Mediating the War of Olives and Pines: Consensus‐Based Land‐Use Planning in a Multicultural Setting

The nation of Israel, although it looms large in Western and Arab consciousness as a hotbed of political and ethnic conflict, is actually smaller in size than the state of Rhode Island. Within this diminutive country, and perhaps surprising to those who have never traveled there, are areas of striking natural beauty. The Galilee region is among them.

The Galilee lies in the northern part of Israel and is known for its natural wonders and scenic vistas. The mountainous terrain is covered in trees and scrubby vegetation, and the valleys and canyons contain seasonal streams. The Galilee's natural, archeological, and cultural resources, including its historic mills, attract tourists by the thousands.

Near the center of this region lies Nahal Tzalmon (Tzalmon Creek), the only stream in the Galilee that flows even during the hot summer months. More than twenty years ago, the Israeli government designated a length of this stream to become a national park.

Like the country itself, the proposed Nahal Tzalmon national park is small by American standards, around 900 acres; and it is not an all‐publicly owned land. Within the proposed park boundaries live approximately fifty Arab Israelis in several large family groups. Also called Israeli Arabs, these are Israeli citizens of Arab ethnicity. In this case, some of the Arab Israelis are Muslim Bedouins and some are Christian Arabs. The section where residents own land and homes and where the government plans to build public trails runs along the creek's banks and measures less than three kilometers long and four hundred meters wide. Between 60 and 70 percent of this section is privately owned. (See Figure One for a photo of the park and surrounding area and Figure Two for a map of it.)

The park has never been officially established or opened to the public because of a longstanding, stalemated conflict between the residents and Israeli planning and lands authorities, primarily over the landowners’ rights. Within the context of Israel's wider geopolitical conflict with the Palestinians and historical struggles over the domination of land, the dispute over the Nahal Tzalmon park has taken on a wider significance over the years, beyond that of simple land claims in a government takings case.

In the summer of 2000, an Arab‐Jewish environmental organization in the Galilee known as LINK brought the Nahal Tzalmon dispute to the attention of the Joint Environmental Mediation Service ( JEMS). JEMS, which was founded by the U.S.‐based Consensus Building Institute (CBI) and the Jerusalem‐based Israel–Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI), offers mediation services and training. JEMS had recently finished training a group of Israeli and Palestinian community leaders to serve as mediators in local environmental conflicts. Under the guidance of CBI and IPCRI, JEMS selected graduates of that course to mediate the Nahal Tzalmon conflict.

Over the next two‐and‐a‐half years, the mediation team facilitated a consensus‐building process among the local residents, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and Israeli government officials, which ultimately led to an agreement accepted by nearly all of the identified stakeholders. Park plans, based in part on this agreement, are currently undergoing the multitier process of state ratification, which, if completed successfully, should lead to the opening of the national park. The Nahal Tzalmon mediation was the first effort in Israel to settle a land‐use planning conflict involving multiple parties, including Israeli authorities and residents of the implicated land, through the systematic application of consensus‐building principles.

This case study analyzes the consensus‐building process involved in reaching the Nahal Tzalmon agreement. The case begins with a brief review of the methodology used for the study and a discussion of the background and context of the conflict. It then describes each stage of the mediation process and analyzes in detail the issues of representation, neutrality, trust‐building, power dynamics, and dealing with emotions. The case concludes with a few key lessons that can be learned from the process.

This case study is based on discussions with the three mediators involved in the Nahal Tzalmon case and on interviews with nearly all of the thirty‐two stakeholders who took part in the mediation. It was conducted by a neutral researcher who provided the interviewees with a pledge of anonymity. The research project was described to the stakeholders as an opportunity for them to give feedback on the mediation process, as well as a means of providing information on and insight about their process to consensus‐building professionals around the world. At the time of this writing, a signing ceremony based on agreements for the consensual opening of a park has taken place, but the agreements remain theoretical; some potentially difficult implementation problems have arisen within the ratifying government agencies. Given the as‐yet‐undetermined results, this case study is not a systematic evaluation, but rather a description of a highly unusual consensus‐building process and the particular challenges and opportunities it posed. It is impossible to evaluate the success of the mediation in terms of tangible results at this point because the consensual establishment of the park may or may not take place.

The conflict surrounding the proposed Nahal Tzalmon park cannot be appreciated without a look at the historical and political context, for in many ways the conflict over this small piece of land reflects the wider conflict between Arabs and Jews in Israel. The Nahal Tzalmon mediation took place during the years of the second Palestinian intifadah (uprising), a very tense and violent period in the region that continues to this day. In October 2000, just as the mediation was getting under way, Arab Israelis held violent protests less than one hundred miles away from Nahal Tzalmon, and the Israeli police responded with deadly fire. Incidents like this in the current geopolitical conflict in the Middle East, as well as the history of the region, influence most interactions between Arabs and Jews in Israel; this mediation was no exception.

At the deepest level, both Jewish and Arab Israelis carry fears of exile and exclusion from their land, the same land. Intellectuals from both sides have written of national historical extinction fears — with the Holocaust symbolizing the ultimate victimization for Jewish Israelis, while their own exile is engrained in the memory of Palestinians. (The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and Jewish novelist Elie Wiesel are among the dominant writers on these topics.) These fears are expressed in political conflicts. With Israel and the Palestinians struggling to define land ownership on a national level, elements of nationalism and the struggle for political and demographic dominance affect smaller land disputes, even when their root per se is purely legal.

A microcosm within the larger Arab–Israeli conflict is the Galilee conflict, geographically manifested in the ongoing government plans and incentives to “settle” the Galilee with Jews in an attempt to balance the natural demographic advantage of the Arabs. Without Israeli government intervention some twenty‐five years ago, the Galilee today would have a large Arab majority. Because the Galilee borders both Syria and Lebanon, the potential for an Arab majority seeking autonomy or annexation into these countries within a decade or two was a real threat for Israel. Muslim clerics, understanding the Arab demographic advantage, called on Arab families to multiply and fight with numbers. The Arab birth rate in Israel has always been significantly higher than the Jewish one. In the opinion of the government, Israel, given its small geographical size, could not afford to risk losing the Galilee.

Throughout the 1980s, therefore, more than thirty Jewish settlements were established in the Galilee region. The government's stated aim in these years was to settle the Galilee by placing a “view post” settlement on each hilltop. A few families with large plots of land occupied the hilltops in a highly successful campaign. Today, the region has a small Jewish majority. Yet the rapid settlement activity, on top of the government's continuous nonrecognition of certain Arab villages, added fuel to Arab unrest in the Galilee. Even when it did not explicitly declare the importance of Jewish settlement, the Israeli government's development plans often came at the expense of Arab residents. The Or Commission, a national investigation into the deadly events of October 2000, held that the Israeli government has continuously discriminated against its Arab citizens by authorizing larger budgets for Jewish settlements than for Arab ones.

It is therefore not surprising that Palestinian “Land Day” celebrations, marking the awakening of Palestinian nationalism, began in the Galilee. In the 1980s, during the rapid Jewish settlement of the Galilee, Arab‐Israeli residents in the region began an “Olive Resistance.” Under this plan, they planted olive groves wherever they could, including the most unlikely places, knowing that the government would not confiscate agricultural lands. During the same years, the Jewish National Fund planted pine forests throughout the country, in a parallel attempt to dominate the landscape. Thus the struggle for domination over the land came to be symbolized by ecological topography: a struggle between “the olives and the pines.” ( The natural vegetation in the Nahal Tzalmon park area is mostly oak, not pine, although the concept behind the phrase certainly still applies.)¹

The potential for conflict and consequent damage to the natural landscape of Nahal Tzalmon was graphically demonstrated at the beginning of the mediation, when a local landowner, in an effort to assert his rights, destroyed with a bulldozer the natural oak vegetation of a part of the park alongside the stream, replacing it with poor‐quality terraces where he planted olive saplings. More recently, a resident again logged down the natural oak vegetation on his land, not with agricultural motives but rather in an attempt to assert sovereignty over the physical landscape. Within the Galilee's geopolitical context, the Tzalmon residents’“fighting pines with olives” must be understood not only as a negotiation power game, but as a symbolic act in the ongoing struggle between the Israeli government and Arab residents. Given this delicate opening situation, the mediation from the outset clearly included elements not typically found in a simple land dispute.

The fact that residents live and own land inside the proposed Nahal Tzalmon park differentiates it from most national parks. Any successful park plan must either incorporate the daily lives and agricultural activities of the residents or provide for an alternative solution. Questions of land rights and the extent of freedoms and obligations in relation to private land in a public space became critical to the mediation. While private land ownership does occur in other parks in Israel, the Nahal Tzalmon presented a unique case because the size and location of the park's main attraction — the stream banks — require public access to private land and mean that any activity on the private land will affect the park's character.

Active fighting over the park's opening was limited over the years to a cycle in which the National Parks Authority (NPA) would place a gate at one of the future park's entrance routes, and one of the residents would tear it down. But the stalemate in the planning process and the overall decay of the area also resulted from the vastly disparate and potentially clashing visions that different stakeholders had of the park's future. These different visions reflected in important ways the country's historical, geographical, and political divides.

Local authorities saw tourism and Jewish settlement as inherently linked, and they viewed the Tzalmon as the postcard‐setting for Jewish settlement of the Galilee. The park's landowners, by contrast, viewed any restriction on their private activities as an infringement of their basic rights. Residents of Salame, a neighboring Bedouin town to the south of the park, considered the Nahal Tzalmon their personal backyard, having used the area for recreational activities for years. They were outraged, for example, at the suggestion that they might have to pay entrance fees. Representatives of Ras el Ein, the Bedouin village just outside the park's northern border, expressed strong sentiments that the park belongs in part to their village's children, who use it as a playground. To representatives of environmental organizations, the park's intrinsic value was diminished by private logging, polluting, and landscape modifications. Different visions of the park encompassed different perspectives across the country's historical, geographical, and political divides.

The park's residents belong to three extended families: two Christian Arab families and one Muslim Bedouin family. Other families own unsettled land in the park near the stream where visitors’ paths are planned. The interests of the nonresident families proved impossible to reconcile within the mediation because these families had no existing structures to maintain and their aspiration to construct new ones is illegal on this agricultural land, whether a park exists or not. A third category of families, those who own land in the park outside the area of the development plan, were not included in the mediation because they were removed from the main issues in conflict (development and public access).

The resident families involved in the mediation each possess a few houses in the area through which the government plans to build trails. The adjacent Bedouin village of Ras el Ein, home to about twenty‐five families, was originally included within the park boundary, but it was removed from the park plan under a government order in 1996 in reaction to political pressure from village leaders. To the south, the relatively modern Bedouin town of Salame, with a few thousand residents, borders the park but was never included in it. The town was originally created with the aim of concentrating the Bedouins of the Galilee in urban centers.

The government agencies involved in the mediation process were mainly concerned with zoning laws, legal precedents, and environmental planning. The Interior Ministry has ultimate approval or veto power over all plans from the local to the national level. The NPA is the national agency in charge of maintaining and protecting national parks. The Lands Authority is the agency responsible for the development of all state‐owned land in the country, and its interests merged with the NPA during the mediation in so far as the two agencies sought the development of a park according to the national zoning plan. The Misgav Regional Authority is the government authority within whose judicial domain the park lies, and its Local Committee for Planning and Development regulates, inspects, and enforces zoning laws.

The last category of stakeholders includes local and national environmental NGOs. The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) and LINK, the Arab‐Jewish environmental cooperation organization in the Galilee, sought to protect the park's natural, cultural, and historical heritage according to their respective beliefs about preservation.

Cultural differences between the stakeholders greatly affected both the conflict and the consensus‐building process. Israeli society is highly segregated and composed of very diverse groups, and this mediation brought together people of very different backgrounds. Cultural differences manifested themselves first and most obviously between Jewish and Arab Israelis. For example, language differences between the Hebrew‐speaking stakeholders and the Arabic‐speaking residents created a need for interpretation, which complicated communication. Also, these two groups have very different concepts of time, gender, expression of emotions, and so forth.

Even the Arab‐Israeli park residents are not a homogenous group, however. Although the residents are all Arabic‐speaking minorities, enormous differences exist between the family groups. Two of the families are Christian Arab, and one is Muslim Bedouin. Christian Arabs share many cultural similarities with Muslim Arabs but also significant differences, including, specifically, the relatively active role Christian women play in family decision making.

But perhaps the most significant cultural difference in this mediation involved class status. As Shirili Kopeleman and Mara Olekalns write, “[p]ower differentials reflect the impact of variables external to the negotiation, such as social status defined by socio‐economic level” (Kopeleman and Olekalns 1999: 377). The Nahal Tzalmon mediation process brought together a population of largely uneducated (and sometimes illiterate) farmers with well‐educated, career employees of government agencies. In contrast to the Jewish/Arab and Muslim/Christian differences, which were significant and familiar to the stakeholders, the class and educational differences posed a unique challenge. The asymmetry was represented not only in different means of expression and communication but on a deeper level in the degree of attention and emotional involvement attached to the process. Also, differing views of time between the mediators’ own culture and that of the park residents meant that much more time had to be spent at each stage than was planned.

It was also clear that the villagers and park residents, on one hand, and the government and NGO representatives, on the other, differed in their basic understanding of mediation. While the government and NGO representatives viewed mediation in its modern Western sense, some of the residents and local villagers saw themselves as having prior experience with the process, through traditional Muslim methods of conflict resolution. One representative of Ras el Ein explained:

What the stakeholder refers to is the traditional Muslim process of sulha, whereby feuding parties agree to buy back each other's trust and solve conflicts. A sulha is often premeditated and administered by a third party or a family member of one side who oversees the process. But it is more of a forgiving process to rescue relationships than a conflict resolution process per se, and it does not require any official neutrality or confidentiality on the part of the overseer nor self‐determination in the agreement on the part of the parties. A sulha overseer often has the power to force and enforce beyond that of a facilitative mediator.

So when a comparison is drawn between mediation and sulha and the understanding is that the two processes are essentially the same, there is a certain truth to the assertion but also a danger of minimizing the differences. Such a comparison can result in unrealistic expectations about the mediator's role and the process. These unrealistic expectations were repeatedly represented in this mediation when residents asked the mediators to “do something” to promote their interests. This demonstrated a lack of understanding of the mediator's role, which perhaps stemmed from confusion with the traditional role of a sulha overseer.

Two planning processes were involved in establishing the Nahal Tzalmon park: the statutory declaration of the park and the park's physical development plan. Both must be successfully ratified before the national park can open. Notably, neither planning process involves public participation nor public input; the views and concerns of residents are not considered until the plans reach a certain level of approval. In this case, all details regarding plans for the Nahal Tzalmon park were, in accord with the law, held back from residents over the years, which intensified the conflict around opening the park. Lacking a forum in which to make their views heard, residents expressed their frustration through acts of sabotage against the landscape, including logging and polluting.

In 1981, a national proposal was ratified defining Israel's future planning agenda, including the borders of the country's national parks. Under this plan, the Nahal Tzalmon region was selected to become a national park. The NPA was in charge of furthering plans to create the park in the local, regional, and national planning committees, and of promoting the ratification of these plans through the interior minister's final approval.

In 1999, the Misgav Regional Authority authorized the park plan with an important change: all the existing houses of residents in the park were erased off the map, with no mention made as to their status. By September 2003, the park plans passed the local and national committees as well. The interior minister's signature became, at this point, a mere formality. Therefore, when the mediation began, the starting assumption was that the park's establishment was nonnegotiable.

The second of the two parallel planning processes is the park's development plan. The NPA employed a planner in 1984 to begin drafting a physical layout for the park. The same planner remained involved through the time of the mediation and participated in some of the group's meetings, although not as an official member of the negotiating group.

The development plan deals with the finer details, such as entry and exit routes, parking spaces, walking paths, connections to roads, and the natural landscape. The main topic of concern in this park has been the public walking paths, but other issues in the development plan have been highly contentious as well. These side issues have included the entrance and exit road, which the neighboring town of Salame insisted pass through it for the sake of the village's commercial development, and the right of park residents to make changes to the natural landscape.

Because the law prohibits the disclosure of plans that have not been fully approved by the local planning committee, the development plan had not yet been disclosed to the park's residents at the start of the mediation. Therefore, residents who felt left in the dark during the planning process displayed high sensitivity to issues regarding public participation and exclusion, and these themes became central to the mediation. Suspicions ran high as residents treated all initial presentations of the plans with great cynicism and a sense that the government was trying to cheat them out of their land.

Adding fuel to the fire, an early attempt by the planner to diffuse tension among the residents had failed. Prior to the mediation, the planner contacted one of the residents, one who has a “dovish” reputation, and invited him to attend a local steering committee meeting. None of the other residents were informed of the meeting. Later, in the mediation itself, a dispute broke out after government representatives pointed to this event as proof that “public participation” had in fact taken place. Residents felt that the involvement of one person in a closed meeting, without the knowledge of the public, was clearly insufficient.

The cynicism and mistrust on the part of the residents contributed to the urgent need for a consensus‐building process in this case. Aside from actual dispute settlement, one of the aims of consensus building is to allow stakeholders access to information that will let them gain an understanding of each others’ interests and aspirations. With varying degrees of success, this aim was accomplished in the Nahal Tzalmon mediation.

In 2000 and 2001, the Joint Environmental Mediation Service ( JEMS) trained 18 Israeli and Palestinian environmental professionals as mediators. LINK, an organization for Jewish‐Arab environmental cooperation in the Galilee, informed JEMS of the Nahal Tzalmon conflict, and JEMS took the case on as a pilot project. At the time, tense relations between the designated park's Arab and Bedouin residents and the national authorities responsible for the land created a stalemate situation. Illegal residents were preventing environmental authorities from protecting the abundant natural resources of the area and were even themselves taking environmentally harmful actions, while national authorities refused to grant official recognition to the area's residents, leaving them without basic services such as water, sewage, telephone, and electricity.

Mediators for the process were selected from among the JEMS training participants, with the mediation team comprising an Israeli Arab and two Israeli Jews: Jallal Abu Touama, an agriculturalist and former mayor of Baqa El‐Garbieh, a large Arab town in northern Israel; Uri Ramon, the head of the Landscape Survey and Evaluation Department at the SPNI; and Amitay Har‐Lev, a planner and public participation expert. Overseeing the team was Merrick Hoben, a Washington D.C.‐based senior associate with CBI.

The Nahal Tzalmon mediation began in the summer of 2001 with a conflict assessment, in which potential stakeholders to the process were identified and interviewed by the mediation team. JEMS opened the conflict assessment process by sending letters to the NPA and the Misgav Regional Council, asking if they would support a mediation process regarding the Nahal Tzalmon park. After a few months of deliberations, both government bodies granted letters of support for the process.

The individuals designated as stakeholders were unofficial or official representatives of the following six groups: (1) the park's residents (three extended Arab‐Israeli and Bedouin families); (2) nonresident landowners; (3) residents of neighboring Bedouin villages; (4) local authorities; (5) national governmental agencies (mainly planning and lands authorities); and (6) environmental groups.

Local members of the conflict assessment team interviewed each of the thirty‐two stakeholders during August and September of 2001. Interviews addressed stakeholders’ concerns, the issues they considered central to the conflict, their willingness to participate in mediation, and their ideas about how a mediation process should be shaped. An analysis of stakeholder feedback led to the drafting of a conflict‐assessment report that mapped the initial interests and concerns expressed by stakeholders, analyzed the practicability of a mediation for the conflict, and recommended the terms and basic structure for mediation. The conflict assessment process took nine months to complete.

Based on the data gathered during the interviews, and especially on the expressed willingness to talk, the team concluded that a mediation would be worthwhile. They wrote in the conflict assessment report, “An overwhelming majority of stakeholders express interest in retaining the services of JEMS to help them mediate this conflict. The fact that points of agreement among stakeholders appear sufficiently numerous leads the JEMS staff to the tentative conclusion that this conflict can be successfully mediated.” The team distributed the conflict assessment report to participants, and the decision to proceed with the mediation was made upon receiving expressions of willingness to participate.

Once the conflict assessment indicated that a mediation should take place, the mediators planned the first few meetings with the aim of introducing stakeholders, identifying and coordinating their expectations for the mediation, setting ground rules, and educating the stakeholders about the consensus‐building process. The format for this phase was a series of meetings of the entire mediation group, and one of the aims was to establish a sense of a common identity and purpose.

The first meeting was held in a nice location, an impressive array of good food was served, and the meeting began in a dignified fashion. The mediators decided to budget a disproportionate amount of their available funds toward this first meeting, and overall they succeeded in their attempt to win the stakeholders’ trust. Mediator Har‐Lev recalls, “The preparation work, food, and informal atmosphere contributed to the success of the first meeting.”

After a series of introductions and a lecture about the park, the mediators talked about the consensus‐building process. Education about consensus building is critical to the first stage of any mediation process (Susskind, McKearnan, and Thomas‐Larmer 1999: 85, 130–131). In order to proceed to substantive deliberations, all of the participating representatives must first understand what is reasonable to expect from the process, its limitations, their self‐determination in agreement, and the voluntary nature of their continued participation. In this case, the mediators explained in detail during the first and second meetings the various aspects of consensus building, the concept of neutrality, and what they themselves could and could not provide as facilitators of the process. Because of the vast disparity in the education levels of participants, however, some stakeholders from the park and the neighboring villages did not leave these meetings with a clear understanding of what they could and could not expect from the process and the mediators, as will be discussed in more detail later.

Next, the mediators embarked on an exercise in “expectation coordination.” This exercise involved stakeholders personally reflecting upon what they hoped to accomplish in the mediation, followed by a group discussion aimed at both centering these interests and getting participants comfortable communicating with each other and building agreement.

In the early meetings, ground rules for the mediation were established as well. The process of establishing ground rules began with an open brainstorming session in which stakeholders suggested rules while the mediators made order of the suggestions and condensed them into a short list, which was read and distributed back to the group. A formal ground‐rules signing ceremony took place at the next meeting. The ground rules included allowing everyone to speak and forming agreements on the basis of consensus, among others.

After laying the groundwork for the mediation, the mediators moved the group into the next phase, identifying and understanding the issues at stake. In a full‐group meeting, the mediators helped the stakeholders map out the major issues in conflict with regard to the Nahal Tzalmon park. The stakeholders came up with an initial list of sixty‐two issues; this long list was then pared down to thirty‐four issues, which were ultimately grouped into nine broad categories.

The following are the categories that were identified, in no particular order:

• Infrastructure for Park Residents. Park residents did not have adequate electricity, water, telephone service, or sewage treatment.

• Employment and Economic Initiatives. Both the park residents and those in the neighboring villages wanted to ensure that they would profit financially from the establishment of the park through licenses for new business activities relating to tourism, the growth of existing hospitality establishments around the park, and park services employment. For government agencies, the park is an opportunity to strengthen tourism.

• Construction Rights of Residents in the Park. This includes recognition of existing structures, rights for future structures and enlargements, and alternative living arrangements for those who choose to leave the park.

• Protection of Nature and Cultural Artifacts.

• Agricultural Lands. This includes development and methods of agriculture to be allowed.

• Accessibility. Issues in this category relate to who has free entrance rights and where roads to and from the park should pass. Smaller, immediate disputes between a few stakeholders had to be resolved as well, relating to a gate the NPA constructed that prevented one of the resident families from accessing its agricultural plots.

• Zoning and Land‐Use Planning.

• Public Participation in the Planning Process. Stakeholders wanted to understand the planning process, define the status of residents in this process or grant them one, and address cooperation between the residents and the authorities.

• Education. This category encompassed issues relating to the park as an educational tool for the appreciation of nature, for both visitors and local youth.

Seeking to focus the mediation on the issues of greatest import to the stakeholders, the mediators and the group proceeded to prioritize the main issues into three overall “realms of importance.” The inner realm included those issues of greatest importance, the outer realm included the issues that were least critical, and the middle realm held those in between (see Figure Three).

Once the issues were identified, the next step was to create a knowledge base of established facts and to make sure all the stakeholders understood the laws, regulations, and planning terminology, and had a grasp of the consensus‐building process. On the surface, there was no need for what the literature calls joint fact‐finding (Susskind, McKearnan, and Thomas‐Larmer 1999: 375–399) or agreement as to the basic facts, as there were no hard facts in dispute — the status of all lands and their legal condition were established. Nonetheless, knowledge building was a critical and extremely difficult phase in this mediation, during which some of the main cultural and educational differences among the stakeholders played out.

What had to be compensated for was a twenty‐year planning process involving no transparency, differences in knowledge about and understanding of the planning process among different stakeholders, and a predisposition for irrational fears based on the bad relationships between local Arabs and the Israeli authorities. The residents had no information about the park plans or the planning and implementation process, so they suspected the government of trying to evacuate them, even in instances where it was not. Government representatives had little or no knowledge of the residents’ and villagers’ customs, and suspected them of various cynical uses of the land (e.g., destroying vegetation for essentially political reasons). With misinformation prevalent, it was important to sort through the stakeholders’ existing conceptions of each other, as well as to clarify for the nonprofessionals some of the characteristics of the planning process. The enormous gap in knowledge and education between the different stakeholders made this phase extremely complicated. As mentioned previously, representatives in the mediation ranged from illiterate farmers to politicians with Ph.D.s in planning. And there was a large amount of highly technical and legal matter that stakeholders had to understand in order to be able to participate in finding solutions. By virtue of their different backgrounds, what some stakeholders found to be extremely educational, others found elementary and boring.

Acknowledging the importance of narrative in mediation, the mediators invited participants to present their “stories,” including asking a representative of one of the planning authorities to explain how national parks are planned and having the residents tell their experiences of historical suffering and unrecognized land ownership. The planner in charge of the Nahal Tzalmon's development plans also presented his preliminary sketches for the park. It was the first time the residents were exposed to the plans.

The mediators also invited Dr. Hana Sued, an Arab planner, mayor, and member of the national planning commission, to present an overview of the planning process in Israel and how the park plan was made. The mediators selected Dr. Sued with the assumption that, as an Arab and a member of the Israeli planning profession, he could not only relay information but serve to bridge the gap between the professionals and the residents and villagers.

Until this point, all meetings involved the entire stakeholder group. Now, mediators began a process of private sessions to identify the interests of each of the stakeholders — their real, underlying needs and concerns. Through repeated meetings over hundreds of hours, the mediators sat with each representative to ensure that each mediator understood the interests of each stakeholder and could represent the stakeholders’ interests with the group, at least those interests that the stakeholders were willing to share. They summarized each one's interests in writing and then compiled a chart outlining the interests of each stakeholder according to each issue, in order to help generate options for agreement. This interest‐identification phase lasted four months.

Once the exposed interests were laid out and agreed to, the process of analyzing the interests and developing options began. As in the “value creation phase” discussed in the consensus‐building literature (Susskind, McKearnan, and Thomas‐Larmer 1999: 11) the aim in this phase was to generate options for agreement that would bridge across the different interests. To do this, the mediators split the stakeholders into small working groups, according to which stakeholders could work constructively together and in a manner that dispersed representatives with similar interests throughout the working groups. Each working group took on a specific category of issues in the conflict — housing, infrastructure, planning, employment, or environment. The working groups were encouraged to use an open‐ended, problem‐solving approach to their topics and were asked to compile a few main recommendations. The mediators then used these recommendations and information received in private caucuses to compile a draft single‐text agreement— a composite, draft document containing the options generated by each group.

Once the single text was compiled, the mediators began a six‐month process of caucusing privately with stakeholders to make the necessary adjustments to the text that would lead to the maximum number of signatures. This shuttle diplomacy process involved dozens of meetings with individual stakeholders and small groups of stakeholders, and a lengthy and specific give‐and‐take in which stakeholders negotiated the details of the agreements through the mediators, down to the most minute decisions regarding each resident's construction rights. During this time, very few full‐group meetings took place, and those that did were almost purely of a social nature so that participants would not lose touch with each other.

Some of the concerns in this final phase were seemingly the least significant and most detailed; they included minor issues of, for instance, plus or minus 100 meters on a homeowner's expansion plan, and the exact location where a kiosk may be opened. Yet the task of realigning expectations so as not to lose a single stakeholder is a sensitive one, so no concern of any stakeholder was too small for deliberation. At times it became clear that the mediation had raised the residents’ expectations so much that it almost “over‐empowered” them, making them feel more powerful in the mediation than they were in reality. As they got swept away in expectations, they forgot that their best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA) was quite low, as the mediators reminded them in private caucuses.

For example, a resident who secured the right to build a new house on his land explained why he was still holding off on signing, “I wanted to build a church too, and they wouldn’t agree. I got very little, and I’m starting to feel annoyed. The final draft . . . doesn’t say that I can build a taboon [traditional pita oven]. I got a bad deal. Others did better.” Toward the end, the mediators got the sense that some of the residents were trying to grab at what they could get, without regard to what would happen if the mediation were to fall apart. But the process of readjusting the agreement according to these negotiations continues in a typical endgame dynamic.

So far, the vast majority of the stakeholders have expressed their support for the single‐text agreement, and on this basis the mediators presented it to the local planning committee. (At this point only two main stakeholders, both of them park residents, still dissent over relatively small requests.) A park plan based on the draft agreement has since been ratified by the local planning committee, and is now working its way through ratification in the regional committee and the national committee. Any citizen could file an objection to the plan, which may delay its ratification, but if the stakeholders were correctly identified it is unlikely that many objections will be filed. Even the SPNI, which deserted the process after the disagreement over the working groups, has said that it does not intend to file any objections.

A festive signing ceremony attended by all stakeholders was held at in Nahal Tzalmon in July 2004 — three years after the process began. The agreement stipulates that all stakeholders agree to the establishment of the park, under the following terms:

• Current park residents will remain in their houses on the land. The next generation will have to leave and will be granted land by lottery in neighboring villages.

• Construction rights were negotiated and agreed upon for each of the existing structures in the park. Structures which follow these guidelines will be granted title recognition by the state, including the provision of all municipal services.

• A map indicating public rights of passage along walking trails on private property forms part of the agreement. Public trail markings through private property were planned according to criteria of nature protection, accessibility of the disabled, and separation of agricultural space from tourism (except in designated areas where ecotourism makes use of local agriculture).

• Access routes and parking spaces will take into account the needs of residents to permanent access‐ways to their homes and agricultural plots, as well as tourism needs. Criteria for access routes include: security concerns and the guidelines of the Transportation Ministry, convenient access to paths and tourist attractions, and prevention of harm to local agriculture and natural resources.

• All stakeholders take upon themselves the duty to protect nature within the park.

• Residents have a right to continue traditional agricultural activities within the park, but may not introduce new or intrusive agricultural techniques. Should the residents decide not to use their agricultural privileges over land intended for agriculture, park staff may take over agricultural initiatives in these areas with the residents’ consent.

• Tourism is intended to benefit all stakeholders in the park, according to the following guidelines: residents in structures that become recognized shall have the right to open traditional restaurants in their houses and traditional food stalls along walking paths; residents will be granted priority in employment in all tourism initiatives in the park; and Tourism Ministry funds will be allocated to assist residents in establishing tourism endeavors.

• Residents of the park, Salame, and Ras el Ein will be exempt from park entrance fees.

• Stakeholders will remain active participants in the ongoing planning process of the park. Should any disagreements emerge, stakeholders are committed to attempt mediation before taking alternative action.

At the core of any successful mediation is a successful conflict assessment, which involves the identification of stakeholders and key issues and an affirmation of the implementing entities’ support. Shortcomings in this critical first phase can lead to problems and misunderstandings in later stages, including the finalizing and implementing of agreements.

A conflict assessment, in theory, involves five stages: (1) initiating the assessment; (2) gathering information through interviews; (3) analyzing interview results; (4) designing a joint problem‐solving process; and (5) sharing the assessment with interviewees (Susskind, McKearnan, and Thomas‐Larmer 1999: 99–136).

The process of gaining the trust of the interviewees in the Nahal Tzalmon mediation was not a simple matter. Cultural differences emerged as early as in the conflict‐assessment phase. Arab‐Israeli mediator Jallal Abu Touama had to spend a long day (with his wife) visiting and socializing with the Bedouin family members before he could ask them any questions about Nahal Tzalmon. This process of first “drinking coffee” and only then getting to the business at hand reflects the importance of having a local mediation team well‐versed in the traditions of the place. Had Abu Touama not known how best to communicate with the Bedouins through their own culture, they may have refused to open up to the conflict‐assessment team and ruled out the possibility of mediation from the start. Yet the necessity for continuous formalities and small talk for the sake of personal acquaintance also made bottom‐line “professional” interviews difficult to attain and made the conflict assessment considerably more expensive than originally planned. Mediator Amitay Har‐Lev comments, “While the initial meetings with the government representatives were relatively short (around an hour‐and‐a‐half), and most of the information they had to give was passed in a direct manner without the need for trust‐building processes, the meetings with representatives of resident families were longer (three to four hours), no information would be given without going through trust‐building measures first, and often another meeting was required to get to the matter at hand.”

Once it was decided that a mediation should take place, the assessment team had to identify who would represent each constituency in the mediation. The mediators’ approach was, as best practice requires, to allow each stakeholder constituency to select its own representative. Within the extended families of residents and villagers, representatives identified themselves, and each participating institution assigned a representative.

In retrospect, however, some of the mediators acknowledge that it might have been helpful to work with each stakeholder constituency to help them identify the most appropriate representative, in order to avoid some of the representation problems that emerged later. (These problems included questions about the authority of some government representatives and conflicting interests among some of the resident family representatives.) Most of the stakeholders have claimed that their constituencies did not undergo any formal process in selecting them as representatives and that they became representatives only because they were first approached in the conflict‐assessment interview.

Overall, the stakeholders interviewed for this study were pleased with the manner in which the conflict assessment was conducted and with the mediators’ understanding of the conflict at this stage. One stakeholder did think the mediators’ understanding of the various interests was too shallow, “In the beginning, the mediators understood everything that was happening on the surface, but not deeper in. They weren’t aware of what was behind — politics, interpersonal issues, conflict between the Bedouins and Christians, etc. — until later.” Interestingly, most stakeholders did not remember much about the conflict‐assessment process at all and did not consider it significant in the mediation.

Three aspects of the Nahal Tzalmon conflict‐assessment process bear analyzing in more detail: (1) securing the support of the implementing agencies; (2) the execution of the assessment itself; and (3) the analysis of its results. From the outset, the agencies that would be involved in implementing whatever agreement emerged from the mediation were not as heavily involved or supportive as they could have been. The support of the NPA and the Misgav Regional Council for the conflict assessment, and ultimately for the mediation as well, involved nothing more than broad letters of acquiescence. Although the NPA and the Regional Council were two powerful stakeholders without whom the mediation could not commence, the two organizations did not assume the traditional role of conveners, or guarantors of the process at the time. They did not take responsibility for the process, for its funding, or for implementing any agreement that may result. They simply gave their “green light” and agreed to participate.

As a result, the mediation and the agreement were left highly vulnerable to being disregarded at the critical moment of implementation because no actual responsibility for implementation was delegated. Before the assessment began, the mediation's organizers should have established a clearer framework of rights and responsibilities with the agencies. In the absence of such a framework, the short range of institutional memory could erase whatever intention of affirmative action‐taking was initially present in these organizations. For example, while it was assumed that the Misgav Regional Council would do all within its powers to try to ratify a park plan based on the mediation agreements it participated in developing, this was never clearly stipulated in the council's initial agreement to participate. Therefore, when deliberations about the plans within the regional council were repeatedly delayed, the mediators had little ground for pressuring the council to assume what most participants considered its “obligations” to the agreement.

A second category of difficulties involved carrying out the conflict assessment and gaining access to information. As there were few organized interest groups to turn to, the mediators had to approach each individual or organization they could predict might have an interest. Once all of the potential stakeholders were identified, the mediators had to make decisions about which stakeholders would be brought into the mediation. The mediators decided to limit the scope to those immediately involved in the conflict. They excluded, for example, the Tourism Ministry and individuals who own land in the park far from the stream, in areas the NPA does not intend to open to the public. This was a purely pragmatic decision. The mediators believed that, in order for the mediation to succeed, the scope should be focused and defined, centering on those individuals immediately affected by the conflict and leaving out the “secondary” stakeholders. This trade‐off between opening up the scope to include as many stakeholders as possible and limiting it so as to increase the chances of agreement often marks a difficult decision point for mediators.

There was some criticism about the selections made. Representatives of the neighboring villages, for example, claimed that the children of the villages should have been included as an independent category of stakeholders because they have a particular interest in the future of the park. One stakeholder objected to the manner in which representatives were selected and to the use of private interviews as the only tool to understand the conflict. He argued that there should have been more public meetings in the beginning to allow stakeholders to self‐select. “I am skeptical about how the representatives of the villages were chosen,” he said. “I don’t think there was an opportunity for the public to get involved.” This is an especially daunting criticism, in light of claims that consensus‐based processes go hand in hand with the enhancement of public participation in planning.

A third category of difficulties in the conflict‐assessment phase involved the final analysis, in light of all the findings, as to whether or not to pursue a mediation process. In making such an analysis, a conflict‐assessment team needs to consider that mediation might actually aggravate the situation and, in the event of failure, intensify the conflict and leave some or all of the stakeholders in a worse position than when the process began. In this situation, there was a danger of building expectations through the commissioning of a mediation process, which, if shattered because of lack of final agreement, could lead to a serious disintegration of relationships among the parties.

Before the start of the mediation, little actual violence took place in the Nahal Tzalmon area (and what took place was aimed at the environment through intentional destruction or at institutions like the NPA by tearing down the gates). A comfortable status quo existed, whereby the government periodically placed demolition orders on houses but then chose not to carry them out, and residents lived their lives in an “unrecognized” but ultimately rather comfortable manner. While this state of affairs was clearly temporary and would have to be resolved at some point, the alternatives to mediation were not necessarily bad in the short run for any of the stakeholders. Thus, mediation was not an urgent last attempt to restore calm, as it can often be. Therefore, the risks of mediation had to be evaluated in light of the fact that the status quo was not terrible, and a deterioration in relations was certainly possible, as they had not hit rock‐bottom. Conducting the mediation ultimately turned out for the better in this case, but it could have gone the other way by igniting hurt feelings and opening healing wounds at a time when the region was overcome by violence. The ultimate inability of a conflict assessment to predict with certainty the success of a mediation places a serious responsibility on the mediators, who often have to take a gamble and go ahead despite the danger of backfire. In this case, the willingness of all stakeholder groups to participate led the conflict‐assessment team to believe that the chances of success overrode the dangers of failure.

A majority of the stakeholders said they were impressed with the seriousness of the mediation process from the very start. However, recalls mediator Har‐Lev, when one of the mediators by accident referred to the process as an expectation coordination game, a stakeholder responded, “We are not children. We have serious problems, and we didn’t come to play.” This reinforced in the mediators a respect for the importance of each word, especially in the early meetings.

The ground rules proved extremely helpful throughout the mediation, when mediators and stakeholders referred to them in making order in heated discussions, and most of the stakeholders felt that the ground rules established by the group helped to guide the process and promote understanding. There was some minor disagreement as to the need for ground rules, however. One stakeholder felt that the rules stated the obvious. But the majority found them very useful for “staying focused and on track” and “making everybody comfortable.” Stakeholders also disagreed about whether the process remained faithful to the ground rules or not. The majority felt it did, but a few felt there was deviation.

In retrospect, one flaw in the ground rules was that they established decision making “by consensus” but did not define consensus nor clarify what would happen if consensus could not be reached. This ultimately led to a problem. As one stakeholder explained, “The rules said we had to reach an agreement that everyone would agree to, but this wasn’t possible.” The mediators had in mind the use of overwhelming consensus, in which a vast majority can reach agreement despite the protest of a small minority, rather than full consensus, in which each individual member of the group has veto power over the agreement. Unfortunately, this distinction (Susskind, McKearnan, and Thomas‐Larmer 1999: 32–33) was never raised. At one point during the mediation, the mediators and group decided to proceed against the wishes of a stakeholder representing the SPNI, after it proved impossible to overcome his objections regarding one key issue. The SPNI representative felt cheated, having believed that nothing would be agreed to without absolute, full consensus. Had the definition of consensus been clearer from the start, this participant would not have felt he was misled.

At the beginning of the mediation, it was also necessary to establish the best possible communication among the participants. Beyond establishing ground rules and coordinating expectations, therefore, the mediators put a lot of work into easing interactions among the stakeholders. After all, mediation is in essence a practice in communication. In a multicultural setting like this one, communication is complicated by language differences. All of the residents and villagers involved in this mediation understand and speak Hebrew, but their main language is Arabic. The other stakeholders speak only Hebrew. Therefore, the mediation was conducted in Hebrew, with translation by the Arab mediator into Arabic. This allowed those who felt more comfortable with Arabic to express themselves in that language.

Ironically, while many of the Hebrew‐speaking stakeholders thought that they had an advantage over the Arabic speakers and that it was more difficult for the Arabic speakers to express themselves, the vast majority of the Arabic speakers felt that they were at no disadvantage, and they felt comfortable with the mediators’ handling of the language issue. Some stakeholders did feel uncomfortable with the fact that it was a mediator who did the translating. “I think that if this were done with simultaneous translation by a third party [a non‐mediator],” one stakeholder said, “it would make it more equal between the two languages.” Budgetary constraints made hiring a separate translator impossible, however.

In one instance, a controversy did erupt over the issue of translation. During some preliminary social activities, all of the stakeholders visited the home of an older park resident. When hosting the group in his house, this resident gave a heartfelt and emotional speech in Arabic about the war of 1948, his connection to history, and the implications of history on the current conflict. In his talk, the man spoke very harshly of the Israeli state and the suffering it had caused his family. The mediator then translated the speech into Hebrew. Some of the Arabic speakers (who understood the Hebrew translation) said that the mediator's translation was inaccurate and that he “softened” the words used, perhaps out of discomfort with their meaning. One stakeholder later complained that, in making the language gentler, the mediator lost the effect of the words. “I was very angry that he ‘beautified’ the language,” this person said, “without translating the hard parts.”

Aside from issues of Hebrew and Arabic language use, the stakeholders differed in their abilities to use and understand professional planning and legal terminology. Some of the stakeholders noted that these differences were much more significant in the mediation than the basic language differences. This underscores the need to begin a mediation process with some kind of educational plan for those who do not come from the professional culture.

As alluded to above, the first stage in the mediation also involved social activities aimed at building acquaintance, trust, and a “group identity” among the stakeholders. The social activities included visiting the park and the home of one of the residents. The mediators decided to give the residents a chance to feel important and overcome power distances in these social events by suggesting that one of the dinners be hosted by a resident. Because Jewish Israelis have adopted most of the traditional Arab foods, there was no issue in regard to the type of food served. However, different stakeholders had different perceptions of the value of these activities. Some viewed the social activities with cynicism (“What's important is the results, not the group”) while others gained a feeling of real bonding (“I felt that we all had something in common . . . ; we all had a common interest, so a group interest formed around trying to solve the problem, which belonged to everyone”). Still others were offended by the activities. “I felt that the social meetings as part of the mediation were inappropriate,” said one NGO representative. “It's one thing to have a joint lunch, but it's completely another thing to hold it at the home of one of the participants who has an illegal construction. This is a cheap attempt to manipulate us emotionally, so I didn’t go. Social events should be held in a neutral place if they don’t want the stakeholders to feel isolated.” So this attempt to bridge the cultural divide was experienced by some as a breach in neutrality. The difference in these reactions is consistent with the cross‐cultural negotiation research of Jeswald Salacuse, who identified cultural differences in the perceived goal of negotiation, in regard to whether the final contract or the relationship formed is more important in a negotiation process (Salacuse 1998: 221).

Overall, the first phase of the mediation was successful in winning the trust of the stakeholders and in engaging them in the process. The group, through a collective process, determined a set of ground rules, which were followed to varying degrees throughout the mediation. While the ground rules managed to set a respectful tone and provide a framework through which all could be heard, the lack of enforcement of certain ground rules, such as those regarding attendance, hindered the process at times. The social aspects of the introductory phase were successful in getting the stakeholders acquainted with one another and forging some degree of mutual empathy, but some stakeholders felt alienated by this process and maintained that neutrality had been violated.

The knowledge‐building phase was one of the most important phases in this mediation, because the lack of transparency and access to information was such a central theme and the disparity in knowledge among stakeholders was so wide.

The stakeholders’ reactions to the knowledge‐building phase were varied. Most of the residents felt this phase was beneficial. “The [planner’s] lecture was excellent, for all sides,” said one. “The lecture was very important because many people didn’t know what was happening before,” said another, “and after they understood things better.” Yet others felt they still did not understand the planning process or the terminology used. Perhaps more worrisome was that, while most residents and villagers claimed that they understood the planning process after the presentations, some of the planning professionals in the group felt that the residents still did not understand. It was nearly impossible for the residents to argue with professional planners “because they were not placed on the same ground in the information‐gathering stage, which was very meager,” said one planner. “The final decision was not reached out of a full understanding of the planning process on the part of the resident families, and this is a problem,” said another. “They did not understand that the government representatives participating in the mediation cannot simply give them immediately all that is agreed to.” If it is true that the residents did not understand even though they felt they did, then the empowerment that is supposed to come with knowledge might not have occurred.

Stakeholders also had differing views about Dr. Hana Sued's presentation. Clearly, the mediators were seeking to accommodate the residents by bringing in a speaker who could bridge between their own culture and the state's bureaucratic culture — someone powerful they could relate to. Many of the stakeholders appreciated this effort and felt that Dr. Sued's lecture, and his mere presence as an Arab planner, succeeded in bridging to a certain extent the different viewpoints. But some of the stakeholders’ comments suggest that perhaps this attempt to accommodate was actually a disservice to the residents in that it did not give them an accurate picture of the harsh reality that the state, unlike some individual planners, does not always try to accommodate their needs. Despite this criticism, Dr. Sued's lecture was much better received by most of the stakeholders than the planner's was, which speaks perhaps to the value of bringing a personality who bridges between the different groups, whom most can identify with, to present information that is difficult to accept.

In assessing the knowledge‐building phase, it is clear that the aim of this phase should ideally have been threefold: to educate about the park plan, the planning process, and the consensus‐building process and what participants could expect from it. The first two objectives were tackled with varying degrees of success. The third part hardly occurred, mainly because the mediators did not realize at that point that what they had presented in the first few meetings was not internalized by all stakeholders. The mediators now feel, and stakeholder responses indicate, that there should have been a “pre‐education phase,” perhaps involving only some of the participants, before the mediation began. The gap in knowledge among stakeholders as to both technical terms of planning and what mediation promises was so immense that additional training would have been helpful for some of the stakeholders. Planning professionals who participated in this stage said so bluntly, “What was missing was a separate process for the residents, to help them understand better.” Said another, “There was an information gap. They should have received more information without us.”

Interestingly, it was mainly other stakeholders who felt that the residents needed additional background information, while the residents themselves were more confident in their understanding of the processes and the plans after the knowledge‐building phase. At worst, this may mean that the residents felt they understood concepts that in fact they did not, making their bargaining positions in the mediation weaker than they realized relative to the other stakeholders. While a separate education process for some stakeholders can always be held in a mediation process like this, there exists a danger that a separate process would have led to negative consequences by generating concerns about the opaqueness of the process. However, as it became clear later in this mediation that the gap in understanding was so deep (not only of the planning process and park plans, but also in what can be expected of the mediation), that some sort of transparent, additional process may have been necessary regardless.

Nearly all the stakeholders agreed that private caucuses undertaken as part of the interest identification process were the most effective mechanism for uncovering interests. “The private meetings with each stakeholder were the best way to understand the interests,” said one stakeholder, “because it would have been harder to talk about in a large group.” However, some felt that the mediators could not understand all of the hidden interests. “The cultural communication gap was not overcome well enough for the interests to be correctly exposed,” said another. Because the compilation of interests was based on what stakeholders themselves told the mediators, the tension between hidden and exposed interests was not resolved at this point. “One thing that didn’t come out at all is the political issues,” explained one person. “For example, the representative of Ras el Ein feared that Christians will return to his village and change the demographic balance. These irrational interests, which remained under the surface, greatly affected the process and moved it backwards when they weren’t exposed.” Often, stakeholders suspected each other of having hidden agendas. So while nearly all stakeholders were pleased with the mediators’ summaries of the interests, some were not confident that the mediators understood the interests that were left unspoken, intentionally or not. “The mediators were able to understand [the state representatives’] interests,” said one stakeholder, “but not those of the residents, because the residents had an interest in hiding their interests from them. The mediators did their best, but the residents were too confused in their own representation problems to be able to give accurate information.” One official expressed his interpretation this way, “There were lots of hidden interests on the part of the residents, and because of these hidden interests, we weren’t able to get to the heart of the problem in a realistic manner.”

One way to uncover hidden interests, which was not employed in this case, is to ask the stakeholders to explain not only their own interests, but also their perceptions or theories about interests that other stakeholders might harbor. While this is a sensitive process and can lead to disagreements, confusion, and denial, it might be worth investigating as a potential tool to get at hidden interests. Another possibility in cases where the level of trust between mediators and stakeholders is high is to ask stakeholders to expose some of their deeper, more delicate concerns to the mediators only, without having to expose them to the group. The mediators can then better craft options that meet these interests and propose them to the individuals and at the appropriate time to the group, without revealing the interests per se. Such crafting took place to a certain extent in this mediation, but the level of trust was not high enough for many stakeholders to reveal secret interests to the mediators.

The use of working groups to arrive at settlement options around specific themes was controversial among the stakeholders and mediators. To the mediators, the fact that most of the groups had to meet only once to come up with possibilities for answering the needs of all stakeholders and only the groups dealing with structures and paths had to meet twice demonstrated the effectiveness of work in small groups. Some stakeholders felt that working groups were the best way to achieve agreement and work together. “It is much easier to convince in small groups,” said one person. “You can convince one or two people who don’t see why you need something, but it's much harder to convince thirty. So it wouldn’t have been possible to reach agreement without the small groups.” Another participant said, “The working groups were ultimately efficient, since they created a feeling of trust. They made us work together, and this helped.” Others felt that the working groups were a waste of time or prevented understanding. “We got nothing out of the working groups,” said one person. “They were irrelevant.” Another said, “I think it was wrong to have small groups. We should have all worked together so as to prevent misunderstandings later.” Another stakeholder “wanted to participate in all of the groups, not just in one.”

One controversy arose during this phase regarding the composition of the working groups. The groups were largely self‐selected, but in one case, the mediators had to interfere. In this case, the representative from the SPNI wanted to participate in the working group on housing and construction, but other stakeholders in that group insisted that he not participate, knowing that his position was irreconcilable with most of their interests. The mediators agreed that he should be in a different working group because of the harsh feelings and difficult power dynamics at play, whereby the other stakeholders would feel too defensive to make any concrete suggestions in his presence and the group would likely not make progress. The rebuffed representative was personally offended by this decision, and from this point stopped attending meetings and essentially dropped out of the mediation. In this instance, the mediators found themselves in a “lose‐lose situation,” forced to choose between losing the confidence of one “outlier” and losing the hard‐earned trust of a whole group of stakeholders and affecting the efficiency of the process. Ultimately, this stakeholder's absence was not so harmful to the process because it is unlikely to affect the implementation of the agreement and because many of his interests were incorporated into the single text in any case. Nonetheless, this was a very difficult decision for the mediators to make.

Despite the varied opinions about the working groups, most stakeholders felt that the recommended options the working groups developed were successfully incorporated into the draft single‐text agreement, thereby allowing them to directly shape the settlement and not just agree or disagree with it. “I think there were many things from what the groups suggested that were included in the draft agreement,” said one participant.

The single‐text agreement that emerged from the caucusing process includes three components: (1) an agreement on public trails in the park as they relate to private landowners; (2) an agreement on housing and construction; and (3) an agreement on related topics such as economic rights, entry and exit, and other issues. The document provides creative solutions to some of the seemingly contradictory interests of the different stakeholders. For example, residents of the park expressed an interest in employment, especially because their traditional agricultural professions are not so profitable anymore. It was agreed that park residents and local villagers would have priority in employment within the park (as tour guides, for example), and that villagers would have the right to build restaurants and souvenir shops on the road leading into the park, which will pass right by them. Traditional agriculture will continue in the park in most cases, and the park will educate visitors about traditional Arab agricultural practices in a kind of “living museum.” The hiring of residents and local villagers as tour guides and rangers promotes the interests of environmental NGOs and government agencies in environmental preservation, as these formerly hostile residents and neighbors will have an interest in preserving nature and ensuring the park's success and will likely act accordingly rather than intentionally destroying the environment as they have done in the past. These are but a few examples of the creative solutions this mediation was able to inspire that would have been unlikely to emerge through litigation. These solutions, in addition to some of the personal transformations that took place, mark the mediation's success.

To get a more complete picture of how and why the Nahal Tzalmon mediation process unfolded the way it did, it is helpful to analyze more fully some of the key aspects of the consensus‐building process. Specifically, the themes of representation, neutrality, trust building, power dynamics, and emotions influenced the process in ways that are worth investigating.

One of the main factors that set the stage for the Nahal Tzalmon mediation and dictated the nature of the final agreement was the issue of representation. In any process, it is essential to identify the key stakeholders and choose appropriate representatives; it is also critical that the representatives then effectively represent their constituencies’ interests throughout the process. In seeking representatives in this case, as mentioned previously, the weak state of civil society in Israel meant that individual stakeholders had to be identified one by one. No organized interest groups existed that could represent the park residents’ or villagers’ interests. The process of selecting representatives was unclear to the representatives themselves, and some participants as well as the mediators were skeptical about how well some representatives did their jobs during the process.

One of the most fascinating aspects of any consensus‐building process is this issue of representation. The “two‐table problem,” as described by Barbara Gray (1989), addresses three main questions: (1) To what extent does each representative in fact represents her constituency? (2) What contact does she maintain with her constituency? (3) What is her real authority to make decisions? In the Nahal Tzalmon mediation process, the stakeholders differed significantly in their levels of authority, relationships to their constituencies, and ability to participate effectively. These differences created problems throughout the process and highlighted the issue of the mediators’ role in relation to representation. A few questions arose from this experience, including the extent to which mediators should be involved in the selection of representatives, as well as the extent of their involvement in representatives’ reporting back to and updating their constituencies.

Representation problems also emerged among the park residents and villagers. The heads of the villages were automatically selected as representatives, but one of the village leaders is also the son of a park resident. “There was no conflict of interest between my representation of my father's house and my representation of the village,” this individual said. But another representative disagreed, “I was not sure whether [he was] representing the interests of the whole village or specific interests that we couldn’t know about.” A family representative once admitted that “there were points when there were conflicts [of opinion] within the family.” He refused to discuss how those conflicts were resolved other than stating that he convinced the family to continue with the mediation. While it is impossible to monitor the activities and effectiveness of each representative, perhaps greater involvement by the mediators in helping the constituencies select representatives, and requiring a certain degree of accountability from representatives, would have helped minimize the negative influence of such conflicts.

Other stakeholders were concerned about the balance of representatives at the table. “[T]he residents cared so much more [about] this process than the authorities did, so their representation was so much better,” said one government representative. “In order to have this mediation be overarching, all of the resident families sent representatives. All residents were included, so that no one would feel left out. So seventy‐five percent of the representatives [at the table] were residents, which made them outnumber us. . . . There was an enormous imbalance.” Another stakeholder felt that a larger problem “was that representatives kept switching. . . .  This made it impossible to negotiate. There should have been only one representative from each organization through the whole process.” The mediators felt this imbalance as well, but noted that it was unavoidable because different family members had different interests and at a certain point it became clear that internal conflicts within the families made it impossible for them to have only one representative.

Mediator Har‐Lev has raised the question of how to best handle the dichotomy between who a representative claims to represent and his true interests. In Nahal Tzalmon, for example, one of the village representatives said that his village would welcome the descendants of the current park residents. The draft agreement incorporated these interests, maintaining that the descendents of the current residents would move to his village (rather than build additional houses in the park). But at one point, the representative changed tacks and began objecting to this idea. None of the conversations with him could clarify why he was suddenly objecting. Only in conversations with other stakeholders was it learned that the new residents could possibly shift the demographic in a negative way for this individual, who was head of the local council, thereby reducing his chances for reelection. In this instance, the representative's personal interests and the interests of his constituency clearly conflicted.

The context of environmental planning raises another set of questions relating to representation. What is the role of environmental NGOs in such a process? Are they the guardians of nature and of the interests of future generations? If so, is living on land and practicing traditional agriculture inherently contradictory to their interests? The hard‐line and unyielding approach of the SPNI was that this land, slated for preservation, should be free from any infrastructure and certainly from any new infrastructure. The SPNI was the main dissenter from the final agreement because the group could not overcome its differences with one of the residents, who needed permits to build a new structure on his land in order to make the agreement worthwhile to him. The environmentalists’ hard‐line approach undermined their ability to reach an agreement. But arguably the potential for preservation is greater through consensus, even if residents remain on the land. In this particular case, it is possible that no inherent contradiction exists between allowing residents to stay on the land and preserving nature, but the SPNI was concerned about the precedent such an agreement would set, and this stance put it in opposition with the residents.

Despite the departure of the SPNI from the process, the organization's participation in fact contributed greatly to the protection of the park's natural resources. Many of SPNI's interests were incorporated into the final agreement and were even promoted by the residents. Residents came to place greater value on their land — and all land, for that matter — as something that will be destroyed without their concerted efforts to preserve it. Thus the consensus‐building process resulted in stakeholders gaining an enlarged sense of environmental appreciation and understanding, which can be seen as a major accomplishment. As a result, the SPNI does not view itself as a “loser” in the mediation, despite dissenting from the final agreement.

Another major concern in a consensus‐building process is the neutrality of the process and the mediators. In this case, the mediating team was rather successfully composed of one Arab Israeli and two Jewish Israelis, who created a sense of neutrality on the most basic cultural level. The team managed to understand both the literal and figurative meaning of what stakeholders from all sides told them and to elicit a fair amount of trust. The stakeholders from the various backgrounds reacted no differently to the Jewish mediators than they did to the Arab mediator — a very positive sign. In any case, the ethnic/religious distinctions are somewhat shallow. Interestingly, in closed discussions among the three mediators, the Jewish mediators often expressed sympathy toward the Arab residents and frustration with the government, while the Arab mediator, a former mayor, was more sympathetic to the bureaucracy than the Jews were.

Most stakeholders felt that the mediators were neutral in practice. “The mediators were completely neutral,” said one stakeholder, “and even when they sometimes felt attached to a certain issue and we could tell they were making an effort to be neutral, they still managed to do this.” Those who felt the mediators were not neutral were split in their perceptions of which way they were biased — toward the government authorities or the residents. Perhaps the divergence of views in this regard speaks for itself in demonstrating that the mediators were as neutral as possible.

Other stakeholders held more complicated perceptions of the mediators’ neutrality. “Neutrality is a loaded word; it is almost impossible,” said one. “There are always interests. The interest of a mediator is to solve a dispute and bring it to a conclusion that reflects his general concept of fairness. But within this framework, the mediators did a pretty good job.” One representative of a state agency differentiated between whom the mediators empathized with, and whose side they were on culturally. “I don’t think neutrality is ever possible . . . ,” this person said. “Here, I felt that the mediators had more empathy for the residents. At the same time, culturally they were on our side, and it was easier for them to talk to us. . . . But their emotions were with the others.”

Another stakeholder felt that the mediators were too determined to reach agreement. “They had their own agenda toward the end,” he said. “They wanted to reach agreement, and, though I don’t remember where this happened, I sometimes felt manipulated.” The incentive of mediators to reach agreement is a double‐edged sword. While a mediator with an overpowering interest in settlement can manipulate stakeholders, one with a reasonable interest in reaching agreement can have a beneficial effect, helping disputants to overcome what Sipe and Stiftel call the “inertia of non‐settlement” (Sipe 1998).

Consensus‐building processes are group processes. Like other group processes, they are based to varying degrees upon the synergetic philosophy of teamwork. Teamwork theory maintains that a group becomes effective when synergy exists among its members (Bunker and Alban 1997). Such synergy is based upon an appreciation of differences within the group as a source of mutual learning and development, as well as trust and respect. In a group where differences are perceived as sources of conflict and trust between members is limited, inefficient patterns of behavior, communication, and management will emerge (Adizes 1999). From the first moment this project was undertaken, one of the main challenges facing the mediators was how to establish a level of trust among the stakeholders. The park's residents had endured years of no information and misinformation — exacerbated by the broader geopolitical reality they faced every day. Their level of cynicism against government authorities was high, and their trust had to be earned. At the same time, the authorities who had worked with the residents in the past and had witnessed them destroying the park's natural landscape, polluting, and building illegal structures, came into the mediation with a very low level of trust toward the residents.

The building of trust among the stakeholders occurred gradually, through the use of the agreement as insurance. “I don’t think we fully got to trust the other stakeholders,” said one participant, “[yet the agreement] did bring us closer, and made the residents have faith that their houses won’t be bulldozed tomorrow. . . . So while we might not trust each other on a personal level now, generally there are agreements which are very important, and I think most participants have trust in the agreements.” One government representative said, “I also think the residents changed. I think their trust was earned when they saw we were serious.”

The lack of trust and the small steps that can be taken to improve it was demonstrated by a minor conflict within the larger mediation. The NPA had placed a locked gate at one of the entrances of the park to prevent the public from damaging the natural landscape. ( There had been incidents of youths holding parties and littering in that area.) One of the landowners needed to get through this gate to get to some of his fields, however. The NPA refused to give him a key, claiming that copies would be circulated, undermining the point of the lock. Throughout the mediation, the resident and the NPA representative got into little squabbles over this issue, until the mediators took them aside for a private caucus and helped them to reach agreement about it. Likewise, many other small conflicts and violations of trust had to be resolved before the larger mediation could go forward.

In this mediation, the stakeholders also had to gain trust in the mediators. This kind of trust building took place through a continuous effort on the part of the mediators to convince the stakeholders that they would do nothing against their interests. As one stakeholder said, “There was a huge amount of trust building that took place toward the mediators. We learned to trust them enormously.” If the mediators did not win the stakeholders’ trust in the first few meetings — through the shuttle‐diplomacy process and enormous efforts to understand and correctly represent each stakeholder's views and interests — they did manage to win the trust of nearly all stakeholders by the end of the process.

As a result of the trust‐building process and the mediators’ attempt to place all participants on equal footing, a remarkable shift in power dynamics took place. While in reality the government agencies involved were infinitely more powerful than the residents, in the mediation the residents’ interests and needs appeared to carry equal weight and importance.

It is not common, especially in Israel, to see senior government authorities sit around a table with local villagers and landowners, all with an equal voice, to make “professional” determinations and plans. All the participants in this mediation had to demonstrate enormous flexibility of thought and behavior to fit themselves to this new situation. Government officials and professionals had to give up, to a certain extent, their role as decision makers. Residents with no formal education had to cooperate with authorities they considered oppressive to present logical counter‐arguments and claims to their professional demands, and to give up their traditional role as the “objectors.”

Given that the process required extra education for certain stakeholders and presupposed a basic belief in the equality of residents and governmental authorities, and given a disparity of power so extreme that some stakeholders could, should they choose to, destroy the lives of others, some degree of transformational mediation may have been essential. (Transformational mediation is, as the name implies, mediation in which the parties not only seek settlement but undergo transformations of their views, beliefs, or behaviors [McCormick 1997].)

According to the theory of transformational mediation, the need to balance power differences has led many mediators to challenge the concept of neutrality and even call for its rejection in certain instances. For “the vast majority of mediators . . . , to be ready and willing to risk our impartiality . . . requires a reeducation process to broaden our mediating skills” (McCormick 1997: 293–294). Both Michael McCormick and Isabelle Gunning argue that the notion of impartiality must be revised to allow interference in cases of power imbalance (Gunning 1995: 55–58; McCormick 1997: 293–294). In the Nahal Tzalmon case, the mediators were not afraid to take that route and to help give a voice to the “underdogs,” so as to ultimately strengthen relationships. As one of the villagers explained, “Overall, [the mediators] were neutral, but they wanted to help the residents. They understood them and the fact that they have difficulties overcoming the strength of the authorities, so they fought for the residents. . . . If they were neutral, they wouldn’t argue with the authorities and give the residents extra help. I respect their attempt to help the weaker.” Of course, the authorities also clearly had something at stake, or they would not have participated in the mediation in the first place. However, there is no doubt that in terms of communication and public discourse, the government representatives were initially stronger, and the mediators assisted the weaker stakeholders in making themselves heard.

The mediators, in placing the residents on equal footing with the government representatives for the course of the mediation, were not reflecting reality but rather creating a new one. The fact that this succeeded even partially is one of the incredible accomplishments of this mediation.

Of course, no mediation can create real equality, and in this case, some serious differences remained. One stakeholder observed, “The NPA and the residents cared most about this process, but the strongest stakeholders are those who can further the plans — the bodies that are actually in charge. The mediators didn’t do anything to overcome this difference, because they couldn’t. There is no option of creating equality [outside] the process. We are all equal in the process, but this doesn’t change the fact that outside of it there is an enormous inequality.”

This observation demands consideration as to whether the artificial equality that was created served the purposes of the weaker parties, who ultimately live in an unequal world. Could the perception of equality that was created have made the residents feel more powerful than they actually were, thereby undermining their sense of reality and their understanding of their BATNAs? The statements of some of the residents hint that at times during the mediation they felt that they could ask for anything — that the mediation did not just promise a Robin Hood stepping in to fix injustice, but a Santa Claus allowing them a wish list. Here, the potential for heightened expectations could lead to disappointment and further alienation. But the balance came from the need for agreement, which required the mediators to bring the dreamers back to earth and remind them of their BATNAs. If the weak overcompensate when given a chance, the danger of disillusionment can be mitigated by the mediators’ awareness and reality checking with the disputants.

Although the Nahal Tzalmon mediation ostensibly revolved around issues of planning and law, for the residents the issues went much deeper and involved their very homes, occupations, and futures. It was thus a very emotionally charged process, and the mediators had to regularly cope with emotional outbursts in order to move the process forward. The mediators worked as a team in these situations, with each playing a different role. At group meetings, when an emotional outburst took place, or even when one stakeholder was visibly upset, two of the mediators would continue with the group and the third would take the person aside for a quiet conversation.

One of the villagers recalled a time when a Ras el Ein representative reminded the residents that their houses were in theoretical danger of being torn down, and the residents responded with a great deal of anger and frustration. “The mediators dealt really well with the emotions,” said one participant. “[One mediator] calmed people down when they were upset. . . . They had to make a sulha. This was a really hard point, and I appreciated the way in which they were able to move on by convincing the sides to gain by continuing in the process. When the residents were persuaded that this was true, they moved on with the mediation.”

Another stakeholder, a government representative, described her ambivalence regarding the mediators’ handling of emotions:

This stakeholder points out the difficult tension between giving credibility and legitimacy to emotions, on one hand, and not allowing emotions to be used as a negotiation tool, on the other. Because the residents were clearly more emotional about this issue than the other stakeholders, and because of cultural differences in the degrees of emotional expression, there was a potential for residents to use emotions to “gain favor.” But if the mediators are truly neutral and if the agreement is self‐determined by stakeholders, there should not be much of a detrimental effect as a result of using emotions in this way.

In two years, the Nahal Tzalmon consensus‐building process brought about an agreement on the proposed park, which the traditional planning process was not able to accomplish in nearly twenty years. Yet the mediation's achievements run deeper than just reaching agreement. The mediation placed on an equal footing people spanning the socioeconomic, power, and educational spectrum in Israel, including individuals from across the Arab–Jewish national divide. It empowered some of the country's least powerful citizens and allowed them to participate in planning their own futures.

A few lessons can be learned from this first attempt at consensus‐based land‐use planning in Israel. The first lesson involves the scope of public participation. In order to more efficiently facilitate an agreement, the mediators decided to limit the scope of the mediation to immediate stakeholders, without involving those with a more indirect interest or the wider public. Hence, no open meetings took place. Some of the stakeholders felt that excluding the public was a mistake and that certain stakeholder groups were unrepresented. “We said we were concerned about the agreement of those involved,” said one stakeholder, “but there was no room here for the voice of the village children, who are the future of this area.” In mediations like this one, it may be beneficial to hold one or two open meetings, in which the wider public is invited to express interests and concerns for the stakeholders’ consideration. Such public participation efforts could address the problem of involving a broader range of stakeholders without compromising the intimacy of the mediation.

The second lesson involves the stakeholders’ understanding of the consensus‐building process. It is fair to ask how effective a process can be when some of the participants proceed without an understanding of the mediation process and of what mediation can and cannot achieve. Some of the stakeholders in this case expressed a belief that the mediators would “deliver” rights agreed upon, and they failed to understand the park's planning process and where a mediated agreement would fit into decisions that would be made by the implementing authorities. For example, one of the residents said of the mediators, “they told us a few years ago that they would be willing to give us construction rights.” His comment exposed the misguided belief that the mediators could control construction rights. Another stakeholder seemed to believe that the agreement would be instantly implemented and the park would open immediately. “I look forward to the creation of the park,” he said. “I’m really waiting for the opening of the park — especially this year, since there is so much water this year and it would be great to have the park open soon. . . . The mediation really saved this area.” The reality of the planning process, however, is that the agreement means nothing until plans based upon it are drafted and ratified in the local, regional, and national planning committees, signed by the Interior Minister and enacted by the NPA. Should the process be delayed or scuttled in any one of these stages, this stakeholder's early optimism will be squashed, most likely along with his belief in consensus‐building processes.

The mediators did repeatedly, throughout the process, try to clarify what they could and could not deliver to the residents and villagers. And the planning process was discussed at length during the knowledge‐building phase. Yet misunderstandings among these stakeholders remained. And other stakeholders, who were professionals and were quick to understand the processes involved, had no patience for longer explanations. Given the wide gap in education and understanding between the professionals and those who were uneducated, it is possible that extra, optional, and transparent education sessions should have been provided at the beginning for the “nonprofessionals.” While this approach would involve risks of apparent inequality, it may still be preferable to the alternative of imperfect self‐determination in the mediation.

Indeed, this mediation demonstrates that sometimes there is a need for a “preliminary educational phase,” held after representatives are selected but before a mediation begins. In a preliminary educational phase, stakeholders’ expectations as to what they can and cannot expect from the process could be established and representatives could be educated about the process. An agreement could just as easily be reached without this phase. But if expectations about what the agreement actually means are off‐base, having an agreement could be more dangerous than not having one. Therefore, the ultimate success of a mediation is likely to rely on the success of this kind of initial consensus‐building education — an often undocumented but critically important phase.

Some Nahal Tzalmon stakeholders recognized this fact. “What was missing was a separate process for the residents, to help them understand better,” said one stakeholder. “I think that before the mediation and after the conflict‐assessment stage, there should have been an education phase for the residents alone. . . . They should have been given tools before the beginning of the process.” In retrospect, some of the mediators agree. In overcoming power and educational differentials, it may be necessary — as transformative mediation theorists propose — to conduct separate processes with certain stakeholders, at the risk of damaging neutrality.

Despite the presence of an agreement about the park for which nearly all stakeholders have expressed support, the Nahal Tzalmon mediation is not yet a success story, and its outcome is still uncertain. Thus, the third lesson revolves around the importance of implementation. An agreement is worth little without implementation, and at the root of this agreement lie major structural problems likely to hinder implementation, including volatility resulting from a clear lack of support from the implementing agencies and changes in agency representation.

On the one hand, it is heartwarming to hear stakeholders describe their increased expectations and the way in which their trust was earned, “Before, no one would listen to us and we had no one to approach about this conflict, so I was optimistic as soon as I was approached. I decided to participate because I was sure that I could get an agreement here.”“I felt cynical that there would be a solution, but later I was surprised to see the authorities willing to compromise so much . . . , so I’m very pleased.”“No one I know had faith in the beginning, but we decided to go with it anyway, and we are happy we did because there was success . . . in the end.”

But on the other hand, these heightened expectations present a real danger, because if plans based on the agreement are not implemented — because one of the planning committees rejects them or the NPA does not place this park high on its priority list — the residents and villagers will be bitterly disappointed, and their relationships with the authorities could disintegrate. In short, all that was won through hard work could still be lost. Some of the stakeholders recognize this risk. “I’m worried about implementation,” said one. “This is the most important thing. Until then, it's just talk. I’m waiting now for action. . . . If the plan doesn’t work out, we’re back at ground zero.” Another stakeholder said, “Since Tzalmon is low on the priority list of the NPA, I’m worried that they . . . won’t open a park, if only for lack of resources, and we might have actually done damage because we raised expectations here. . . . If the whole issue gets dropped for five years, the people involved will change, and there will be no implementation. The dynamic will be lost.”

Research has established that mediation leads to higher settlement rates, partially because a conflict's inherent “inertia of non‐settlement” can be overridden by the mediator's interest in settlement (Sipe 1998). But mediation does not necessarily lead to higher implementation rates because the mediator is frequently absent in the implementation stage, and so he or she cannot change the similar inertia relating to implementation (Sipe 1998). While mediation in theory (and in this case) encourages stakeholder buy‐in, which should lead to implementation, often the issue may simply not be high enough on the decision makers’ agenda for implementation to take place. In the Nahal Tzalmon case, once the final agreement is signed, it is critical that the mediators follow through with the implementation phase as no other body has taken responsibility for implementing the plans. Even if the plans pass all the committees, the park may not open. It is not high on the NPA's agenda, and so its opening could be stalled for many years.

The dangers posed by the potential implementation problems are intensified in this case by some stakeholders’ lack of understanding, discussed just previously, of what the process can and cannot promise. “The weakest point here was that people were asked to sign something that they had no control over ultimately, since the only control lies with the planning authorities,” one stakeholder worries. “The participants were misled into thinking that they have control [over the] plan here, when in reality all they could do was give a document to the planning commissions that it could accept or reject. There was no solid commitment, nor could there be real results.” This combination of a vulnerable agreement and a belief on the part of some stakeholders that the agreement is a final plan is particularly precarious.

The lesson for other mediation processes may be that not only must stakeholders understand how the mediation fits into the bureaucratic planning process, but that strong support should be secured at the outset from the implementing agencies. If the agencies were persuaded to take a more active role — serving as actual conveners or funders of the consensus‐building process and pledging to implement any agreement that emerges — implementation would be more likely to be achieved.

There is no question that the Nahal Tzalmon mediation process — despite its shortcomings and concerns about its implementation — was a pioneering effort that opened the door for the use of public consensus‐building processes in planning efforts in Israel. Furthermore, the consensus‐building tools and methods, and improved relationships acquired by the stakeholders in this case will stay with them, providing a transformative effect. As one park resident put it, “This will affect me greatly in the rest of my life, in family and neighbor disputes. I now know that everything can be solved in this way.”