity, along with their relative lack of preparation and less-than-professional internecine warfare, were particularly vulnerable to the security hawks’ favored tactics of divide-and-rule and pressing the advantage.
The Israelis’ willingness to take advantage of the Palestinian team’s weaknesses
led the Palestinians to feel burdened by the interim agreements that resulted from the first two years’ talks, and raised the stakes for them in achieving a more equitable deal in the final status agreement. Israel’s security subculture led its negotiators to lay numerous and absolute “red lines” in the interim talks, and to defend them aggressively and without compromise. As Dajani relates, the Palestinians felt railroaded as a result, and this led them to adopt a strategy in final status talks of negotiating from principles rather than specific substantive positions. Israel’s negotiators viewed this Palestinian emphasis on principles as a maddening refusal to grapple with the issues at the heart of the talks, and a preference for dwelling in the past.
The Palestinians’ internal divisions also left them without clear red lines or
fallback positions on entering the final status talks. This forced them to use Israeli proposals as catalysts for their own internal debates on issues that had previously been taboo. But Israelis viewed the inability of Palestinians to respond to final status proposals as evidence of a lack of serious intent in the negotiations. This played into already-extant Israeli suspicions of their interlocutors’ insincerity, cultivated by their history in the region and by their broader historical narrative of being a besieged minority in a hostile environment.
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8
security-conditioned mode of achieving it. “One fatal manifestation,” Klieman writes,
“has got to be his attempt at converting a pillar of IDF strategy -- seizing the initiative
from one’s opponent by moving onto the offense, concentrating upon a single objective,
amassing forces, applying pressure, boxing the enemy into a corner, and then taking his
targeted positions by storm – into a bold diplomatic bargaining strategy. Besides
imposing a time limitation of his own on reaching a Final Status agreement with the
Palestinians he put forward each of successive Israeli packaged proposals and conditions
as a ‘take it or leave it’ offer.” The Palestinian response to this unexpected negotiating
blitzkrieg was intransigence, with the outcome well-known.
Israeli and Palestinian Interaction: Reinforcing Each Other’s Worst Traits
Reading Klieman’s and Dajani’s accounts together, one can see how the national
security approach that dominated Israel’s negotiating style and the passivity and
indecision that characterized the Palestinian negotiators’ behavior interacted in a
tremendously counterproductive fashion and contributed to the conflagration during and
after the summit at Camp David. The vicious cycle began after the first Oslo agreement,
when publicity led domestic politics to become a larger part of the equation, and when
the Israeli negotiators who embraced the “spirit of Oslo” were supplemented and in some
cases replaced by professional military and intelligence officials, and the national security
subculture began to dominate the Israeli side. The Palestinians’ passivity, along with their
relative lack of preparation and less-than-professional internecine warfare, were
particularly vulnerable to the security hawks’ favored tactics of divide-and-rule and
pressing the advantage.
The Israelis’ willingness to take advantage of the Palestinian team’s weaknesses
led the Palestinians to feel burdened by the interim agreements that resulted from the first
two years’ talks, and raised the stakes for them in achieving a more equitable deal in the
final status agreement. Israel’s security subculture led its negotiators to lay numerous and
absolute “red lines” in the interim talks, and to defend them aggressively and without
compromise. As Dajani relates, the Palestinians felt railroaded as a result, and this led
them to adopt a strategy in final status talks of negotiating from principles rather than
specific substantive positions. Israel’s negotiators viewed this Palestinian emphasis on
principles as a maddening refusal to grapple with the issues at the heart of the talks, and a
preference for dwelling in the past.
The Palestinians’ internal divisions also left them without clear red lines or
fallback positions on entering the final status talks. This forced them to use Israeli
proposals as catalysts for their own internal debates on issues that had previously been
taboo. But Israelis viewed the inability of Palestinians to respond to final status proposals
as evidence of a lack of serious intent in the negotiations. This played into already-extant
Israeli suspicions of their interlocutors’ insincerity, cultivated by their history in the
region and by their broader historical narrative of being a besieged minority in a hostile
environment.
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