PEACEW RK

S

UNITED STATES

INSTITUTE OF PEACE

How Not to Make Peace

“Conflict Syndrome” and the Demise 

of the Oslo Accords

Robert L. Rothstein 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2005911324

Peaceworks No. 57. First published March 2006.

The views expressed in this report are those of the author alone. 

They do not necessarily reflect views of the United States Institute of Peace.

United States Institute of Peace

1200 17th Street NW, Suite 200

Washington, DC 20036-3011

Phone: 202-457-1700

Fax: 202-429-6063

E-mail: usip_requests@usip.org

Web: www.usip.org
Contents

Summary 1

Acknowledgments 3

1. Introduction 5

2. Oslo’s Demise: The Search for Understanding 7

3. The Intrinsic Nature of Peacemaking in Protracted Conflicts 11

4. Resurrecting the Peace Process: Uncertainty and Hope 25

5. A Way Forward? Outlines of a Strategy 31

6. Alternative Roads to Peace 37

Notes 43

About the Author 47

About the Institute 49

 

Summary

The failure of the Oslo Accords has been attributed to a variety of factors, including deficiencies in the accords themselves, failures of implementation, and the play of domestic politics. 

These are all critical factors that describe what happened, but they do not explain why each 

side behaved as it did—that is, why each side made choices that would only increase the 

likelihood of the accords’ failure. To understand why each side behaved as it did, we must first 

understand the “conflict syndrome” that affected the negotiating and decision-making 

process—a syndrome that is, to varying degrees, present in many protracted conflicts. While 

the conflict syndrome is never the sole cause of failure in any given peace process and does 

not affect every conflict in the same way, the significant role it often plays in perpetuating 

conflict is frequently ignored or undervalued.

Conflict syndrome consists of a set of attitudes, assumptions, and beliefs that become embedded over decades of bitter conflict and are difficult to unlearn even if some kind of peace 

agreement—or exploratory truce—has been signed. The individual elements of the syndrome 

are familiar, but, taken as a whole, they exert a powerful influence on most peace processes 

and inform the choices each side makes. Thus, distrusting the opposite side’s motives by 

default, cheating for fear of being cheated, making only tentative concessions that can easily 

be revoked, and asking the other side to prove its good faith by making large initial concessions, among other things, generate a peace process that can easily become a “race to the 

bottom.” This implies that the stop-and-go, on-and-off, crisis-driven peace processes in the 

Middle East and elsewhere should not be taken as aberrations: they are the norm that should 

be anticipated and planned for.

This argument has clear policy implications. Premature ceremonies on the White House lawn 

and inflated rhetoric that raises expectations too hastily need to be avoided. The search for 

quick solutions and “last negotiations” is likely to lead to a return of bitter discord. To solve 

the Middle East conflict, a carefully calibrated peace process—described herein as “gradually 

accelerating incrementalism”—is needed. Architects of such a process must recognize that 

elements of the conflict syndrome still persist in the Middle East and will for years to come, 

that high-risk/high-gain negotiating strategies in such a context are bound to fail, and that 

demands for stricter compliance with commitments can and should increase as the process 

begins to provide both sides with tangible evidence that it can produce mutual benefits and 

is worth preserving.

 

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank John Crist of the United States Institute of Peace for his support and 

advice throughout the process of editing a much longer manuscript into a shorter form. 

I would also like to thank Kurt Volkan, my editor.

1 

Introduction

Many Israeli and Palestinian politicians and intellectuals came to recognize certain basic facts 

in the decade before the signing of the Oslo Accords: neither side could defeat the other, at 

least at an acceptable cost; the overall costs of the conflict to both sides were staggering; 

parts of both communities were beginning to exhibit “battle fatigue” and a strong desire to 

live a “normal” life; and the general outlines of a painful but bearable compromise solution—

some details aside—had been apparent for many years, indeed perhaps from the partition 

formula of 1947. Although extremists on both sides totally rejected any compromise, majority 

support had been growing for some kind of mutually bearable settlement. Put differently, 

“rational actors” should have seen a clear interest in compromise and the marginalization of 

extremists. Why then did the Oslo peace process disintegrate so rapidly, and why did a conflict 

that had moved beyond its earlier existentialist phase return to it so savagely—and perhaps 

irredeemably?

The conventional explanations for Oslo’s failure, some of which will be discussed below, are 

better at elucidating what happened during the process rather than why the accords collapsed. One could also argue that such explanations represent partial narratives of Oslo’s fate 

rather than the whole story. To get at the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict one needs to 

look at more than the details of any failure to agree on Jerusalem, refugees, or borders—and 

the Palestinians’ inability or unwillingness to stop terrorism. One must also examine the tacit 

and unstated assumptions about the nature of the conflict itself that became embedded over 

time and seemed to mandate policy responses virtually guaranteed to undermine an already 

fragile peace process. In short, these assumptions generated patterns of behavior that deepened the conflict and produced a kind of Gresham’s Law of protracted conflict: extremists 

drove out moderates. In such a context, one “easy” explanation for the failure of the peace 

process—specifically, that one needed Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk but got Yasser 

Arafat and Benjamin Netanyahu—misses the deeper point that even strong and wise leaders 

might have chosen badly or felt compelled to make the same kinds of mistakes attributed to 

their weaker brethren. However, I am not arguing that a conflict’s unstated assumptions 

totally determine outcomes: there are factors that can diminish or overcome such assumptions, as appeared to happen in South Africa in the early 1990s, but these factors are not 

always present or sufficiently powerful.

The unstated assumptions of a conflict affect the judgment of each side and are likely to 

affect how difficult questions that hover over any negotiating process are answered: Can the 

other side ever be trusted? Is real peace possible? Will any agreement offer more than a temporary truce in a continuing existential conflict? Can the ancient attitudes and beliefs that 

have sustained and deepened the conflict ever be transformed, especially after a seemingly 

endless exchange of atrocities? And will the leader(s) of the other side be able or willing to 

expend the necessary domestic political capital on developing enough support for an agreement that involves significant concessions? In any case of protracted conflict, these questions 
 How Not to Make Peace

will have no ready answers, but the embedded assumptions of the conflict will heavily affect 

how these questions are interpreted, evaluated, and answered. Certain risk-reduction techniques and third-party guarantees may mitigate against negative answers to these questions—negative answers are likely in the early stages of any peace process—but such techniques and guarantees are themselves imperfect. Indeed, they may slow a process down at 

the point where it most needs to provide evidence that the peace is worth preserving.

The tendency to answer such questions negatively while undergoing a peace process helps to 

explain why apparently sensible compromises are often rejected and why the possibility of a 

compromise peace is often seen as a third-best option to some future outright victory or a 

familiar but bearable status quo, especially among elites living in relatively comfortable exile. 

In effect, war can become “domesticated”—that is, people learn to live with it. This normalization is facilitated—as the Sudanese case illustrates—by “the insulation of the country’s 

elites . . . from the cruel havoc . . . wreaked on millions of ordinary people.”1 Additionally, in 

some cases, certain constituencies may benefit more from the continuation of the conflict 

than from its resolution.2

Although the Oslo peace process was a failure, it did have a number of (potentially) redeeming features that can be built on by future peacemakers. In particular, certain leaders and 

segments of the public on both sides recognized that there was a preferable alternative to a 

bitter—and deteriorating—stalemate, that the historical problem of two people claiming a 

single territory could only be resolved through the equitable division of territory, and that 

working out the terms of this division and establishing new rules for peaceful coexistence 

were the central tasks of the peace process. While such progression fell well short of “breaking the genetic code” of the conflict, to borrow the words of Moshe Ma’oz, Oslo did lay down 

footprints for later negotiators to follow—even if they insist that Oslo’s only useful lessons are 

about what not to do.3 Either way, the Oslo experience will have shaped perceptions of what 

can and should be done in the future—and many of the tacit and explicit agreements reached 

during the Oslo years will affect the substance and atmosphere of any future negotiation. The 

Oslo peace process may have suffered an ignominious death but the lessons of that demise 

are still relevant—if frequently ignored.
 

Oslo’s Demise: 

The Search for Understanding

Three general factors are frequently cited as having been primarily responsible for Oslo’s 

demise.4 The first concerns deficiencies in Oslo’s terms. For example, Henry Siegman has 

argued that Oslo—and the current “road map”—suffered from a failure to spell out in detail 

what the Palestinians would get at the end of the process if they implemented their own 

promises effectively, thus reducing their incentive to comply in the earlier stages.5 By implication, therefore, the negotiators missed a unique opportunity to reach a much stronger agreement that would have generated greater willingness on both sides to comply with its terms.

However, specifying details about core issues from the start would have destroyed the peace 

process before it even began and would have generated immense domestic opposition on 

both sides. Oslo was not a peace settlement but rather an exploratory truce that seemed to 

offer some hope of gradually changing the psychological environment of the conflict and 

opening, if tentatively, a new set of opportunities to move forward on substantive issues. 

However, such opportunities were easily missed or misinterpreted by weak leaders, particularly because they were forced to make decisions in a dangerous and uncertain environment. 

In this sense, Oslo was not intrinsically a “bad” peace doomed to fail or a “good” peace that 

guaranteed each side would attain enough of its central goals to make implementation 

increasingly likely. Rather, it was an imperfect product of its times, the most that could be 

gotten at that particular stage of a bitter protracted conflict.

The second factor that led to Oslo’s demise involved escalating and reciprocal failures of 

implementation. With inevitable uncertainties about the shape of a final agreement and pervasive distrust, neither side was willing to take great risks for peace and each side demanded 

that the other prove its good faith before making major concessions of its own. This was a 

recipe for disaster, not least because neither side made plans to deal with the inevitable failures to implement. Stricter compliance mechanisms might have helped, but they were not 

included in the accords, perhaps because the negotiators were so enthused about what they 

had accomplished that they ignored how problematic implementation was likely to be. Both 

sets of negotiators may have also believed that Arafat would never accept strong commitments on compliance. While failures to implement surely contributed to Oslo’s rapid decline, 

this explanation does not account for why such failures became endemic to the process and 

sheds little light on the underlying cause.

The third—and perhaps the most important and widely cited—factor that contributed to 

Oslo’s failure involved the impact of domestic politics on the process. While leaders are central 

to the negotiation process and make key decisions, public support is critical for deepening and 

sustaining any agreement. But what leaders and their associates expect or get from an agreement may be very different from what the public expects or gets. In the case of Oslo, the 

public did not see any immediate, substantial, or widespread benefits from the agreement 

2
 How Not to Make Peace

and, therefore, was reluctant to bestow legitimacy on it. Each side also tended to see the 

other as being more unitary and monolithic than it actually was and thus did not seek potential allies on the other side, missing certain opportunities. As a result, sharp and escalating 

internal conflicts and declining popular support for the peace process made its collapse practically inevitable.

Central to each of the above factors is the decision-making style of the leaders themselves. 

Leaders weakened by a failure to produce substantive gains, to bring the conflict to a successful conclusion, and to deal with threats—real or imagined—of revolt by coalition partners, see 

deep risks in every decision they make. As a result, they often adopt a decision-making style 

that I call “negative satisficing.”6 Specifically, weak or weakened leaders begin to make lastminute decisions, fudged as much as possible, that offend the least number of actors who 

have the power to do them harm. Therefore, in negotiating a risky peace with an enemy that 

cannot be trusted, leaders often decide by deciding as little as possible. Indeed, from the 

perspective of Israel and the United States, Oslo failed largely because Arafat was incapable 

of or unwilling to make peace, perhaps because he could not deal with the prospect of having 

his rhetoric of ultimate triumph thrown back into his face. If true, his death should open new 

possibilities of reviving the peace process—and there are tentative signs that it has done so. 

But one must not jump too quickly to the conclusion that the major obstacle to peace has 

now been eliminated or, conversely, that nothing much has really changed. To understand 

some of the complexities of the current situation, one must first understand Arafat’s vices and 

virtues as a leader.

Arafat: The Enigmas of Leaders

Neither Arafat’s limitations as a leader nor the weaknesses of Palestinian institutions were the 

sole domestic problems impeding implementation of the accords. The weak coalition governments of Israel also made progress difficult, focusing the leaders’ attention on internal negotiations to stay in power and generating doubts in the Palestinian community about the 

credibility of Israeli promises. These doubts only grew when Likud leaders asserted that they 

would not be bound by Oslo’s principles should they return to power. In addition, Israeli society was split almost evenly between factions opposing and supporting the peace process, 

especially after violence surged during the Peres-Netanyahu election campaign. This made it 

very difficult for any leader to assemble a strong constituency for peace. However, I choose 

to focus on Arafat’s role in the failure of Oslo because he was in power throughout the process and because he alone could decide whether to support or undermine Oslo’s principles. 

Further, his decision to support the use of violence, his refusal to oppose Palestinian terrorist 

groups in a serious manner, and his illegal importation of arms directly threatened the process 

and destroyed the peace movement in Israel.

Arafat’s leadership has been severely criticized not only by Israel and American sources but 

also by some leading Palestinian and Arab sources.7 Dennis Ross, the former U.S. Middle East 

negotiator, has been particularly unflattering, as has been Bill Clinton.8 The picture that 
Oslo’s Demise: The Search for Understanding 

emerges is of a leader firmly looking backward, unable or unwilling to make decisions that 

might generate internal dissent, and unable to adapt or learn in response to new opportunities. Why then did he accept the Oslo Accords, which did not guarantee the achievement of 

any Palestinian goals, but refuse to accept the flawed but much more promising Clinton-Barak 

offers at and after Camp David? Presumably he accepted Oslo because it provided him with 

real resources, such as foreign aid, international recognition as the leader of the Palestinians, 

and access to the White House, and gave him some breathing room at a moment when his 

power and standing were being challenged, without requiring the relinquishment of any 

central goals. Conversely, he rejected the Clinton-Barak offers—which included potentially 

significant concessions by Israel—because accepting them would have required a much more 

open sacrifice of some critical goals and would have generated much more domestic opposition among Palestinians. In short, Oslo’s low-risk/low-gain strategy was more acceptable than 

Camp David’s high-risk/high-gain strategy to a risk-averse, suspicious, and reluctant decision 

maker. To be fair, Arafat never had a strong hand to play and was never in complete control 

of all the Palestinian groups. Thus, while some of his actions may have appeared irrational to 

external observers, they may in fact have been rational and prudent in the context of his 

desire to remain in power and to avoid overt challenges to Palestinian unity.

A more malign interpretation of Arafat’s behavior argues that he was never serious about the 

peace process and lied about his intentions from the day the accords were signed. Such 

motives are suggested in the comments of one experienced Palestinian journalist, who noted, 

“Arafat always described the Oslo process as the rape of the PLO. . . . He always presented 

the agreements . . . to his people as at best a short-term truce.”9 This interpretation also 

seems to explain some decisions by Arafat—and the Palestinian Authority—that otherwise 

seem perverse. These include his continued rhetoric to his people that the “jihad continues”; 

his refusal to stop his media from spewing out anti-Semitic propaganda, to change school 

textbooks that did not recognize Israel’s right to exist, and to confront any of the Palestinian 

terrorist organizations; his indifference toward the inept performance of the authority under 

his control; his illegal creation of multiple security forces as a nascent army; and his illegal 

importation of vast amounts of arms. Such actions are not designed to build a constituency 

for peace or to convince the enemy that a real commitment to peace has been made.

There is a revisionist school that justifies Arafat’s failure to accept Clinton’s “final” offer in 

January 2001 and that instead blames Ross, Clinton, and Ehud Barak for not offering more 

and for being vague on details.10 However, such criticisms seem tendentious and insufficiently 

contextual. For example, proponents of this school ignore Arafat’s pattern of behavior after 

Oslo, they ignore the fact that no agreement at that time was going to be anything but imperfect, and they seem so concerned to point out its flaws that they forget that what was on the 

table offered the Palestinians far more than any previous—or subsequent—offer. Further, 

accepting the agreement would have kept the negotiating process alive and potentially made 

it even more productive. Did resorting to a brutal and immoral strategy of indiscriminate terrorism produce more for the Palestinian people? What better alternative do the revisionist 

critics have in mind, particularly given the constraints set by Oslo’s failure and the declining 

domestic support for the peace process in both camps? Because the revisionist critics do not 
10 How Not to Make Peace

provide meaningful answers to these questions—or offer a superior and politically feasible 

alternative to what was offered at Camp David—their indictment is not convincing.

However, the very image of Arafat with a clear strategy of manipulating Oslo to prepare for 

the resumption of conflict is not entirely persuasive and does not fit very well with his image 

as a cautious, reactive, and indecisive leader whose vision was entirely tactical and who 

decided most things by not deciding. He was also never a dictator who could impose his views 

by fiat, and he seemed to value unity, even superficial unity, over what seemed likely to be 

the small gains of the peace process. Yet, despite the limitations of his power and his own 

limitations as a leader, he can be fairly blamed for a number of things: he failed to anticipate 

the consequences of his actions and inaction; he deliberately launched a vicious terrorist campaign that hurt Israelis but hurt his own people far more; he played into the hands of the 

Israeli right-wing; he largely destroyed the Israeli peace movement; and he did not understand 

that he needed to stabilize and to deepen the peace process before trying to take advantage 

of it.

As a result, this combination of weak leadership, a flawed peace agreement, and pervasive 

distrust generated a race to the bottom of the peace process: prudent actions to lower risks 

and delay commitments on crucial issues created a downward cycle that neither could nor 

would be arrested. It is important to understand, however, that even stronger and wiser 

leaders may have become trapped in this cycle because both sides suffered from what I call 

“conflict syndrome.” Specifically, deeply embedded beliefs, assumptions, and attitudes 

affected how policy was set and how decisions were made. This syndrome is likely to continue 

to affect the post-Arafat negotiating process, although perhaps with less power. It is also 

important to remember that, despite Arafat’s deficiencies as a leader, he had two very important characteristics that may be sorely missed in the near term: he managed to keep a fractious Palestinian community more or less unified, and he and only he had the standing to 

impose a compromise agreement on his community—if, a big if, he had the will to do so.
 11

The Intrinsic Nature of Peacemaking 

in Protracted Conflicts

Expectations about what peace or a peace process will bring are crucial to its survival. 

Therefore, incorrect and inflated—or deflated—expectations about what Oslo would produce are a major reason why it failed. At least some of the errors of the past decade could 

have been avoided and some of the individuals or groups on both sides intent on destroying 

the peace could have been thwarted if both sides had more clearly understood what to 

expect from Oslo and what kind of policies they needed to pursue to give Oslo a better 

chance of becoming a step toward peace, not a step backward. In effect, while the complexity of the issues on the negotiating table, the limitations of the accords themselves, and 

domestic political constraints all contributed to Oslo’s failure, how each side thought about 

and conceptualized the peace process and what they expected from it may have been the 

determining factor in its demise.

Although Arafat may have been an incompetent leader blundering from one disaster to 

another, and Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon may have been deliberately trying to undermine a 

peace process they did not believe in, the cognitive framework that they each took for 

granted made it very difficult for them to make better decisions and stronger commitments 

to the peace process. Such an argument also provides a different perspective on the controversial issue of why Arafat turned down Clinton’s final offer in January 2001. Specifically, 

Arafat may not have turned down the offer solely because of the ostensible inadequacies of 

its terms but also—if not largely—because of the attitudes, assumptions, and beliefs that he 

had developed over decades of bitter conflict. These beliefs, in turn, predisposed him to see 

only traps, deceit, risks, and losses. Please note that this is not a deterministic theory: there 

are too many factors in play and too many uncertainties to allow for precise predictions.11

However, the concept of conflict syndrome offers insight into how such peace processes are 

likely to evolve and what ought to be done to help a fragile peace survive and deepen.

This syndrome—or cognitive framework—not only leads to actions and policies that intensify 

conflict but also makes the halting or reversing of a downward cycle of violence exceptionally 

difficult once begun. In the abstract, one might reasonably conclude that such a downward 

cycle ought not to occur. After all, in the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the political, 

economic, and psychological costs have been monumental and obvious to both sides, and 

the desire on both sides to live a normal life is pervasive. Further, compromise is not unthinkable to shifting majorities on either side: the outlines of a two-state solution are well known 

and various official and unofficial negotiations have gotten close to reaching bearable compromises on even the most controversial issues. Why then do we now seem even further 

from agreement? John Darby has asked and answered the same question in regard to 

Northern Ireland: “So why has the crisis in Northern Ireland not been resolved, either with a 

compromise settlement or genocidal carnage? The answer is simple. There has been no 

3
12 How Not to Make Peace

resolution because the violence has not been intolerable. By whatever calculus communities 

compute their interests, the price of compromise is still thought to be greater than the cost 

of violence.”12

My answer, however, is quite different. Nothing in the process of trying to end a bitter, protracted conflict is quite that simple or quite that amenable to rational calculation of costs and 

benefits—if such are indeed “computable” by weakened leaders in a complex environment 

of choice. Even if the costs of violence exceed the costs of compromise in the minds of the 

leadership and some followers—perhaps even among a majority—stable peace may still be 

unachievable. There are a variety of reasons for this: those who lose from peace will resist it; 

leaders may be primarily concerned with staying in power and thus reluctant to risk internal 

dissent; peace may not resolve or significantly diminish some of the underlying problems that 

drive the conflict; and—as just noted—mind-sets ingrained after decades of conflict may still 

persist even after a nominal peace has been negotiated.

All conflicts are to some extent socially constructed. Therefore, more is at stake than resolving 

a clash of interests or even enlarging the joint benefits of peace: each side needs to alter the 

way it thinks about the conflict and its future relationship with the opposing side. I will examine certain aspects of this conflict syndrome, but it should be noted that the following discussion is somewhat stylized. The below elements apply to the Israeli-Palestinian case very well 

most of the time for most of the participants, while they apply to other cases more or less 

well—and yet others only loosely.

Primary Aspects of Conflict Syndrome

Oslo was really an exploratory truce that would have led to stable peace only if the leaders 

had understood the nature of the task they confronted, worked to develop public and cognitive legitimacy for an agreement that was largely procedural and incremental, and managed 

to contain and marginalize extremists. Oslo, like the Dayton Agreement on Bosnia or the 

Good Friday Agreement on Northern Ireland, largely left all the central issues unresolved. In 

such agreements, risks and uncertainties are so high that one cannot expect either side to 

make a full commitment to them: initial offers are likely to be hedged and minimal; doubts 

about the other’s willingness or ability to offer more or to implement commitments are generally great; each side has reasonable fears about the other side’s ability to get a substantive 

agreement through domestic political processes; and both sides are ultimately unhappy about 

the terms of any agreement and constantly seek to push its limits, renegotiate its terms, and 

get the other to move first. The parties to the conflict, in effect, seek to use the peace process 

for their own ends; actually achieving real peace may not rank very high on their list of priorities. Further, the agreements themselves may be open-ended and masterpieces of ambiguity and imprecision. This may be necessary to get the parties to sign an initial agreement, but 

ultimately this lack of clarity and precision may make it difficult to deepen and legitimize the 

peace process. Moreover, such agreements may also lack a self-correcting mechanism that 

can restore equilibrium and arrest a cycle of retaliation and revenge. These problems are 
The Intrinsic Nature of Peacemaking in Protracted Conflicts 13

compounded by the fact that such negotiations are obviously intensely political for both sides 

and directly affect the fate of the current leadership and real or potential opponents.

Most protracted conflicts reach a stage where both sides believe no solution is possible. For 

example, a U.S. official speaking at the height of the Bosnian conflict noted, “I don’t think 

there is a solution to it. It’s becoming clear that the Bosnian war simply has to be managed. 

We have to try to keep the violence at a tolerable level. This approach does not come easy 

because we, as Americans, are used to solving problems. But this one is insoluble.”13 Political 

scientists have made similar claims with regard to other conflicts. Sumit Ganguly has said of 

the conflict in Kashmir that it has seemed “impervious to resolution,” and Richard Rose made 

the same point about Northern Ireland some years ago.14 Additionally, Bernard Crick proclaimed in 1989 that the conflicts in South Africa, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland were 

equally insoluble because no internal solution could satisfy the announced principles of either 

side and because an externally imposed or enforced solution would only strengthen the 

desperation of extremist groups.15 More recently, some have so despaired of a solution to the 

Israeli-Palestinian conflict that they have advocated an externally imposed solution or argued 

that the conflict can only be “managed” and not resolved.16 After so many failed attempts 

at resolution, these views are hardly surprising, but they also tend to affect the pattern of 

expectations around any tentative peace agreement. How can any agreement that resolves 

so little and requires the cooperation of an untrustworthy enemy overcome the anticipation 

of failure?

The absence of empathy is an additional element of the conflict syndrome that is often 

ignored or undervalued. Defined as a demonstration of an accurate and nonjudgmental 

understanding of the other’s needs, interests, and perspectives, empathy is a learned characteristic;17 it is virtually impossible to learn it in an environment of hatred and bitterness, where 

each side seeks to inflict pain on the “devilish” other. There is rarely an effort to try to see the 

world through the eyes of the other or to try to show the other that you understand what he 

is saying even if you do not agree with it. An expression of empathy—particularly if it is perceived as credible and sincere by the other—is valuable because empathy is the basis of most 

moral judgments: it may begin the process of diminishing distrust, and it may begin a useful 

process of communication, as distinct from an exchange of rhetorical barrages. In its absence, 

therefore, demonization of the other persists, distrust deepens, and exchanges are superficial 

and sometimes cynical or hypocritical—consider Arafat’s expression of disapproval of terrorist 

actions that he himself had condoned or ordered. As a result, discussions about bringing an 

end to the violence usually revolve around its tactical costs—often concerns such as “it is 

losing us support” are voiced—and not about the moral evil of deliberately murdering innocent citizens of the other. This also has a practical consequence: one side always fears that the 

other will return to violence if it does not get its way, which implicitly implies that peace itself 

is only a tactic.

A related element of the syndrome is the sense of humiliation, loss of pride, and loss of 

face—especially among the weaker side—that deepens and sustains the desire for revenge 

and for recapturing past glories.18 This, and the tendency of each side to construct biased and 
14 How Not to Make Peace

one-sided historical narratives that are taken on faith and are sometimes impervious to rational argument, leads to the embedding of distrust into the warp and woof of the conflict itself. 

Attempts by revisionist historians—usually only on the more powerful side—to construct a 

less tendentious and less emotional story also contribute to suspicion and doubt between the 

sides. The dangers of this are exacerbated by the tendency of each side to parse the other’s 

rhetoric literally and to ignore the need to situate it contextually in terms of domestic or other 

needs and pressures.

One general implication of this argument is that reluctant and tentative commitment to a 

low-risk/low-gain strategy is intrinsic to the endgame of protracted conflict. Perhaps even the 

notion of an endgame is misleading because the game will go on for many years and notions 

of a “last” negotiation are dangerously naive. Generosity will be limited, demands to dot 

every “i” and cross every “t” will be pervasive, fighting over every inch of territory or every 

symbolic concession will be nasty, and leaders will be under pressure to display toughness and 

to rationalize why they say one thing to one audience and something else to another. Fearing 

failure, leaders will also try to protect against risk to themselves and to the peace process, in 

that order. Moreover, as demands increase because of rising costs—and perhaps premature 

euphoria—and if or as these demands are not met, attitudes will more likely be shaped by 

unattained aspirations than by whatever real, positive achievements may have been registered: the glass will thus always seems half-empty and progress, if it has been achieved, will 

be undervalued. Such a peace process is in trouble from the start. Merely keeping it alive will 

require strong leadership, substantial external support, the absence of negative shocks, such 

as the assassination of a leader, and a good bit of luck. In effect, the peace process will itself 

be little more than conflict by other means and will persist only as long as its immediate benefits exceed its costs and no important sacrifices have to be made.

In such an environment, leaders will fear appearing weak or losing face, especially those who 

have themselves been weakened and are confronting challenges from domestic opponents.

These fears will make it difficult—if not impossible—for a leader to back down or to compromise, thus thrusting the need to do so on the other side. Fear here will not be a spur to 

innovative thinking but, rather, a spur to rigidity, conspiratorial thinking, and perhaps even 

excessive personalization of the conflict. Max Frankel, in a recent book on the Cuban missile 

crisis, notes, “For the roots of crises, look to powerful men feeling vulnerable and underestimated. Their dread of weakness, even imagined frailty, begets belligerence.”19 Frankel later 

illustrates this point by describing President John F. Kennedy’s reaction to Soviet leader Nikita 

Krushchev in the lead up to the crisis, in which he reportedly said, “[Krushchev] can’t do that 

to me”—that is, place Soviet missiles in Cuba.20 Such fear-based belligerence may have had 

something to do with the IRA’s long-standing refusal to disarm, and it may have been part of 

the reason Arafat never made a serious effort to control various terrorist groups. These attitudes are not exclusively limited to the weaker side—both sides can be fearful and insecure—

but they are presumably more prevalent in the side that is or sees itself as weaker and thus 

more vulnerable.
The Intrinsic Nature of Peacemaking in Protracted Conflicts 15

Therefore, the stop-and-go, off-and-on, crisis-driven negotiating process that developed after 

Oslo—and other such agreements, mutatis mutandis—was not simply the result of flawed 

leadership, bad draftsmanship, and unpredictable political events. Rather, this kind of erratic 

and unstable peace process was unavoidable: one should not be surprised that leaders will 

not take risks—why should they?—and that they act with mental reservations and a readiness 

to pull back quickly. Architects of future agreements must anticipate and prepare for a process that loses momentum, that is dominated by last-minute decisions on the edge of an 

abyss, and that staggers inconsistently from one crisis to another. They must also understand 

that reciprocal fears of cheating will be widespread, that cheating before being cheated will 

be the (apparently) prudent default strategy on both sides, and that the race downward will 

be far more likely to accelerate than decelerate.

As noted earlier, policymaking in this context is likely to become a form of “deciding by not 

deciding” or, more generally, of “negative satisficing.” The primary focus may well be on 

containing domestic opposition and pacifying external supporters rather than on making 

peace with the enemy—which may in some ways be less of a threat to the leader. Leaps of 

faith into a brave new world are likely to seem bearable only to strong leaders very sure of 

their domestic base—and external critics and analysts who value peace above all other virtues 

and who do not have to run the risks of betting on the wrong horse. Moreover, as conditions 

deteriorate and human and material losses mount, both sides may return to an existential 

phase of the conflict and begin to inflict pain and retribution on the other no matter the 

damage to the prospects for peace. Issues that could or should be treated dispassionately will 

be treated as symbolic, make-or-break demands—such as the right of return. Additionally, the 

process will be fueled by the leaders’ absence of empathy for the other and their need to 

manipulate issues to rationalize their own failures.

Other Aspects of Conflict Syndrome

In situations where conflict syndrome is firmly rooted, traditional bargaining strategies are 

unlikely to work well because of the difficulties of working out pragmatic trade-offs on emotionally fraught symbolic issues. An intensely competitive form of distributional bargaining is 

likely to develop, meaning asymmetrical benefits in favor of the weaker side in the early stages 

of the process may be very difficult to negotiate. Additionally, fear of being duped will hinder 

the needed cooperation for a successful peace process, and so too will the presence of a 

perverse form of reciprocity: returning good for good will be inhibited by doubts about the 

“good,” leading the exchange of bad for bad to become the norm. With an anticipation of 

failure, the ability to encourage cooperation through repeated games may also well be lost. 

Thus, interest in long-term cooperation between the two sides will be limited, particularly 

without reliable information about the other’s intentions and actions.

Another factor that may inhibit both cooperation and the implementation of an agreement is 

that there may be a large gap between the intentions of the negotiators and the intentions 

of the people on the ground who have to carry out agreed policies in daily encounters with 
16 How Not to Make Peace

the citizens or officials of the other side. Specifically, the people who interact at this level, such 

as border guards, employers, and security personnel, may be reluctant to cooperate or change 

familiar patterns of interaction. The result is not only a failure to cooperate effectively but also 

an increase in hostility.

Traditional negotiating strategies will also be problematic because negotiating away ingrained 

patterns of thought and action is almost impossible, although some paths may be established 

at this stage that begin the process of “unlearning” what has “stood to reason” for so long. 

In addition, some of the standard negotiating lessons that have been extrapolated from other 

arenas—for example, environmental or trade negotiations—are not easily applicable in the 

context of bitter and protracted violent conflicts. Commonsensical notions that treaties must 

be self-enforcing—that is, each party must see a clear interest in implementing it—and must 

contain incentives to alter self-interested patterns of behavior do not work well in protracted 

conflicts: agreements such as Oslo are not self-enforcing because each side assumes the other 

will cheat and therefore decides it must cheat first. As a result, incentives to comply are 

weaker than incentives to fake compliance.

This model of protracted conflict reflects not only the social-psychological notion of entrapment but also cognitive notions about how to conceptualize protracted conflicts and policy 

notions about what can or cannot be done at any stage of a peace process. The entrapment 

model argues that decision makers sometimes pursue bad courses of action to justify or 

rational­ize costly prior commitments that have not produced promised results.21 Thus, they 

may become overinvested in counterproductive initiatives to deflect charges that sacrifices 

have been in vain. This model helps to explain why demands increase and tactics harden as 

costs go up and the need for compromise becomes ever more apparent, particularly to those 

outside the inner circle of decision makers, who suffer from “incestuous amplification.” Fear 

of losing face and admitting fundamental errors of judgment are also crucial in entrapment, 

which means that the rationalization of past mistakes often plays a larger role in decision 

making than rational analysis. Getting out of such a psychological—and political—trap is 

obviously difficult, especially with weak leaders, since taking a longer-term perspective on 

current policy decisions or changing cognitive patterns of thinking is likely possible only if the 

leader can be shown clear benefits to and few risks for himself.

However, the entrapment model does not fully explain all aspects of the perpetuation of a 

conflict, since other domestic and external factors may be important, and the other side’s 

tactics may compel policy responses that deepen the conflict and make talk of an exit strategy 

an exercise in futility. For example, the “long-war” strategy of attrition adopted by many rebel 

organizations, in which they demonstrate a greater willingness to accept casualties and losses 

than their more dominant opponents, may force a government into policy responses that 

simply dig a deeper hole for each side. A sustained terrorist assault, as with the Palestinians 

during the al-Aqsa intifada, may also achieve the same end. Still, the entrapment model does 

provide a useful starting point for understanding why leaders choose courses of action that 

seem guaranteed to make a bad situation worse. Consider briefly Arafat’s support of a 

terrorist strategy that made peace less and less likely and Netanyahu’s and Sharon’s continued 
The Intrinsic Nature of Peacemaking in Protracted Conflicts 17

support for settlement activity that isolates Israel, encourages terrorism, sharply divides Israel 

itself, and helps to foster anti-Semitism in Europe and the Muslim world.

Although this model of protracted conflict does anticipate bad faith, it also attempts to 

explain why some of the familiar techniques to reduce the risks of cheating are likely to work 

badly or fail to produce intended effects. The mere act of signing a peace agreement will not 

change the attitudes and beliefs that have sustained a conflict. Thus, after a fragile exploratory truce has been negotiated, new policies and patterns of thought will be needed to 

deepen the peace. Making commitments that are binding, credible, and irreversible—or at 

least seem so to the other side—will also be necessary. However, in some cases, simple and 

self-committing gestures, such as Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem, might 

even be rejected outright by the other side out of distrust.

When the negotiating process appears to have reached a dead end and the parties seem incapable of negotiating seriously with each other, there is inevitably a demand for third-party 

intervention, especially from the United States. Such intervention may indeed be useful or even 

necessary—as in Northern Ireland and Bosnia—since, as a vast literature has made clear, the 

third party may perform a variety of services that facilitate successful negotiations. However, 

caution is needed before advocating mediation or other forms of external intervention. At 

times, mediators may have interests of their own that could complicate the negotiating process, 

or they may not fully commit to the process, causing damage to it by abandoning it in a sensitive moment. Additionally, adaptive learning between the parties may be short-circuited and 

neither side may feel much ownership of a peace process that is at least partially imposed.

Perhaps an even bigger problem with third-party intervention is illustrated by this comment 

about Iraq by a UN official: “Iraq needs to be liberated—liberated from big plans. Every time 

people mentioned it in the last few years, it was to connect it to big ideas—the war against 

WMDs, solving the Arab-Israeli conflict, the war against terrorism, a model of democracy. 

That’s why all these mistakes are made. They’re made because Iraq is always, in someone’s 

mind, the first step to something else.”22 Similarly, Richard Bourke has said of the Good Friday 

Agreement that it was regularly represented as a stepping-stone “along the road to something better.”23 Put simply, third parties may feel the need to view the resolution of a given 

conflict as a “first step” to justify a costly intervention or to pursue a deeply held ideological 

fantasy, but such attitudes may also mean that the particularity or density of a conflict may 

be ignored or misunderstood. As a result, sometimes parties to a conflict are better off trying 

to resolve it themselves. For example, successful peace negotiations in South Africa were carried out directly by the two sides with very little external intervention.

The Limits of Conflict Resolution

There is a curious theme in some of the literature on resolving protracted conflicts. For 

example, Bourke “calls into question the usefulness of the instruments we have devised for 

ending conflicts. . . . [These tools] encounter the unpredictable disposition of passion and 
18 How Not to Make Peace

interest, of dissidence and vanity . . . [and thus] cannot consequently be rationalized into a 

technique.”24 Similar complaints have been made in both Sri Lanka and the Middle East about 

the usefulness of all the apparently commonsensical advice about, and approaches to, conflict 

resolution proffered by most would-be peacemakers. This raises an interesting question about 

why much of this material, which can appear perfectly reasonable on an analytic level, does 

not seem to work as well as anticipated in the “real” world of protracted conflict. One might 

argue that the literature often focuses on the wrong issues to begin with: it is not the clash 

of interests or the political constraints on leadership by themselves that explain success or 

failure. Such notions as the management of expectations, empathy, fear, distrust, and the 

equality of esteem also need to be taken into account. These abstractions, of course, are not 

on the negotiating table, at least not in any direct fashion. Often within the literature there is 

also an asymmetry between the search for usable generalizations across a large number of 

cases—a normal academic concern—and the need to account for the unique context and 

peculiarities of each particular case. There may also be a tacit or implicit notion among some 

students of conflict resolution that all right-thinking people would naturally prefer peace to 

war and compromise to the continued pursuit of likely unattainable goals. But the fighters 

have many goals and peace may not be the highest of such goals. The fighters may also work 

with different time horizons and different evaluations of costs and benefits, all of which make 

rational, interest-based analysis inherently problematic. Put differently, the clash of interests is 

real and consequential but conflicts are sustained and deepened over long periods because 

they are also socially—and psychologically—constructed. It is this dimension of conflict that 

must be dealt with if there is to be a serious hope of success in conflict amelioration, let alone 

resolution.

Finally, the set of assumptions, attitudes, and beliefs that characterize the syndrome tends to 

generate a conflict analogous to a breeder nuclear reactor that creates its own fuel. Once 

begun, such conflicts create their own internal momentum as “grievance and countergrievance make compromise more difficult and violence more cyclically intense.”25 The fire is 

hard to extinguish—to shift the metaphor—just as many underground coal mine fires are hard 

to extinguish, because it fuels itself through embedded, deeply felt, learned, and relearned 

“lessons of our history.” A fragile peace agreement will hardly even begin to challenge these 

lessons, even though they pose a mortal threat to the survival of any agreement.

All Is Not Lost: Some Negotiating Successes

While Oslo made the Israeli-Palestinian conflict worse and peace less likely, peace processes 

in protracted conflicts are not doomed to failure. In fact, a few protracted conflicts have been 

successfully resolved and others have at least been diminished in effect for some period of 

time. In South Africa, for example, the two parties negotiated a reasonable compromise 

peace to a seemingly intractable conflict that granted the black community majority rule and 

the white community continued economic power and some temporary political power. The 

settlement was far from perfect and its implementation has been flawed, but it has persisted 

and remains better than the alternative of continued conflict. Why did this peace process 
The Intrinsic Nature of Peacemaking in Protracted Conflicts 19

succeed, almost to the consternation of many experts? One answer is that the negotiators 

created a “peace culture” based on tolerance and jointly agreed-upon codes of conduct. 

More important, de Klerk and Mandela were in control of their domestic constituencies and 

committed to the notion of a compromise peace. In addition, a bottom-up revolt by the black 

population—along with the pressure of international sanctions—finally convinced the white 

community that continued resistance would eventually prove too costly and ultimately futile. 

A strong civil society had also developed over the years and it too became committed to the 

notion that peace was in everyone’s interest.26 Unfortunately, in the Middle East, Arafat was 

not committed to the notion of a compromise peace, leadership on both sides was weak, and 

Arafat worked to undermine the civil society that had begun to develop in the West Bank and 

Gaza after the first intifada.27

The Northern Ireland case also provides an interesting comparison to Arafat’s refusal to accept 

the less-than-perfect but still unprecedented Clinton-Barak offers. The Good Friday negotiations in 1998 presented the IRA and Sinn Fein with a final offer that gave them far less than 

they had sought and indeed less than they had already rejected in the Sunningdale Agreement 

of 1974. Why then did they accept it? While the end of the Cold War and Clinton’s active 

involvement played an important role in their decision, as did the realization within the IRA and 

Sinn Fein that a military stalemate existed, that they could make real gains from peace, and 

that demography was on their side,28 these factors do not fully account for their acceptance of 

the agreement. What seems to me to be the dominant factor in the decision is that the IRA 

and Sinn Fein leadership, especially Gerry Adams, learned from the past and was able to adjust 

and adapt to new conditions and new opportunities—that is, even though the IRA lived by the 

gun for decades, Adams realized that you do not have to die by the gun if you prepare the way 

for change and are willing to take some internal risks for peace when an opportunity arises.

The peace process in Northern Ireland has since floundered, although even in its current 

uncertain state conditions on the ground for both communities are vastly better than they are 

in the Middle East. The Northern Ireland case illustrates, at least tentatively, that some of the 

worst effects of the conflict syndrome can be diminished by intelligent leadership, strong 

external support, and some willingness to learn from the mistakes of the past. It is very 

encouraging, for example, that the IRA acceptance of monitored disarmament in early 

October 2005 was followed a few weeks later by an announcement that two Protestant 

militias had agreed to end a violent feud and that one of the militias had ordered its gunmen 

to stand down—a potential move toward “taking the gun out of politics” both within and 

between the two sides. Caution is still imperative because of rampant criminality on both sides 

and because of continued suspicions and resistance by Protestant hard-liners, but progress 

toward peace, however fitfully, has clearly taken a step forward.

Conflict Syndrome and Doubts about Negotiations

Taken individually, the hallmarks of conflict syndrome are not unknown in conflict resolution 

literature: they have appeared and will continue to appear in discussions of protracted conflict. 
20 How Not to Make Peace

Rather than being seen as discrete elements of a conflict, however, they must be taken as a 

whole, as a powerful syndrome that influences how each side sees itself and the other, what 

each side takes for granted about appropriate rules of behavior and normative standards, 

what attitudes and assumptions are embedded in the peace process, and what policies seem 

sensible or prudent. Thus, the syndrome affects not only long-term conflict resolution initiatives but also the very warp and woof of the negotiating process—if there is one—and the 

pattern of regular interaction. Most critically, the syndrome generates a peace process built 

on the anticipation of failure and an unwillingness to take large risks for peace, particularly if 

peace is perceived as merely a transitory stage, before the resumption of conflict, that is 

unlikely to produce large gains.

Dennis Ross has stressed that the failure to transform attitudes was one of the most important 

factors in Oslo’s failure. He notes, “In the absence of transformed attitudes, mythologies were 

perpetuated, not challenged. Leveling with publics about compromise was avoided. The climate so necessary for rationalizing or explaining hard concessions was not created.”29 This 

argument is fully justified, but the argument herein goes well beyond the need to transform 

attitudes, as crucial as that surely is. Conflict syndrome also includes tacit and explicit assumptions about the nature of the conflict and patterns of belief about anticipated and appropriate 

behavior. As Ross’s words suggest, we must understand in greater analytical depth the consequences of the syndrome so that its effects can be contained and confronted—especially, 

as the next section will make clear, in the early stages of a peace process.

This argument also implies that the management of expectations—a critical task for leaders—

will be exceptionally difficult. Expectations affect how information is processed, what information is sought, and how parties interact. Negative expectations grow in intensity as conflicts deepen and reciprocal atrocities and rising costs begin to influence all calculations. This 

suggests that weak leaders may feel compelled to promise too much too quickly to overcome 

domestic resistance and to generate a constituency for peace, which means that disappointment and despair will rapidly undermine the peace process, especially one that is top-down 

and elite-driven. Conversely, if a leader deliberately keeps expectations low—both his own 

and the public’s—there will be little change in patterns of behavior and a quick return to 

“conflict as usual.” And the absence of empathy and each side’s focus on its own victimization strongly increases the likelihood of missed signals and misperceptions.

Further, there is a kind of metaphysical doubt that shadows negotiations to end protracted 

conflicts, doubt that emerges from the syndrome’s attitudes and assumptions. For example, 

if your experience with the other—and experience is the primary source of trust or distrust—

is that the other has lied and not fulfilled commitments in the past, that the other has used 

earlier cease-fires to regroup and to prepare for the resumption of conflict, that the other 

consumes concessions as a preface to making new demands, and that the other often acts in 

bad faith, you may have legitimate fears and suspicions that the other will continue to act in 

such a manner. Such a dynamic has been at work not only in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiating process but also in negotiations between enemy groups all over the world. For example, 

just as Israelis were wary of Arafat’s commitment to peace—and the Palestinians question the 
The Intrinsic Nature of Peacemaking in Protracted Conflicts 21

real motives of Israeli leaders—so too have Protestants doubted the IRA’s true intentions and 

Tamils distrusted the Sinhalese.

Why then join the negotiating process at all? If one gains benefits from a peace process but 

not from a compromise peace, or if one feels strong pressures from crucial allies or domestic 

proponents of peace, why not replace doubt and ambivalence about the possibilities for 

peace with outright cynicism, opportunism, and manipulation to gain tactical leverage? There 

is no single overarching answer to these questions: perhaps every leader or leadership group 

answers them according to some complex, shifting, and uncertain evaluation of the costs and 

benefits of either taking some real risks for peace—or, more likely, not taking them. Pressure 

and promises of support from needed domestic and external allies and bottom-up pressure 

from the grassroots who suffer from battle fatigue and who desire to lead a normal life are 

also a part of this complex calculus. Domestic pressure has seemed to have had positive 

effects—at least indirectly—in the resolution of conflict in Northern Ireland and the Basque 

country, but not in the Middle East, where conditions are so desperate that hopes for peace 

have seemed a mirage.

Perhaps more critically, the leader may feel that the status quo is bad and likely to get worse 

and that it is better to run the risk of generating domestic dissent now rather than later or of 

dealing with the current leader of the opposition rather than with potentially more radical 

successors. Other factors may also diminish doubts among leaders about signing and implementing a risky agreement. For example, some failures to implement are to be expected at 

the start of any peace process because the terms of any initial agreement are likely to be 

ambiguous and each side will try to take advantage of these ambiguities. In turn, awareness 

among leaders that this is likely to happen will allay some fears and moderate against overreactions to certain instances of noncompliance by the opposing side. Therefore, nondecisive 

failures to implement should be noted but not stressed early in the post-agreement period. 

Additionally, as nonimplementation can cause a leader to lose a reputation—or not gain 

one—for trustworthiness, aware leaders may be less inclined to grossly violate an agreement, 

particularly for fear that his or her tarnished reputation may adversely affect any future negotiations. And, as there are a variety of techniques available to decrease vulnerability against 

the dangers of noncompliance, leaders may sign a preliminary agreement as a way to test the 

intentions of the other.

In short, even a peace process that one or both sides think is doomed to fail may generate a 

degree of political, economic, and psychic investment that might slowly accumulate into 

genuine support for peace. For example, even presumably untrustworthy leaders may come 

to enjoy a new status as a peacemaker, resource recipient, and legitimized spokesman for the 

cause. Or new leaders may emerge who protest the loss of earlier opportunities—as happened with the growth of internal opposition to Arafat among some young leaders. However, 

much will depend on the propensities of the leaders, the degree of risk they are willing to 

take, their judgment about the strength of the opposition, their assumptions about the future, 

and—above all—their alternatives to risking peace. Clearly, it is unlikely that any but the 

strongest leader will fully commit to a fragile and imperfect peace without fearful mental 
reservations. Israel’s peacemakers at Oslo may seem to refute this point because they were so 

optimistic about what they had achieved, but that very optimism, if not naivete, may have 

contributed to—but not caused—the ensuing disaster.

The Oslo Accords: Why They Failed

The belief that the Oslo Accords were a major step toward the final resolution of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict is now a “shattered dream.”30 Despite repeated official efforts to restart 

the peace process, despite apparently endless unofficial and semiofficial efforts by notables 

on both sides to work out the terms of a final agreement, despite the fact that the rough 

outlines of a compromise settlement that seems preferable to the status quo have been 

obvious for many years, despite the staggering and mounting costs of the conflict, and 

despite the widespread awareness that the conflict could get worse and make any settlement 

impossible, finding a path out of the swamp of despair and bitterness has proven too difficult 

for even the most dedicated of peacemakers, let alone the ambivalent and fearful peacemakers of the region itself. Indeed, the notion that the conflict has no solution is widely 

prevalent once again and self-styled realists insist that conflict management is the only prudent alternative. Oslo, with all its imperfections, deserved a better fate.

Why did this happen? Difficulties, delays, setbacks, misunderstandings, reluctant and tentative efforts to stumble forward, and other problems were inevitable. Agreements that resolve 

bitter, protracted conflicts are rarely going to offer an elegant progression into a brave new 

world of peace and reconciliation—or normalization, as the Israelis always hoped. But total 

failure and a peace process that made a return to an even more destructive conflict ever more 

likely were not inevitable. That level of failure is not attributable to a single cause. To fully 

understand why Oslo failed, we need to understand how the leaders and public alike came 

to conceptualize what to expect from the peace process, how the other was likely to behave, 

and how they themselves had to behave to protect their interests and advance their cause. 

From this perspective, what seemed to be a rational and sensible compromise in the eyes of 

outside analysts—and peacemakers—could also seem to be a high-risk venture into dangerous and uncharted territory to the parties involved. The status quo may have been bad, but 

it was rarely unbearably bad for leaders in safe exile, for those who benefited from the conflict, or indeed for ordinary citizens who adjusted to living within its constraints—even those 

set by an apparently endless stream of suicide bombers. Moreover, the dangers of the status 

quo were known and usually manageable.

While conflict syndrome was decidedly not the only factor that made progress toward stable 

peace so difficult, it did compound the negative effects of the other more widely cited factors 

for Oslo’s failure. Although the costs of the conflict have been staggering and the outlines of 

a mutually beneficial—if also painful—agreement are apparent, the psychological and political constraints of the syndrome generated largely negative dynamics, creating and then 

exacer­bating patterns of behavior that accelerated the race to the bottom. However, stronger 

and wiser leadership on both sides could have at least slowed the deterioration of the process 

22 How Not to Make Peace
The Intrinsic Nature of Peacemaking in Protracted Conflicts 23

and—with cooperation between them—perhaps even gradually reversed the downward 

trend, thereby strengthening the peace. But, as fate would have it, the failure of leadership 

made the constraints of the conflict syndrome even worse, leading the process to end in a 

disastrous fashion.

 25

Resurrecting the Peace Process: 

Uncertainty and Hope

Despite the apparently mortal wounds that have been inflicted on the Oslo peace process, 

there are a number of astute and experienced analysts who insist that the peace process can 

be resurrected and that a mutually acceptable compromise peace is still within reach. These 

analysts tend to believe that the major obstacle to peace is the continued Israeli occupation 

of the West Bank and the continued and badly disguised efforts to increase the size of key 

settlement blocs. They also believe that Arafat’s successors and the Palestinian people will 

accept the two-state solution as definitive. The evidence for this is fourfold: (1) polls seem to 

show that roughly 70 percent of the Palestinian people now support a two-state solution and 

believe that they can live in peace with Israel after their own state has been established; 

(2) various unofficial negotiations have been successful in reaching agreement on even the 

most controversial issues on the negotiating agenda, such as the right of return; (3) a new 

leadership is gradually emerging within the Palestinian community that may ultimately replace 

the dispiriting and corrupt leadership of the past, although there are obvious conflicts over 

who can or will lead and in what direction; and (4) battle fatigue and a desperate desire to 

lead a normal life have begun to affect both communities, which may generate more support 

for at least thinking about the unthinkable—a compromise peace that will require some sacrifice of sacred goals on both sides.31 Some analysts also argue that even for Israelis who distrust the peace process, the idea of hunkering down behind the so-called security wall, which 

separates Israelis and Palestinians and encompasses many West Bank settlements, might seem 

less prudent than taking a risk on peace, especially given the new dangers of catastrophic 

terrorism and virulent Islamic fanaticism.

There are, however, some reasons for doubt and skepticism about reaching a compromise 

peace in the near term. For example, there are contrary polling numbers that suggest that a 

majority of Palestinians now want not only the land Israel captured after the 1967 war, but 

all of mandatory Palestine—that is, they want the destruction of Israel as soon as possible. In 

effect, in a familiar dialectic, the grievous losses the Palestinian people and the Palestinian 

Authority have suffered in the ongoing intifada seem to have increased demands for greater 

compensation and diminished any willingness to compromise for peace. The Palestinian 

community has also expressed massive support for the continuation of terrorism despite the 

fact that it has made most Israelis less willing to compromise and has generated widespread 

support for the construction of the aforementioned security wall, which in some areas 

intrudes beyond the 1967 boundaries into Palestinian territory, making compromise even 

more difficult. The wall may even generate sharp internal conflict in Israel if it fails to protect 

most settlements.32

Equally troubling, even some Palestinians who are within the peace camp have clearly indicated that they will not recognize Israel’s right to exist as a legitimate Middle Eastern state, a 

4
26 How Not to Make Peace

denial that suggests any peace will only be regarded as a temporary stage in a continuing 

conflict. For example, moderates such as the late Faisal Husseini have occasionally made statements suggesting that the ultimate aim of the Palestinian movement is the destruction of 

Israel. Further, Hamas and other terrorist groups have consistently indicated that they will 

oppose any peace with Israel; their ability to undermine or even destroy a fragile peace process by continued atrocities that generate increasingly harsh retaliation by Israel is already 

evident. It is far from clear whether a renewed peace process would be able to withstand such 

actions and reactions. In addition, the new scale and magnitude of the terrorist threat, coming not only from the terrorists’ willingness and potential ability to use weapons of mass 

destruction, but also from the increasing radicalization of parts of the Muslim world, suggest 

that Israel may have to employ policy responses that further alienate Palestinians and its 

neighbors.

A continued domestication or normalization of the conflict among Israelis and Palestinians 

also makes it less likely that a comprehensive peace will be possible in the near term. People 

adjust to the war, internalize its costs, and learn to live with it—as Israelis have learned to live 

with suicide bombers and Palestinians with socioeconomic deprivation, if with real costs in 

both cases. Pressures on the leadership to “do something” or to take risks for peace will 

diminish and, indeed, as the entrapment model implies, the pressure to increase the level of 

violence may escalate, if only to rationalize past expenditures in lives and resources. This 

means that the stalemate between the two sides will be hard to break and that keeping it 

from being a race to the bottom will be difficult, precisely because the stalemate is not 

unbearable. The closer the stalemate comes to being unbearable, however, the likelier it will 

be to generate demands for revenge and retaliation—no matter the costs. The creation of a 

security wall might help Israel to lower the threat of terrorism and thus to continue living with 

a nasty but bearable status quo, but other means of terrorism, pressure from abroad, and 

continuing economic decline may soon force Israel to recalculate its interests—and, one 

hopes, resume a peace process with new leaders on both sides.

However, even if a new agreement were to be negotiated that avoided some of the mistakes 

of the Oslo process—for example, by making much clearer what the Palestinians would get 

from the peace—and even if external powers promised massive and continuing amounts of 

aid and support, the Palestinian state that emerged might not be viable: providing jobs and 

other basic human needs for the citizens of the West Bank and Gaza, as well as those who 

return from the refugee camps, will be a massive undertaking. It will be especially difficult 

because the educational system has been hampered for some time by a lack of resources, a 

loss of schooling time, and an environment hardly conducive to the educational process. This 

may, of course, only be a transitional problem, given the talents of the Palestinian community, 

but it does imply the existence for some time of a cadre of young people still prone to destabilizing violence. If the new state begins to perform as badly as Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, 

discontent will be quickly generated and the likely outcome could be a renewed demand to 

capture the land “between the Jordan and the sea.” While these negative considerations may 

be as unstable or ephemeral as the positive considerations suggested by the peace camp, they 
Resurrecting the Peace Process: Uncertainty and Hope 27

should not be ignored in the wave of euphoria that will inevitably be generated by a new 

agreement, even one that seems to resolve the most contentious issues.

Still, however the pluses and minuses of these contrary views are calculated, even a tenuous 

agreement that might make matters worse in the short or medium term is a better gamble 

than persisting with the disastrously failed policies of the past. Such an initiative might break 

a futile stalemate that benefits neither side and might begin to break down the idea that the 

only solution is no solution until one side is strong enough to win. Put differently, the disasters 

and frustrations of the years since Oslo was negotiated have obviously made peace vastly 

more difficult to achieve, and this may not be a “ripe moment”—whatever that over-used 

phrase is taken to mean—to seek to restart the negotiating process. But peace desperately 

needs to be sought now not because it is a good alternative but because it is a better alternative than any other possibility—a perspective that recalls Churchill’s famous quip about 

democracy. Despite the pessimistic arguments just cited, nothing is written in stone, neither 

the arguments of the optimists nor those of the pessimists: leaders change, the views of allies 

evolve, some beneficial learning may go on even where it is not immediately apparent, and 

surprises and shocks that alter cognitive and political universes are always possible, if not 

probable. Even where conflict resolution remains a distant dream, conflict amelioration is 

always a possibility. Still, a note of caution is needed: a “bad” peace could raise expectations 

too high, could increase support for extremists if it failed, and could generate a moral hazard 

as the parties turn to other agendas. Awareness of these dangers may help to avert them—

and help to focus attention on the need to deepen the peace process.

The Role of Third Parties

The episodic and inconsistent involvement of third parties in the Oslo peace process—bar the 

important but largely procedural involvement of the Norwegians—does not seem to have 

been a major or decisive factor in its demise. Even powerful third parties such as the United 

States cannot compel ambivalent and distrustful enemies to implement an agreement that is 

domestically divisive for both and that is inherently unclear about its final destination. But the 

situation has become so desperate and the belief that the Israelis and the Palestinians can 

themselves negotiate a way out of the conflict has sunk so low that some analysts have advocated leaping over the difficulties by imposing a solution from the “outside-in.”33 However, 

third-party interventions generally tend to come too late and to be of limited value for a number of reasons: early warnings about the need for intervention are ambiguous; rallying domestic support for interventions that are costly and not clearly related to an immediate national 

interest is difficult; the need to intervene may clash with other interests; and the parties themselves may resent and resist unwanted interventions. As a result, “big bang” negotiations do 

not always end happily, especially when strong minorities bitterly oppose necessary concessions. The Dayton Agreement, for example, is still very tenuous; the conflict could quickly 

reignite if the peacekeeping forces were removed. There may also be a kind of moral hazard 

in assuming that only external intervention can resolve a conflict. It relieves the participants 

of the obligation to take some risks for peace or to explore ways out of the disaster that their 
28 How Not to Make Peace

own policies have created—letting the “big guy” do it is too easy an option. Further, the 

failure of incremental peacemaking in the past hardly means that an imposed “big bang” 

negotiation will produce better results. In fact, given the persistence of old patterns of 

thought and behavior, a diktat could disintegrate even more rapidly than a slow, step-by-step 

peace process.

However, not all external interventions or cases of imposed peace are necessarily bad. There 

is some contrary evidence to suggest that external involvement can be useful in determining 

which demands should be compromised and which demands need not. Additionally, a third 

party (or parties) can provide useful political cover and substantial resource transfers at a 

critical point in the peace process. Nevertheless, external salvation is not a panacea and has 

not always been useful. As the economists are wont to say, it all depends. This is a universe 

of fuzzy logic and multidimensional patterns of causation—no single solution is likely to be 

uniformly adequate.

One final illustration from the peace process in Northern Ireland may be indicative of this 

point. The editors of A Farewell to Arms? note that Good Friday did not occur because of 

harmony or because each side saw discussion and compromise as better than violence and 

intransigence. Rather, they note,

It would be comforting to report that there had been a meeting of minds; 

that peace was the natural result of a rapid growth of that most valuable 

piece of scarce political real estate—the middle ground. . . . But it did not 

happen like that. . . . There was no Road to Damascus conversion to the 

other side’s point of view, no sudden outbreak of moderation, but a long 

and very painful, and as yet incomplete recognition that the old means of 

achieving desired ends would not work or were no longer acceptable to 

those upon whom the opposing camps depended for support.34

The peace process was therefore bound to be lengthy because many felt it was either an 

illusion or a mere interlude in the conflict; in effect, it engendered as much hostility as enthusiasm on both sides. Once again, premature euphoria was likely to generate rapid disillusionment rather than rapid progress.

Setting Expectations

Establishing modest expectations for any new peace initiative, especially in its early stages, is 

a useful and perhaps necessary preface to efforts to break through the wall of suspicion, 

distrust, unresolved grievances, and an unfortunate but inevitable desire for revenge for 

earlier atrocities. But doing so does not answer the question of how to get out of the current 

stalemate. Many have argued that we should emphasize shared future interests in peace and 

common problems, that we should seek linkages and trade-offs to make painful concessions 

more bearable, that we should seek like-minded allies in the enemy camp, that we should 
Resurrecting the Peace Process: Uncertainty and Hope 29

seek to enhance credibility by taking actions costly to ourselves (such as Sadat’s visit to 

Jerusalem), that we should seek to put ourselves empathetically in the shoes of the other, or 

that we should extend each decision maker’s time perspective so that the long-run benefits 

of peace become more relevant and consequential. From the same rationalist perspective, 

each side might also benefit from asking itself why it is participating in the peace process: if 

the answer is to seek a genuine peace, the appropriate policies and trade-offs are likely to be 

considerably different than if the answer is only to take advantage of a truce.

Unfortunately, while these are sensible and prudent suggestions, they are likely to be ignored 

or misused by would-be peacemakers who take the other’s duplicity and hypocrisy for granted 

and are primarily driven by nonrational and subjective concerns. This implies that a successful 

Israeli-Palestinian peace process cannot focus only on resolving crucial issues through the 

usual trade-offs, reciprocal concessions, and adaptive learning. Initiatives that diminish prevailing patterns of thought and action and unstated fears and resentments must also be built into 

the peace process from the start, no matter how difficult or uncomfortable this may be for 

diplomats and negotiators.

 31

A Way Forward? 

Outlines of a Strategy

It is not my intention here to attempt to lay out a fully articulated strategy to revive and sustain 

the peace process that began at Oslo. Nevertheless, a brief comment on a possible way forward does seem appropriate, especially one that reflects—and reflects upon—the central 

argument of this paper. I will begin by reemphasizing a few background points that a new 

peace strategy needs to keep clearly in mind. I should perhaps also note that the appropriate 

mind-set for this venture recalls a famous formula by Samuel Beckett: try again, fail again, fail 

better. Perhaps we might also add “try better” to Beckett’s list.

One critical point that emerges from my argument is that there is inevitably a bad fit between 

the constraints set by the conflict syndrome, especially ambivalent and inconsistent commitments to implementing principles that require substantial concessions, and the measures that 

need to be taken to increase the public legitimacy of the peace by proving to a suspicious and 

disheartened populace that peace is worth preserving. As a legion of conflict resolution analysts have argued for many years, the dispute needs to be transformed or redefined to break 

the stalemate that emerges from the reciprocal reiteration of grievances, the reciprocal 

exchange of atrocities, and the reciprocal and escalating failure to implement agreements.

How to do that, however, is rarely made very clear and most of the emphasis in the literature 

is on long-run changes. In contrast, immediate, salient, and felt changes in assumptions about 

the benefits that peace can or will produce are needed. Practically no peace process could 

withstand the endemic and escalating failures of the Oslo peace process, but neither could it 

withstand asking the leaders on both sides to take actions that directly threaten their power 

or place. One way to try to diminish the effects of this dilemma, which has no simple solution, 

is to make external support contingent on initially private leadership guarantees that actions 

which aggravate red flag issues will be avoided—such as continued support for terrorism and 

continued settlement activity. Serious failures to follow through on these guarantees should 

be immediately denounced and the peace process should be suspended until there are 

renewed guarantees of performance. Such onerous conditions may seem excessive in light of 

the constraints of conflict syndrome, but the peace will fail anyway without a real commitment to avoid actions that guarantee failure. The Middle East cannot afford another venture 

into peace as a charade or as an exercise in rhetorical gamesmanship. A window of opportunity for serious negotiations will only occur when leaders on both sides have come to recognize that a fragile peace will survive—and, one hopes, prosper—only if and when they are 

willing to make serious—if initially private—commitments about new patterns of behavior. 

Without such commitments, the peace process will flounder and will not to be saved by 

cynical allusions to the need for a “peace of the brave.”

In theory, a transformative process would focus on changing public attitudes, the definition of 

central issues, the rules by which the two sides carry on their conflict (for example, through a 

5
32 How Not to Make Peace

cease-fire or a tacit agreement to end the use of violence for some period of time), and the 

underlying structures that have deepened the conflict over time, such as economic inequality, 

social separation, and inequities in treatment. Given the necessity of building a constituency 

for peace and legitimizing a top-down peace process, the initial emphasis must be on changing 

societal structures because they have the most immediate impact on the lives of ordinary 

people. Given the limited resources of the government and the massive needs of the Palestinian 

people, such an initial effort would obviously require significant support from the international 

community. This happened with the Oslo agreement, but the United States and the international aid agencies yielded much too easily to Arafat’s demands for control over these 

resources. As a result, they were wasted on security-force salaries, an inefficient bureaucracy, 

and the illegal purchase of arms, and were otherwise lost through corruption. A new aid effort 

must be designed that maintains the usual standards of transparency and accountability and 

that does not yield to extortion—that is, give-me-the-money-or-there-will-be-chaos demands. 

Because Arafat received substantial sums without sufficient oversight, the Palestinian people 

did not benefit. They saw a disastrous decline in living standards—and chaos still ruled.

The initial policy focus thus must be on trying to drain the swamp before seeking to build on 

its very shaky foundations. Decades of failed efforts at development in the Middle East and 

elsewhere provide abundant proof that this task will never be fully or quickly accomplished. 

Nevertheless, there are useful things that can be done quickly and effectively, especially in 

meeting basic human needs and providing evidence to the long-suffering Palestinian people 

that their governing institutions will not be misused for personal gain and that these institutions will seek to meet public needs and to improve their performance. These tasks are exceptionally difficult, especially in the early stages of a peace process, but substantial empirical 

evidence suggests that initial public expectations are usually modest and realistic—in effect, 

a new governing authority has a honeymoon period to prove that it is something more than 

an old autocracy in a new disguise. However, while the structural elements of the conflict bear 

a large share of the responsibility for deepening and sustaining it, they are least amenable to 

quick solutions, which may be one reason why they are often ignored or underemphasized in 

the peace process. Thus, getting quick results will be dependent on external support that is 

both generous and carefully planned. And, through this support, the problems created by the 

need for quick and tangible results and the ambivalence of the parties about trusting the 

peace process will be diminished: the initially strong commitments will come from external 

parties and the benefits will be (relatively) quickly felt on the ground.

Since negotiations tend to begin because of leadership judgments about future developments, 

changes in the pattern of expectations are crucial. These changes reflect new interpretations 

of what the peace process can produce and what needs to be done at what point to improve 

the chances that the peace will begin to be perceived as intrinsically valuable and not merely 

as a new stage in the conflict. Success at this stage will be closely linked to the success of the 

initial aid effort. But attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors must also be changed. Unsurprisingly, 

new patterns of thought have been slow in coming and have been largely confined to tactical 

shifts about how to pursue traditional goals. But recent leadership changes, generational 

shifts, pressure from external allies, and shocks that precipitate the rethinking of conventional 
A Way Forward? Outlines of a Strategy 33

wisdom—for example, judgments about the utility of terrorism after 9/11—may be accelerating new patterns of thought. Paul Pillar, a career CIA officer, has noted recently that “major 

policy changes tend to come only from actual disasters.”35 As Oslo clearly qualifies as one, it 

should generate new patterns of thought, although they are—as yet—very hard to detect. Of 

course, there is no guarantee that new patterns will be entirely beneficial, but it seems unlikely 

that they will produce results that are more dysfunctional than existing patterns of thought. 

Seeking to manage expectations more effectively, or at least being aware of how important 

they can be, may help—if nothing else—to avert rapid oscillation between premature euphoria and deep despair and cynicism.

An effective multidimensional peace process that will continue for years—or decades if 

genuine reconciliation is the goal—cannot be built on the fly. One consistent failure, as I have 

already emphasized, not only in the Oslo process but also in a number of other peace processes, has been the lack of planning in the steps needed to build support for a very fragile 

peace, to maintain its momentum, to deal with the inevitable misunderstandings, setbacks, 

and failures, and to create institutions to facilitate cooperation and communication. Failure to 

do so usually reflects the persistence of old patterns of thought and the belief that the peace 

is only transitory. Why plan for a post-peace period when the conflict will resume? Even if 

planning has been undertaken, it will not accomplish much if leaders are indifferent or blinded 

by ideology or ignorance. But this sort of planning could become very valuable for leaders 

who do want to drive the peace process forward in a very inhospitable environment.

Gradually Accelerating Incrementalism

In effect, one needs a peace strategy for the Middle East that takes into account the contextual constraints of peacemaking in a protracted conflict, that is heavily aware of the need for 

very salient improvements on the ground as quickly as possible, that plans and prepares for 

inevitable failures and setbacks, and that is increasingly demanding in terms of implementation and compliance as the peace process begins to prove its worth. This is a peace process 

that is initially modest, flexible, and front-loaded, but ultimately ambitious, sustained, and 

committed. Such a peace process, which I call “gradually accelerating incrementalism,” differs 

from traditional incrementalism by establishing as early as possible—perhaps tacitly among 

leaders at the start—a mutually agreed-upon set of shared goals to be achieved in defined 

stages of the process. It would begin with a major effort by the international community—

and Israel as the stronger party—to improve standards of living and quality of life for the 

Palestinian people and would focus on meeting basic human needs, such as health, sanitation, clean water, housing, and education. Commitments on implementation of proposals can 

be loose and permissive at this stage, but commitments not to violate tacit agreements on 

certain red flag issues must be firm—or the slide downward could accelerate once again. 

However, the leaders should not be asked at this stage to sacrifice central goals or to take 

actions that commit too early or preclude a quick retreat if such seems necessary. After all, 

the leaders may decide to explore a peace process, but this does not mean they want to do 

so at the risk of losing power or status.
34 How Not to Make Peace

Additionally, since there is a very strong need to begin strengthening the public legitimacy of 

peace as quickly as possible, efforts to contain or diminish corruption must commence immediately. Failure to do so was one of the major reasons why support for Oslo rapidly deteriorated in the Palestinian community: it was impossible to believe that a regime that was corrupt, brutal, and incompetent would produce major public benefits or deepen a fragile peace 

process. In the next stage, after some initial progress, there needs to be relatively flexible 

commitments to implement more of the principles and provisions of the peace agreement, 

but with both sides aware that support for the peace will still be tentative and that extremists 

will be increasingly desperate to destroy the peace process. This bears at least a rough resemblance to the difficulties that some Eastern European and developing countries faced in 

moving from discredited authoritarian regimes to relatively more democratic regimes amid 

resistance by the old guard and a disintegrating economy. The “politics of accommodation” 

that prevailed in many of these cases, in which some painful compromises were accepted to 

avoid a descent into civil war, may also be relevant in the present Israeli-Palestinian context. 

This is also a period in which cheating may be disproportionately dangerous because it confirms the other’s worst fears and accelerates reciprocal defections from commitments. One 

hopes, however, that success in the first phase will diminish such dangers and that careful 

monitoring without harsh sanctions will reduce incentives to cheat. Once progress has been 

achieved on these fronts, the process must turn to resolving the central issues of the conflict 

and to making increasingly firm commitments about implementation and deadlines. An independent and presumably unbiased panel should be tasked with monitoring these commitments and any violations of them should lead to serious sanctions. Since the concessions and 

compromises at this stage are more burdensome and dangerous to both sides, the threat of 

coercive and punishing sanctions for noncompliance may increase incentives to comply and to 

fulfill painful obligations.

Such a process would resemble the economic concept of a “cascade of information,” except 

that the cascade here is of small steps that accumulate into a sustained progression toward 

an agreed vision of peace. Any and all measures can be used in this pursuit, but it should be 

emphasized that changes in the rhetoric of mutual invective are imperative immediately—a 

point Arafat ignored, to his detriment. Such changes should be accompanied by an attempt 

to begin to alter educational practices aimed at vilifying and denying the legitimacy of the 

other. These are more than atmospherics because they provide crucial information about how 

serious one or both parties are about the peace process. Failure to pay attention to these 

issues during the Oslo years, whether deliberately or because of a lack of awareness of their 

importance, was crucial, not least because it generated or exacerbated Israeli fears that the 

Palestinians and larger Arab world would never accept Israel as a legitimate Middle Eastern 

state. (Similar educational failures have occurred in Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland.) As a 

result, the legitimacy of the peace process was always under threat and the fear that it was 

merely an interlude in the conflict affected attitudes and behaviors on both sides.

In beginning a new process, one might also think about reviving the old Cold War idea of 

GRIT—that is, graduated, unilateral, and reciprocal reductions in tension.36 Such initiatives are 

designed to break a stalemate in which each side resists movement for fear of seeming weak. 
A Way Forward? Outlines of a Strategy 35

Given persistent mistrust, initial steps may require third-party support or strong leadership 

from the more powerful side in the conflict. However, this perfectly reasonable image of 

reciprocal and unilateral concessions will not work well if one or both sides see concessions 

as a sign of weakness and if one or both leaders feel too weak to respond appropriately. And 

it will not work if one or both leaders are using the peace process only to prepare for renewed 

conflict or as a means of deflecting domestic discontent. If careful draftsmanship can allay 

some fears about conceding too much too soon, so too can an agreement not to press for 

too quick a resolution of the most difficult issues—or not to surrender any demands until 

there is a final agreement.

Finally, the obviously severe problems of generating and sustaining cooperation in these 

circumstances can be diminished not only by a variety of familiar techniques, such as side 

payments, recognition that the parties are in a continuing game, and hedging strategies to 

reduce risk, but also by joint recognition of the need to focus on “diffuse reciprocity.”37 In 

such circumstances, the parties choose to cooperate because they hope to benefit over many 

years and many issues but not necessarily in every year or on every issue. It should be emphasized that the notion of diffuse reciprocity is likely to work best and to produce more joint 

benefits if the stronger party accepts the need to act first and to expect less in the initial 

period after a negotiation. Israeli governments, especially the right-wing administrations of 

Netanyahu and Sharon, failed miserably in this regard, raising justified suspicions about their 

commitment to the peace process. Northern Ireland offers a more positive illustration of the 

potential benefits of reciprocated unilateral actions: as noted, shortly after the IRA accepted 

the need to disarm, one of the main Protestant militias announced that it had ordered its 

gunmen to stand down. This may illustrate that leaders in Northern Ireland are more aware 

than those in Israel that domestic politics is not the only game in town: one also needs to 

respond to the actions of the other without perceiving them only as traps.

 37

Alternative Roads to Peace

The approach to peace that I have outlined here stands in sharp contrast to two recent contributions to the debate over the direction future Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives might 

take. The first is reflected in an unofficial agreement negotiated by a group of Israeli and 

Palestinian political figures and intellectuals in Geneva, Switzerland, that was presented to the 

public in October 2003. The participants managed to reach agreement on many of the conflict’s central issues, if with some ambiguity in places, but this effort ultimately disappeared 

as rapidly as so many prior attempts to break through the stalemate. One reason why it floundered is that none of the subjective elements of conflict syndrome were discussed, perhaps 

because addressing them requires a long-term peacemaking strategy—and not merely a 

peace of grand gestures. An even stronger reason for its failure was that this initiative got too 

far ahead of where the publics were—as yet—willing to go. Many on both sides stated that 

the other side could not be trusted to implement commitments. As I argue, the respective 

publics need to see the benefits of peace and to be reeducated in new beliefs and attitudes 

before any such agreement can survive and prosper. One might presume that the negotiators 

of this agreement, many of whom were involved in negotiating Oslo, would have painfully 

learned this lesson during the Oslo years, but apparently they had not. Moreover, if such an 

agreement were to begin to earn public support, it would require leaders committed to 

peace, to containing their own extremists, and to speaking the truth to their own people 

about the need to accept painful compromises and to alter ancient beliefs. One doubts that 

the current leadership on either side is willing or able to rise to such tasks.

Sharon has his own version of what he calls a “long-term interim agreement,” or standstill 

agreement, with the Palestinians. This involves unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, a 

limited Palestinian state in parts of the West Bank and all of Gaza, completion of the security 

wall between Israel and the Palestinian territories, and discussion of the central issues, such 

as Jerusalem and the right of return, only on some distant date.38 This is a peace policy virtually guaranteed to sustain and deepen the conflict, especially if it goes hand in hand with an 

effort to expand the main settlement blocs in the West Bank, and is a testament to the unwillingness of the right wing in Israel to give up its hopes and delusions about the retention of 

territory. Israel is powerful, but its position is also precarious: its ability to contain the escalating threat of catastrophic terrorism may not go on for long, and its tendency to ignore 

the opinion of rising numbers of people—not all of whom can be dismissed as anti-Semites—

who believe that Israel’s policies are generating support for Islamic terrorism in their own 

countries may become increasingly costly. In Europe, for example, the media, intellectuals, and 

academics, especially those on the Left, continue to turn against Israel. In fact, many of them 

justify or rationalize violence against Israel while denouncing any Israeli retaliation as excessive 

or unjustified. As a result, Israel risks becoming even more of an international pariah with few 

friends. The attendant dangers and discomforts of being in such a state will surely rise.39

6
38 How Not to Make Peace

After Arafat—Possibilities and Constraints

Arafat’s death may create new opportunities for negotiation and new dangers for both Israelis 

and Palestinians. However, it does not change the analytical argument about why Oslo failed 

and what share of the responsibility for that failure should be attributed to Arafat himself. Nor 

does it change the underlying theoretical argument about the impact of conflict syndrome on 

how the conflict continues to deepen or why it is so difficult to resolve the conflict despite its 

ever-mounting costs and the fact that shifting majorities on both sides seem willing to risk 

peace. What his death does change is short-run calculations about what may become possible 

and what needs to be done on both sides to grasp new opportunities—which may arise not 

merely from his passing but also from the Bush administration’s willingness to expend some 

political capital on the Middle East peace process.

Although Arafat is gone, the beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions on both sides that undermined the implementation of Oslo are still powerfully present and cannot be quickly altered. 

In addition, terrorist groups, both secular and religious, remain committed to Israel’s destruction. The fact that they are seeking and may acquire more deadly arms raises the stakes 

considerably. However, there have been some tentative signs of moderation from Hamas. 

Whether such signs are related to its hope to benefit from the electoral process or are simply 

a tactical lull related to the threat of Israeli retaliation is unclear. Much will depend obviously 

on whether an effective peace process can be initiated, on how well a new Palestinian 

Authority performs, and on how effective it is in marginalizing extremists by altering the 

beliefs and behaviors that have made groups such as Hamas popular.

An upsurge in optimism over the possibility of a resumption of negotiations also reflects the 

obvious fact that Arafat’s death removes at least part of the excuse that Israel and the United 

States had for largely ignoring the peace process or whatever was left of it—specifically, that 

Arafat had repeatedly failed to honor commitments or to do anything to stop terror. 

Unfortunately, as many commentators have been quick to note, his death does not remove 

the more general reason for Israel’s refusal to negotiate: the absence, as yet, of a reliable 

partner who is able and willing to stop or at least limit the violence and who is willing to 

accept a two-state solution (on mutually agreed terms) as final. There are a variety of reasons 

to doubt that any such leader either can or will emerge any time soon. Arafat’s success in 

putting the Palestinian cause on the international agenda is unquestioned, but, in retrospect, 

his record will be tarnished not only by what he did not do but also by his refusal to share 

power, to allow other leaders to emerge, and to prepare for an orderly succession.

The election of Mahmoud Abbas is potentially encouraging, but Abbas also lacks the power 

and perhaps the will to contain the extremists. Further, he probably lacks the status needed 

to make necessary concessions on symbolic issues that Arafat long manipulated to retain 

popular support, such as the right of return. Abbas’s desire to incorporate extremist groups 

into the political process, rather than to attempt to crush them militarily, is undoubtedly a 

reflection of his own desire to avoid civil war and the general weakness and unreliability of 

his security forces. But neither Israel nor the United States have seemed willing to give him 
Alternative Roads to Peace 39

the time and support needed to strengthen his hold on power. They also have failed to understand that making demands that are too risky for him to address will only lead to inconsistent 

policy responses that could potentially generate instability and perhaps chaos.

Moreover, Arafat maintained power by buying off dissent and avoiding decisions that would 

likely generate significant dissent. Now, with different groups wanting different things—not 

all of which are compatible—and with a strong likelihood of weak leadership emerging from 

the struggle to take over, the willingness of any leader to take large risks for a compromise 

peace is likely to be sharply constrained. This will be especially so if personal ambition trumps 

group needs and if Arafat’s “old-boy network,” desperately afraid of losing economic benefits, tries to retain power. In the worst of circumstances, internal violence could erupt until one 

strong leader emerges. Unless the Palestinians can remain united without Arafat’s dominant 

presence, the short-run prospects for peace may actually deteriorate.

Much will also depend, of course, on the willingness of the Sharon government to make a 

more generous offer than anything it has been willing to put on the table in the past. The 

new Palestinian leadership will be in desperate need of substantive concessions from Israel—

for example, on the release of prisoners, the turning over of tax resources, and the pulling of 

some troops from Palestinian areas—but it is far from clear that Sharon will be willing to offer 

more than cosmetic gestures or that the Israeli public—badly scarred by the terrorism of the 

Oslo years—will accept offering any more concessions until the Palestinians prove they are 

serious about peace. Needless to say, the Palestinians are unlikely to do so unless they receive 

significant benefits quickly. Nor is it clear that the Bush administration’s brave words about its 

willingness to expend political capital on the Middle East peace process will survive the inevitable disappointments and frustrations of peacemaking or even protests from domestic supporters of Sharon’s hard-line policies, such as Christian fundamentalist groups and some 

conservative Jewish organizations. Yet Sharon’s successful withdrawal from Gaza and the lessthan-feared reaction of the settlers might suggest that the old warrior wants to leave a mark 

as a peacemaker. It might further suggest that—if he can remain in power and maintain 

majority support in the Israeli electorate—he might risk even more in the future by ordering 

major withdrawals from the West Bank and a major confrontation with the settlers and their 

supporters.40

The severe dilemmas confronting weak leaders in a complex and dangerous environment are 

major obstacles that impede progress toward an effective peace process. The greatest dangers 

to such leaders may reflect two linked factors: the failure to think contextually about the 

constraints of working within an environment created by decades of bitter conflict and pervasive distrust, and the consequent failure to abandon tactics and strategies that have failed 

so miserably in the past. Instead, failure is too easily attributed to the duplicity and bad faith 

of the other and change in “normal” patterns of interaction is resisted as being too risky. As 

a result, the guilt for past failures is shared. Thus, Israelis continue to make demands on the 

Palestinians that they know cannot or will not be fulfilled, such as confronting terrorist groups 

directly and forcefully. The dangers of doing so are simply too great for a weak Abbas regime 

that is unwilling to risk civil war and fearful of delegitimizing the electoral process before it 
40 How Not to Make Peace

can prove its worth. However, such demands are obviously understandable from an Israeli 

domestic perspective: forestalling terrorist actions by groups dedicated to Israel’s destruction 

is a prime purpose of the peace process. But asking for too much too soon merely indicates 

that Israeli policy has not adjusted to the singular needs of a very fragile peace process.

By the same token, the Palestinians continue to use the rhetoric of the Arafat years, continue 

to extol the heroism of the “martyrs,” and continue to demand large concessions from the 

Israelis before there is sufficient evidence that the peace process can and will provide mutual

benefits. Israel needs to act more generously and more quickly than it has yet done, but it is 

not sensible for the Palestinians to ignore the profound political and psychological damage 

created by repeated terrorist atrocities or Israel’s own domestic constraints. In short, peace 

requires more than Arafat’s departure. Both sides need to understand the complex and critical 

linkages and feedback between their own beliefs, needs, and actions, and the beliefs, needs, 

and actions of the other.

Conclusion: Short-Run Pessimism, Long-Run Hope

Only the very brave or the very foolish are willing to offer confident predictions about shortterm prospects in the Middle East. Developments are still mostly driven by largely unpredictable events within the conflict itself, the region, and even the wider world. Such events could 

thrust the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to the top of the international agenda or onto the 

back burner—or some uncomfortable place between these extremes. The only certainty is 

that the problem itself will not disappear and will fester without sustained effort. Short-term 

forecasting is also bound to be unreliable because of one ancient social science axiom that 

continues to operate: every darn thing is related to every other darn thing. Multiple linkages 

and complex patterns of feedback guarantee high levels of risk and uncertainty. These considerations come together to suggest that short-term pessimism about a rapid breakthrough 

to peace in the post-Arafat years is probably justified. The transition to a new era in the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians is likely to be rough and perhaps even traumatic if 

the Palestinians do not quickly resolve their domestic conflicts and the Israelis try to hang on 

to too much land in the West Bank. Nevertheless, longer-term prospects for peace are 

brighter because certain factors are pushing both sides—suspiciously and reluctantly—toward 

“thinking about the unthinkable.” This presupposes, of course, a carefully planned peace 

process that receives generous and sustained external support and much wiser internal leadership. The fact that much has not changed after Arafat’s death, and some things have indeed 

gotten worse, should not be used as a rationalization for doing nothing or arguing that failure 

is inevitable. Improvements that can slowly accumulate into significant change are always 

possible and small steps consistently implemented can produce large effects.

The need to institutionalize the peace process may be the least understood factor in successful 

peacemaking. The Israelis and Palestinians did create, especially after the Madrid Con­ference 

of 1991, a number of functional committees to discuss a variety of specific issues. Unfortunately, they never achieved much because of turmoil in the political and security arenas. 
Alternative Roads to Peace 41

Something quite different is needed here—specifically, a high-level, well-staffed, and tripartite committee that is asked to try to avert or at least to diminish the effects of the inevitable 

crises, shocks, and misunderstandings that are likely to occur. Such an institution with a fiveor seven-year mandate would not be a panacea, but it would offer a degree of hope that 

some of the worst crises can be contained, that some of the least anticipated surprises can 

be anticipated, and that the most destabilizing misunderstandings can be clarified. The habits 

of cooperation that this committee establishes could prove useful, as could the possibility of 

public exposure for cheating, but perhaps the most important potential benefit is that such 

an institution might forestall or certainly delay another race to the bottom.

Such an approach offers no quick solutions or guarantees of progress. It may also seem too 

slow and too modest for a conflict that always seems on the verge of an explosion. But all the 

grandiose efforts to impose solutions, to compel the parties to leap into the unknown, and 

to capitalize on the seemingly unending initiatives of various officials, former officials, and 

notable leaders to negotiate a stable peace have floundered. This is not surprising given the 

failure of such efforts to deal with or understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict syndrome. 

Perhaps, then, gradually accelerating incrementalism, which does recognize how far the peace 

process has to travel and does take account of the range of obstacles to progress, may offer 

some hope of arresting and ultimately breaking out of an apparently unstoppable race to the 

bottom. A focus on sustained conflict amelioration is obviously less heroic—no Nobel Peace 

Prizes, no ceremonies on the White House lawn—than a focus on conflict resolution, but it 

may provide the best long-run hope for peace.

 43

Notes

1. William Finnegan, “The Invisible War,” New Yorker, January 25, 1999, 66.

2. See Finnegan, “The Invisible War,” 70; for Sri Lanka see Robert L. Rothstein, The 

Sri Lankan Peace Process: Lessons from the Middle East and Northern Ireland (Colombo: 

International Centre for Ethnic Studies, 2002), 22–3.

3. For Moshe Ma’oz’s comment, see his “The Oslo Peace Process: From Breakthrough to 

Breakdown,” in The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process, ed. Robert L. Rothstein, Moshe Ma’oz, 

and Khalil Shikaki (Sussex, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2002), 146.

4. The Oslo peace process did not, of course, occur in a vacuum. It was preceded by 

many negotiations, large and small, official and unofficial, and it has been followed by many 

more such efforts. My concentration on Oslo is thus not intended to deny the importance 

of these other initiatives.

5. Henry Siegman, “A ‘Map’ without a Destination,” International Herald Tribune,

October 9, 2002.

6. Herbert Simon’s well-known notion of “satisficing” implies choosing the first good 

enough option, but my adaptation of his idea rests on a strategy of avoidance and of 

choosing the least harmful option. See Herbert Simon, Models of Bounded Rationality

(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982), 35–64.

7. Some of the most negative views have been summarized in Dilip Hiro, Sharing the 

Promised Land—An Interwoven Tale of Israelis and Palestinians (London: Hodder and 

Stoughton, 1996), 485. Negative views by the Saudi ambassador to the United States are 

quoted in Elsa Walsh, “The Prince,” New Yorker, March 24, 2003, 58. Negative criticism 

within the Palestinian community is cited in Steven Erlanger, “Arafat Outfoxes His Political 

Foes—Again,” International Herald Tribune, August 17, 2004.

8. See Dennis Ross, The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East 

Peace (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), 338, 699, and 776; and Bill Clinton, 

My Life (London: Hutchinson, 2004), 943.

9. Quoted in David Horowitz, Still Life with Bombers: Israel in the Age of Terrorism

(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 116–17. The Palestinian journalist also notes that when 

Arafat saw that Israel had been forced out of Lebanon by twenty deaths a year, he decided 

he could do better than Oslo by launching a new and more violent intifada and by happily 

calling for a million “martyrs.”

10. See, for example, Jerome Slater, “The Missing Pieces in The Missing Peace,” Tikkun

20, no. 3 (2005): 22–25 and 58–61.

11. This concept is in the realm of pretheory, that is, of plausible hypotheses that might 

someday make a contribution to theory.
44 How Not to Make Peace

12. Quoted without attribution at the beginning of Paul Arthur, “The Anglo-Irish Peace 

Process: Obstacles to Peace,” in Robert Rothstein, After the Peace—Resistance and 

Reconciliation (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999), 65.

13. Quoted in New York Times, April 16, 1995.

14. Sumit Ganguly, The Crisis in Kashmir: Portents of War, Hopes of Peace (Cambridge: 

Cambridge University Press, 1997), 2. Rose is quoted in John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary,

Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 354.

15. Quoted in Adrian Guelke, “‘Comparatively Peaceful’: South Africa, the Middle East 

and Northern Ireland,” in A Farewell to Arms? From ‘Long War’ to Long Peace in Northern 

Ireland, ed. Michael Cox, Adrian Guelke, and Fiona Stephen (Manchester, UK: Manchester 

University Press, 2000), 226. Ironically, within a few short years after Crick’s negative 

forecast, a successful peace process was under way in South Africa, progress toward peace 

accelerated in Northern Ireland, and the Oslo Accords were negotiated—so, difficult yes, 

but “insoluble” maybe not.

16. Shlomo Ben-Ami, foreign minister under Barak, argues for an externally imposed 

settlement in “Bush’s Mideast Opportunity,” New York Times, April 5, 2002. Another 

argument for an imposed solution in a big bang negotiation is Hussein Agha and Robert 

Malley, “The Last Negotiation: How to End the Middle East Peace Process,” Foreign Affairs

81, no. 3 (May/June 2002): 10–18. The title of this piece is absurd for there will be no 

“last” negotiation in the Middle East, big bang or not, and the “end” might be considerably 

different from the authors’ pious hopes for an imposed settlement. See the comments by 

Tom Segev on management as the only remaining option in Roger Cohen, “Israel’s Wall, a 

Victory for the Logic of War,” International Herald Tribune, July 14, 2004.

17. There is a useful discussion of empathy in Robert Mnookin, Scott R. Peppet, and 

Adam S. Tulamello, Beyond Winning: Negotiating to Create Value in Deals and Disputes

(Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2000), 46–7. For other illustrations of 

the absence of empathy, see Cohen, “Israel’s Wall,” 2, and Arthur, “The Anglo-Irish Peace 

Process,” 75–84.

18. Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 

120 and 130, stresses the extent to which humiliation lasts longer than physical pain 

because the wounds of the former last much longer and because it “becomes constitutive 

of our sense of who we are.”

19. Quoted in a review by Ben Macintyre, “Eyeball to Eyeball,” New York Times Book 

Review, November 28, 2004, 9.

20. Ibid. Historian Peter Galison’s description of the Cold War’s “ontology of the enemy,” 

in which each side saw the other as a “cold-blooded, machinelike opponent” who wanted 

only to win and whose every move reflected that goal, recalls my ideas on conflict syndrome. 

Cited in Louis Menand, “Fat Man,” New Yorker, June 27, 2005, 97.

21. There is an excellent discussion of entrapment in Joel Brockner and Jeffrey Z. Rubin, 

Entrapment in Escalating Conflict: A Social-Psychological Analysis (New York: SpringerVerlag, 1985).
Notes 45

22. Quoted in George Packer, “Letter from Baghdad: War after the War,” New Yorker,

Nov. 24, 2003, 85.

23. Richard Bourke, Peace in Ireland: The War of Ideas (London: Pimlico, 2003), 307.

24. Ibid., 18.

25. Richard English, Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA (London: Pan, 2003), 359. 

Michael Doran has noted that “In the Middle East, as in the Balkans and Ireland, sup­pressed 

religious and ethnic groups have a kind of film playing in their minds of their own oppression. 

In moments of political disruption, they are ready to add another scene to the pre-existing 

narrative.” Quoted in Robert F. Worth, “In Iraq, a Tug of War over the Truth,” New York 

Times, April 24, 2005.

26. I draw here on Patti Waldmeir, Anatomy of a Miracle (New York: W. W. Norton and 

Company, 1997).

27. For a critical analysis of the failure of Arafat’s leadership of the Palestinian Authority 

after Oslo, see Glen E. Robinson, Building a Palestinian State: The Incomplete Revolution

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997).

28. For an insightful discussion of these issues, see English, Armed Struggle, 307­–15.

29. Ross, The Missing Peace, 764.

30. The quoted phrase is from Charles Enderlin, Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the 

Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995–2002 (New York: The Other Press, 2003), 235.

31. For various comments supporting these views, see Glen E. Robinson, “Being Yasir 

Arafat: A Portrait of Palestine’s President,” Foreign Affairs 82, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 2003): 138; 

Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall—Israel and the Arab World (London: Penguin Books, 2000), 

517ff.; Baruch Kimerling and Joel S. Migdal, The Palestinian People (Cambridge: Harvard 

University Press, 2003), 317ff.; and Agha and Malley, “The Last Negotiation.”

32. For this polling data, see Horowitz, Still Life with Bombers, 99–100.

33. See Agha and Malley, “The Last Negotiation,” 18. They also argue, or rather assert, 

that the deal itself will create trust where none existed, a dangerous assumption with no 

evidence to support it.

34. Cox, Guelke, and Stephen, “Introduction,” in A Farewell to Arms?, 1.

35. Paul R. Pillar, “A Scapegoat Is Not a Solution,” New York Times, June 4, 2004.

36. For a successful illustration in a similar context, see Ed Moloney, A Secret History of 

the IRA (London: Allan Lane, 2002), 352ff.

37. I am not sure who devised this term, but I think I first saw it some years ago in 

several works on regime theory.

38. Sharon’s views are discussed in James Bennet, “Shaper of Modern Israel: Sharon the 

Warrior,” International Herald Tribune, August 16, 2004.
46 How Not to Make Peace

39. One does not mean to deny that some Israeli actions and some of its policies have 

been unacceptable violations of international norms, such as the targeted assassinations of 

terrorist leaders, but the failure of the Palestinian Authority to act must also share some of 

the blame. While Israel should be bound by the various Geneva Conventions, it does have 

the legal and moral right to maintain order and to act in self-defense. The dilemmas that 

all countries now face in dealing with sustained terrorist assaults or in averting them are 

apparent, in terms of civil rights and in the unfortunate likelihood that casualties may be 

inflicted on civilians in the course of preventive or retaliatory actions. But Israel has faced 

the severest terrorist threat, and it is ironic to see some of its critics (for example, the Labor 

Party in the United Kingdom) chastising it for certain actions and policies that they now 

advocate against real or potential terrorists in their own countries.

40. This paper was in press when Sharon suffered an incapacitating stroke, making 

revisions impossible. Since my argument is not about the short-term policies of any one 

leader but about the long-term effects of the conflict syndrome, the costs of not being able 

to revise the paper are bearable.
About the Author

Robert L. Rothstein is the Harvey Picker Distinguished Professor of International Relations 

(Emeritus) at Colgate University. He has written or edited nine books and some eighty articles 

and has been a past fellow of the United States Institute of Peace, the Woodrow Wilson 

International Center for Scholars, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Carnegie Foundation. 

He has also received several research grants from the U.S. Department of State and the United 

Nations. His most recent book, jointly edited with Moshe Ma’oz and Khalil Shikaki, is The 

Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process: The Lessons of Failure.

About the Author 47

About the Institute

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, nonpartisan federal institution created by 

Congress to promote the prevention, management, and peaceful resolution of international conflicts. 

Established in 1984, the Institute meets its congressional mandate through an array of programs, 

including research grants, fellowships, professional training, education programs from high school 

through graduate school, conferences and workshops, library services, and publications. The Institute’s 

Board of Directors is appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate.

Chairman of the Board: J. Robinson West

Vice Chairman: María Otero

President: Richard H. Solomon

Executive Vice President: Patricia Powers Thomson

Vice President: Charles E. Nelson

Board of Directors

J. Robinson West (Chairman), Chairman, PFC Energy, Washington, D.C.

María Otero (Vice Chairman), President, ACCION International, Boston, Mass.

Betty F. Bumpers, Founder and former President, Peace Links, Washington, D.C.

Holly J. Burkhalter, Director of U.S. Policy, Physicians for Human Rights, Washington, D.C.

Chester A. Crocker, James R. Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies, School of Foreign Service, 

Georgetown University

Laurie S. Fulton, Williams and Connolly, Washington, D.C.

Charles Horner, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C.

Seymour Martin Lipset, Hazel Professor of Public Policy, George Mason University

Mora L. McLean, Esq., President, Africa-America Institute, New York, N.Y.

Barbara W. Snelling, former State Senator and former Lieutenant Governor, Shelburne, Vt.

Members ex officio

Michael M. Dunn, Lieutenant General, U.S. Air Force; President, National Defense University

Barry F. Lowenkron, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

Peter W. Rodman, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs

Richard H. Solomon, President, United States Institute of Peace (nonvoting)

About the Institute 49

Other Titles in the Peaceworks Series

n	 Chaplains as Liaisons with Religious Leaders: Lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan, by 

George Adams (No. 56, February 2006) 

n	 Religious Contributions to Peacemaking: When Religion Brings Peace, Not War, edited by 

David R. Smock (No. 55, January 2006) 

n	 Dismantling the DPRK’s Nuclear Weapons Program: A Practicable, Verifiable Plan of 

Action, by David Albright and Corey Hinderstein (No. 54, January 2006)

n	 Downward Spiral: HIV/AIDS, State Capacity, and Political Conflict in Zimbabwe,

by Andrew T. Price-Smith and John L. Daly (No. 53, July 2004)

n	 Biosecurity: Limiting Terrorist Access to Deadly Pathogens, by Jonathan B. Tucker (No. 52, 

November 2003) 

n	 Healing the Holy Land: Interreligious Peacebuilding in Israel/Palestine, by Yehezkel Landau 

(No. 51, August 2003) 

n	 Boundary Disputes in Latin America, by Jorge I. Domínguez with David Mares, Manuel 

Orozco, David Scott Palmer, Francisco Rojas Aravena, and Andrés Serbin (No. 50, 

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n	 The Road Ahead: Lessons in Nation Building from Japan, Germany, and Afghanistan for 

Postwar Iraq, by Ray Salvatore Jennings (No. 49, May 2003)

n	 The Palestinian Reform Agenda, by Nathan Brown (No. 48, December 2002)

n	 The Israeli Military and Israel’s Palestinian Policy: From Oslo to the Al Aqsa Intifada,

by Yoram Peri (No. 47, November 2002)

n	 The Chaplain’s Evolving Role in Peace and Humanitarian Relief Operations, by Captain 

Paul McLaughlin (No. 46, September 2002) 

n	 The Ethics of Armed Humanitarian Intervention, by C. A. J. Coady (No. 45, July 2002) 

n	 Democratic Values, Political Structures, and Alternative Politics in Greater China,

by David Zweig (No. 44, June 2002) 

n	 Training for Peace and Humanitarian Relief Operations: Advancing Best Practices,

by Robert M. Schoenhaus (No. 43, April 2002) 

n	 The Role of International Financial Institutions in International Humanitarian Law,

by Laurie R. Blank (No. 42, January 2002) 

n	 Controlling Weapons of Mass Destruction: Findings from USIP-Sponsored Projects,

edited by Deepa M. Ollapally (No. 41, September 2001) 

n	 Passing the Baton: Challenges of Statecraft for the New Administration, with remarks 

by Samuel R. Berger and Condoleezza Rice (No. 40, May 2001) 

n	 From Revolutionary Internationalism to Conservative Nationalism: The Chinese Military’s 

Discourse on National Security and Identity in the Post-Mao Era, by Nan Li (No. 39, 

May 2001) 

n	 El Salvador: Implementation of the Peace Accords, edited by Margarita S. Studemeister 

(No. 38, January 2001) 

n	 The News Media and Peace Processes: The Middle East and Northern Ireland,

by Gadi Wolfsfeld (No. 37, January 2001) 

n	 Conflict Management Training: Advancing Best Practices, by Robert M. Schoenhaus 

(No. 36, January 2001) 

 
OF RELATED INTEREST

Several other recent publications from the United States Institute of Peace address issues of 

direct relevance to the Middle East peace process.

Recent Institute reports include:

n	 The Future of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Critical Trends Affecting Israel, by Yossi 

Alpher (Special Report, September 2005)

n	 Healing the Holy Land: Interreligious Peacebuilding in Israel/Palestine, by Yehezkel Landau 

(Peaceworks, August 2003)

n	 The Israeli Military and Israel’s Palestinian Policy: From Oslo to the Al Aqsa Intifada, by 

Yoram Peri (Peaceworks, November 2002)

To obtain an Institute report (available free of charge), write United States Institute of Peace, 

1200 17th Street NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20036-3011; call 202-429-3832; fax 

202-429-6063; or e-mail: usip_requests@usip.org.

United States

Institute of Peace

1200 17th Street NW • Washington, DC 20036 • www.usip.org Peaceworks 57