This ability to sidestep problems owes to the obvious and apparent usefulness of ambiguity when negotiating singularly intractable international conflicts. In other words, substantive differences, and not procedural, situational or personality variables are at the heart of each and every Middle East impasse. In effect the argument presented here entertains the following supposition. The bargaining process begun in 1993 with such promise would have risked going aground even had Shimon Peres and the late Yitzchak Rabin, principal architects of the Oslo breakthrough, remained seated across the diplomatic table from Yassir Arafat and his negotiating team. For the simple reason that sooner or later they, too, would have had to pay the deferred wages of undue reliance upon constructive ambiguity.
Constructive ambiguity offers the pretense of peacemaking, and peace, without the substance.
To be sure, consciously resorting to fuzziness possesses considerable short-term appeal in diplomacy, whether for purposes of deception or denial. Domestically, CA avoids confronting one s opponents at home and being charged with weakness, with capitulation or with betraying the cause. Bilaterally, as pointed out in the preceding discussion and analysis, CA helps avert crisis, breakdown and failure, especially in the early and most sensitive stages of talks. Lastly, seen from the perspective of outside intermediaries and would-be peacemakers, CA s legitimacy and recourse to it mean not having to take sides, risk one s credibility or be accused of bias. This has become more readily apparent the closer we move to grappling with the truly core issues on the Middle East peace agenda and to terminating this longstanding territorial and nationalist dispute in, and over the contested Holy Land.