Helena Cobban, the journalist and Quaker friend, wrote on her Just World News blog on 10 November about analyzing the possible success of any peace negotiation — such as the forthcoming Annapolis event:
“I went to a panel discussion at the US Institute of Peace yesterday on the topic of ‘Constructing an Effective Ceasefire’. Now, I know that what the Palestinians and the Bushites are hoping for from the upcoming “Annapolis” meeting is something of considerably greater impact than merely a ceasefire. Indeed, the PA still avers it is insistent on tangible and monitorable progress towards the final peace agreement with Israel that is, surely, the desire of the vast majority of the people in the world. The government of Israel– consistent with many years of foot-dragging now– wants to move much slower than that. (That foot-dragging has allowed government-subsidized Israeli colonial corporations to implant large numbers of illegal colonies inside the occupied Palestinian territories. Coincidence, or what?) But still, even though I recognize there are differences between a ceasefire and a final peace agreement, I thought it would be good to trek along to USIP and catch up with some state of the art in negotiations theory.
[The two speakers at this conference were Dr. Ranabir Samaddar, head of the Calcutta Research Group, and Nita Yawanarajah, "a staff member of the Policy Planning and Mediation Support Unit, at the UN's Department of Political Affairs, described as 'involved in UN negotiations and assessments of ceasefires in the Balkans and Sudan and ...developing guidelines for ceasefire negotiations'."]
Cobban wrote: “Both took a cool, analytical look at what makes peace negotiations (in general, and not just those aiming at temporary ceasefires) effective. Both looked dispassionately at the political components of successful peace negotiations. Samaddar noted, for example, that in government-insurgent conflicts, the governments have a strong interest in using the ceasefire to bring about the complete demilitarization of the insurgent side without opening up any of the insurgents’ grievances, while the insurgents seek strongly to use the ceasefire to get their political issues onto the table without, if possible, disarming. Nothing new there. (Except perhaps to the people across in the US State Department who continue to parrot the Israeli line that all of Israel’s opponents need to disarm completely– at both the military and the ideological levels– before they can even be admitted to any negotiation.) A successful negotiation would, the two panelists said, be one that laid out and won agreement to measurable, monitored steps being taken in parallel by each of the parties, so that neither would end up feeling taken advantage of by the negotiating process itself…
Helena Cobban’s post on the discussion at the conference continued: ” ‘[T]he prospects for peace are harmed if the government side insists too hard on the rebels’ demilitarization at the very beginning’, Dr. Samaddar underlined at one point. He also judged that governments frequently seem to have a self-serving and unhelpful understanding of why the rebels in any situation have accepted a ceasefire. ‘It is a queer understanding’, he said. ‘They frequently think that the rebels have agreed only because they are weak … And so instead of listening to the rebels’ grievances, the governments use the ceasefire to try to drive home a military advantage over the rebels. But that doesn’t build peace’…
“But the most telling moments came when both he and Yawanarajah laid stress on the fact that, to be successful, a peace negotiation requires that both sides are experiencing a ‘mutually hurting stalemate’. In question time, I asked Yawanarajah whether, in view of her analysis– which was considerably longer and more sophisticated than I’ve had time to describe here– she thought that the negotiators in ‘Annapolis’ had any hope of success… Particularly in view of the fact that you very evidently don’t have the situation of a mutually hurting stalemate there. (A feature of the Palestine-Israel conflict that I have noted several times in recent years, including in my comments last year about sipping lattes in elegant malls in North Tel Aviv.) Yawanarajah’s response– which she stressed she was giving in her personal capacity as an analyst and not as a UN official– was that they ‘didn’t seem to have a hope in hell’ of succeeding. H’mmm…
Cobban continued: “In her earlier presentation, she had noted that this whole question of ‘needing a mutually hurting stalemate’ raises thorny ethical questions. Should we, indeed, seek to impose hurt on the Israelis so that they would be hurting as much as the Palestinians? Probably not. However, I would also note the following: (1. ) To equalize the amount of ‘hurt’ each side is suffering, we could also seek to decrease the amount of hurt being intentionally inflicted by the Israelis and the US on the Palestinians– in both Gaza and the West Bank. This route should certainly be followed. The total economic lockdown imposed on the Palestinians is anti-humanitarian and quite possibly illegal under international law; and it should be ended. (2.) The US, and much of the rest of what some people claim is an ‘international community’, is meanwhile actively involved in both maintaining the level of harm being inflicted on Palestinians and in providing continuing lovely benefits to Israel, through generous aid packages, trade preferences, etc etc. (3.) To cut back on those generous benefits would not involve the imposition of any real harm on the Israelis. They could still have a fairly nice lifestyle…
Cobban concluded: “Finally, if anyone thinks that a party that has been actively colluding with Israel’s anti-Palestinian project for many years now could realistically be considered to have the moral authority and the neutrality required to act as lead negotiator on this issue, I would love to hear their arguments. Go on, Condi: Persuade me! Until now, though, I see neither morality nor realism in the ‘Annapolis’ set-up”.
See the full post by Helena Cobban on 10 November here.
Tags: Annapolis, Helena Cobban, theory of peace negotiations