Influencing Negotiation Willingness in the Middle East: The Potential Contributions of Private Actors Open Access

When asked at a public lecture in 2012 “what can the Israelis do to encourage the negotiation willingness of the Palestinians,” former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert replied, “Expressing your willingness to negotiate yourself. Lately I have not seen an expression of the will to negotiate by my own government. The whole idea that ‘let's sit down without preconditions and talk about everything’… this was twenty‐five or thirty years ago” (Olmert 2012).

Efforts to solve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict through diplomacy have been ongoing for more than four decades. Various actors have sought to bring peace to a protracted conflict involving competing territorial claims in multiple different ways. But these peace efforts — including the Madrid Conference in 1991, the Oslo Process in 1993–1995, the “Road Map” in 2003, the Israel–Hamas ceasefire in 2008, and the revival of direct talks in 2010 and 2013 — have failed to end the conflict.

To better understand this dilemma, we have examined the role that private actors and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have played to enhance the negotiation willingness of nonstate armed groups. We argue that NGOs in particular have played a key role in promoting negotiation willingness. They often have more freedom and flexibility to engage armed actors than states do. In Olmert's words, they can “sit down without preconditions and talk about everything.” Their nonofficial status can facilitate NGOs’ effectiveness: they often can address contentious issues with nonstate parties more easily than states or other official parties can. Nonstate parties may perceive that their shared nongovernmental status “levels the playing field” (Hofmann 2012). Additionally, because NGOs usually lack political and material leverage, they often achieve agreements between the conflict parties by finding a viable “middle ground.”

Actors in conflict typically choose specific tools. For instance, states and state‐based actors, such as international organizations, can change the conflict dynamics by credibly increasing high‐level and even military pressure on the parties to a conflict (George 1991; Art and Cronin 2003). NGOs and private individuals (e.g., influential international figures and retired high officials) do not have these tools at their disposal. They often, however, have other advantages: their smaller organizational structure and bureaucracy often means that they have greater flexibility than state actors and international organizations, and their nongovernmental status can mean that they are more likely to be perceived by parties as neutral. Especially in conflicts in which some of the disputants are nonstate actors, leveling the playing field by facilitating dialogue between nonstate disputants and nonstate neutrals may appeal to armed groups who might distrust the motives of ostensibly neutral third‐party states and international organizations because of their participation in previous failed negotiations or because of their perceived allegiance to the other parties to the conflict (such as states) based on their international status. Nonstate armed actors may be more likely to view NGOs as principled because they perceive that the work of such organizations more often reflects humanitarian principles than political interests.¹ Because they are more flexible and can adjust their approaches more easily to suit the particular conflict, NGOs can also more easily address particular issues and communicate with nonstate armed actors outside the existing political framework (Hofmann 2006; Hofmann and Schneckener 2011).

Non‐governmental organizations can provide specialized technical support, help build parties’ capacities, monitor previous or interim agreements, facilitate dialogue and discussion independent of formal negotiations, and offer their “good offices” (e.g., prestige and credibility) to such efforts (Touval and Zartman 1985; Zartman and Rasmussen 1997; Bercovitch 2002). The belief that any kind of dialogue based on humanitarian principles is constructive and increases the chances that a current or future political agreement will be reached often drives such engagement with armed groups (Hofmann and Schneckener 2011; Hofmann 2012).

The work of NGOs was critical, for example, in encouraging armed groups to negotiate such agreements as the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (COHA) between the government of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in 2002 (Kivimäki and Gorman 2008), several (monitored) agreements that banned the use of land mines by armed groups (Geneva Call Staff 2010), and the peace agreement signed by the government of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in 2014 (Hofmann 2011).

In this article, we explore how NGOs can promote negotiation willingness by analyzing two pairs of efforts to resolve the conflict in Israel and Palestine: the “Road Map” and the track two Geneva Initiative of 2003, and the Olmert Peace Plan and Jimmy Carter's visit to the Middle East in 2008. We chose the first pair because the results of the Geneva Initiative were unexpected — this nonofficial approach helped sustain negotiation willingness and group cohesion on the Palestinian side while official negotiations foundered during the Second Intifada. We chose the second set of initiatives because Palestinian reactions to Olmert's ostensibly generous peace offer seemed especially puzzling, and we believe these reactions illustrate divisive dynamics among the Palestinian factions.

In both sets of initiatives, private efforts attempted to address a party's lack of internal cohesion, which had substantially undermined possibilities for agreement. In both cases, nongovernmental efforts enhanced the Palestinians’ willingness to negotiate. Despite unfavorable conditions for the proposed agreements — which did ultimately fail — the engagement of nonstate actors did succeed in creating greater cohesion.

In September 2000, rising tensions between Israel and the Palestinians culminated in the beginning of the Second Intifada, an uprising that began a period of intensified violence on both sides of the conflict. In this environment, negotiators at the Taba Summit, held in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in January 2001, made substantial progress toward a negotiated agreement and hoped to resume negotiations following the upcoming Israeli elections. Parties issued a joint statement declaring that the sides “have never been closer to reaching an agreement” (Israel and Palestinian Negotiators 2001).

But Ariel Sharon, who succeeded Ehud Barak as Prime Minister following the Israeli elections, refused to negotiate with the Palestinians as long as violence persisted in the Occupied Territories. After months of violence on both sides, a supporter of the Palestinian Islamic organization Hamas detonated a suicide bomb in March 2002 during a Passover seder in the Israeli city of Netanya, sparking “Operation Defensive Shield,” the largest Israeli military operation in the West Bank since the 1967 Six‐Day War. The Israeli army destroyed Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah, and the Israeli government put him under house arrest for the rest of his life, effectively isolating him from his people. Arafat's position became increasingly embattled — Sharon declared him irrelevant to the peace process, and President George W. Bush said that “peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership so that a Palestinian state can be born” (Jonas 2002; Bush 2002).

In March 2003, under considerable pressure from the United States, Israel, and some members of the Palestinian legislature, Arafat appointed Mahmoud Abbas — a perceived moderate and pragmatist — as the first Palestinian Prime Minister. Arafat and Abbas remained in a constant power struggle, however; and Abbas was forced to resign in September 2003 after a truce he brokered collapsed, destroying his already fragile authority, and leaving Arafat as the de facto Palestinian leader.²

In April 2003, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan announced that the “Quartet on the Middle East,” which was formed in 2002 and comprises the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, and Russia, had developed a proposal for resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict known as the “Road Map for Peace.” The plan acknowledged “the occupation that began in 1967” and the need for a two‐state solution to end the conflict (Knesset 2003a, b). It also proposed concrete steps for ending the conflict to unfold in three phases. In the first, Palestine and Israel would each recognize the other as legitimate states and agree to an immediate ceasefire, Israel would withdraw its troops from the Occupied Territories, and democratic elections would be held in Palestine by mid‐2003. The second phase proposed economic recovery measures for the Palestinian state and a revival of multilateral engagements to address such issues as regional water resources, environment, economic development, and arms control issues by late 2003. The third phase proposed a permanent status agreement that would address such critical issues as borders, Jerusalem, refugees, and settlements, and officially end the conflict by 2005.

The Israeli government added substantial conditions, which included the full demilitarization of militant Palestinian groups, new and different Palestinian leadership, the avoidance of final settlement issues, the removal of references to most other previous agreements, and a waiver of any right of return for Palestinian refugees to Israel (Knesset 2003a, b). Because these conditions reflected Israel's unilateral goals, they essentially undermined the purpose of the Road Map.

The Palestinians, on the other hand, objected to the Road Map's vague language, which they feared Israel would exploit. But because of strong American support for Israel as its ally in the “war on terror,” the Palestinian Authority believed that accepting the Road Map was its only option (Dean 2004), although it became clear to the Palestinians that the Road Map would secure neither a full Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories nor a right of return for Palestinian refugees.

Palestinian public support began to shift, away from Abbas's more moderate stance and toward Arafat and the Intifada, and support for the Road Map waned. Increasing numbers of Palestinians began to see violent resistance as a viable and legitimate response to occupation (Dean 2004). Islamist and leftist factions within the PLO reaffirmed their commitment to national unity and to the Intifada, and in August 2003 Hamas violated Abbas's June 2003 call for a ceasefire. In response, in September 2003 the Israeli government suspended all contacts with Palestinian officials and reinitiated military operations in the Palestinian territories, most prominently in Gaza and Nablus in December 2003.

The beginning of the Second Intifada in 2000 and the termination of the Taba peace talks in 2001 convinced many observers that official negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians were stalled. To maintain the momentum created by Taba and by the peace plan that U.S. President Bill Clinton had proposed in 2000, University of Geneva professor Alexis Keller launched an unofficial effort known as the “Geneva Initiative.”³ The negotiating teams were led by Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli minister of justice, and Yasser Abed Rabbo, a member of the PLO's executive committee and a former minister of information and culture in the Palestinian National Authority. They were joined by members of the Israeli opposition and other Palestinian officials and supported by a diverse array of prominent individuals.⁴ The negotiations took place over 2 years in secret meetings, with a final draft agreement reached in October 2003 and published in December 2003.

The agreement offered a comprehensive solution to the conflict. It called for the mutual recognition of both nations and Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories to the 1976 borders, and it limited the number of new settlements in the Occupied Territories on the basis of land swaps. It also called for a limited right to return (only to those areas in Israel being transferred to Palestine in a land swap) and for establishing Jerusalem as the capital for both states, and proposed security arrangements for the Palestinian state.

Internationally, the Geneva Accord was well received, although in the United States, the Bush administration remained silent.⁵ Sharon, however, denounced the Geneva Accord as a threat to Israel's existence and went so far as to accuse the Israeli authors of the accord of collaborating with terrorists (McGreal 2003). The public response on the Palestinian side was divided between those who hoped the initiative would lead to peace and those who opposed it for ceding too much territory to Israel. Accordingly, Arafat sent representatives to the signing ceremony to support the plan but refrained from actually endorsing it. Arafat's apparent support for the agreement was not matched by commitment on the Israeli side, and the Geneva Accords turned out to be little more than an academic exercise.

Israeli and Palestinian responses to the Road Map for Peace differed significantly. American support strengthened Israel's bargaining position, and the Israeli government imposed significant conditions on the plan. Conversely, Palestinian negotiators believed that, because of their relatively weak bargaining position, their best option would be to accept the plan unconditionally. Palestinian support wavered, however, and the process stalled.

The success of the Geneva Initiative instead demonstrated the coherence and dedication to constructive dialogue of which both sides were capable. For two years several high‐level negotiators from both sides communicated continuously and secretly to develop an agreement that seemed acceptable to both sides.⁶ The cohesion of the Palestinian negotiation team during the time of great upheaval through the Second Intifada was critical to the constructive and eventually successful negotiations. The participants hoped that strong public support for the agreement would put sufficient pressure on both parties that leaders on both sides would feel compelled to resume official negotiations.

But Israel dismissed the proposal, which convinced Palestinian leaders that the process would not lead to official negotiations.⁷ Nonetheless, the Geneva Initiative did manage to enhance the Palestinians’ willingness to negotiate and their group cohesion, even after the Road Map failed and violence resumed.

Israeli and Palestinian authorities agreed during the Annapolis Conference in late 2007 to revive peace talks, but by early 2008 had made little progress. In March 2008, both Israeli and Palestinian negotiators expressed strong reservations that they would reach a deal soon in the wake of continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and repeated violent attacks on both sides, and the resulting increase in tension between the parties. Instead, neither side would agree on what the parameters of a peace deal should be and each perceived the other side as too incapable to follow through on such a deal.

In January 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert lost the support of the conservative faction of his coalition government (which left him with just over half the seats in the Knesset) and faced the threat of further defections (Hazony 2008). Palestinian President Abbas had not recovered politically from the 2006 rupture between Fatah and Hamas, and the ensuing isolation of Hamas and the Gazan population (International Crisis Group 2008). Moreover, in his first visit to the region in January, President Bush indicated that the United States would not assume a leadership role in the negotiations and, thus, would not mediate an end to the stalemate.

For the Palestinians, the separation of Gaza from the remainder of the Palestinian territory posed a significant obstacle to negotiations. Arguably, any sustainable agreement between Israel and all Palestinians would require some form of unity between Fatah and Hamas. But by 2008 tension between Fatah and Hamas had escalated to a point where each side accused the other of plotting to kill its key leaders (International Crisis Group 2008), and Abbas's negotiating leverage was weakened because of Hamas's potential to act as a spoiler.

In September 2008, Olmert presented a far‐reaching peace plan to Abbas following several conversations between both men directly and via their representatives. The plan called for the establishment of a Palestinian state comprising territory equivalent in size to the pre‐1967 West Bank and Gaza Strip. The plan proposed that Israel would annex 6.3 percent of the West Bank to accommodate the 75 percent Jewish population in these areas, and, in exchange, Israel would give the Palestinians land elsewhere and assure a safe‐passage route from Hebron in the West Bank to the Gaza Strip (Benn 2009). Additionally, the proposal called for Jerusalem to become a shared city, with the western Jewish areas forming the Israeli capital and the eastern Arab areas becoming the Palestinian capital. The holy sites would be administered by an international committee consisting of nonpartisan “wise men” from Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. In addition, Palestine would be allowed to establish a strong police force but would otherwise be demilitarized and give extensive access to the Israeli Defense Forces (Avishai 2011). Moreover, Olmert proposed to address the issue of whether Palestinians would have the “right of return” to their ancestral communities by allowing several thousand Palestinian refugees to settle in Israel on humanitarian grounds.

Abbas neither endorsed nor rejected the final iteration of the plan. Olmert explained, “[w]hen I proposed my agreement to Abu Mazen he never said no, but he never said yes” (Olmert 2012). A leaked document from the Palestinian Negotiations Support Unit (NSU) confirmed that the support unit neither explicitly endorsed nor rejected Olmert's offer at the time. The memo cautioned against accepting continued settlements in designated areas but also stated that if this proposal was not accepted, then continued settlement growth could make an agreement even more difficult to achieve in the future (Carlstrom 2011).

Abbas's response to his proposal perplexed Olmert: “It would have been the best possible solution to the conflict. … I gave everything that the Palestinians wanted. I proposed it to Abu Mazen. I was very excited” (Olmert 2012). Olmert believed he had developed a viable solution to the conflict in consultation with Abbas.

But while Abbas saw Olmert's offer as a “deposit for peace,” from the Palestinian perspective several factors hindered an agreement (Carter 2009: 151). Because of an outstanding political agreement between Fatah, Hamas, and other factions, Abbas lacked the authority to negotiate an agreement on behalf of both the West Bank and Gaza. Continuing violent clashes between the Israeli military and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as well as Israel's ongoing expansion of settlements undermined Palestinian trust in Israel's promises. And the United States’ seeming acceptance of such Israeli actions as settlement expansion, the imposition of travel restrictions on Palestinians, the establishment of checkpoints, and the withholding of Palestinian funds further undermined Abbas's authority internally.

Consequently, Abbas could not convince the various Palestinian factions that Olmert's peace plan presented a viable way out of the conflict, and he was apparently unwilling to move forward alone. “He [Abbas] didn't have the courage to do it,” Olmert (2012) said. “I told him we can convince everyone else later.” Fatah never replied to Olmert's offer, and the conflict remained unresolved.

During a trip to the Middle East in mid‐April 2008, former United States President Jimmy Carter met with representatives of several private organizations from Israel and the West Bank as well as Shimon Peres, the former Israeli prime minister who served at the time in the mostly ceremonial role of president, and Eli Yishai, the deputy prime minister and minister of industry and trade, who was the only member of the Israeli cabinet who agreed to meet with Carter.⁸ In particular, Carter hoped to find out more about Hamas's negotiation preconditions and goals because, as he wrote (Carter 2009: 136), “[p]eace is not sustainable unless a way can be found to ensure that Hamas will not disrupt the peace process.”

In Cairo, Carter met with Mahmoud al‐Zahar, co‐founder of Hamas and a member of Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip; Said Seyam, former interior minister of the Palestinian Authority and one of Hamas's top commanders; and Ahmed Yousef, senior adviser to Gaza's Prime Minister, to discuss the possibilities for a cease‐fire in Gaza, exchange of prisoners, a reconciliation with Fatah, and elections in the Palestinian territories.

Carter also met with Khaled Mashal and other Hamas leaders at the organization's political bureau in Damascus to discuss ways of reducing tension and making progress in the peace talks (Carter 2009). Following those talks, Mashal gave a press conference in which he stated that he would accept a peace agreement between Abbas and Israel based on the pre‐1967 borders with the condition that the Palestinian population would need to approve the agreement via referendum. He also stated that, to ensure that Palestinian elections would be truly representative, Fatah and Hamas would need to reconcile under the umbrella of the PLO (Bronner 2008).

Additionally, Mashal agreed to honor a Gaza ceasefire that would enable easier delivery of goods to the area. Indeed, a Gaza ceasefire was initiated in June 2008 under Egyptian auspices that lasted for six months; the violence decreased noticeably (although it never entirely ceased) and commerce improved (Kershner 2008a, 2008b). In addition, Hamas delivered a letter from Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, whom it had been holding as a prisoner since June 2006, to the Carter Center's office in Ramallah, a move designed to placate Israel in a matter of great public concern (Khoury 2010).

During his meetings with Hamas, Carter addressed two main obstacles to a peace agreement with Israel. First, by identifying the issue of Hamas's status in a potential peace agreement, he was able to clarify Hamas's position on a rapprochement with Fatah. His impression after the meetings was that Hamas leaders “accept him [Abbas] as head of the PLO and president of the Palestinian Authority and therefore spokesman for all Palestinians,” and are “prepared for unconditional talks with Fatah” (Carter 2009: 139–140). Second, the decision on a cease‐fire in Gaza and the delivery of Shalit's letter eased some of the tension between Israel and Hamas. Rather than focusing on the bargaining processes between combatants that constitute the give and take of a peace negotiation, Carter addressed the internal situation within one of the parties, the Palestinians, which had prevented Abbas from committing to an agreement with Olmert.

When presented with Olmert's peace plan, Abbas found himself between a rock and a hard place. Olmert's offer contained unprecedented concessions regarding the borders of a Palestinian state, the status of Jerusalem, and the status of Palestinian returnees. Additionally, Olmert and Abbas were agreed on the issue of security in a Palestinian state. Olmert was convinced that he had created a way out of the conflict. He later told Israeli author Bernard Avishai (2011: M36), “[w]e were very close, … more than ever in the past, to complete an agreement on principles that would have led to the end of the conflict between us and the Palestinians.” Moreover, Olmert was certain, he wrote, that he could have “won over public opinion in this country and the world” (Avishai 2011). Concurring, Abbas stated that “the talks produced more ‘creative ideas’ than any in the past” (Avishai 2011).

Generating acceptable solutions to the contested issues, however, was insufficient for achieving agreement because Palestinian opinions about the appropriate end to the conflict diverged. For Abbas, accepting Olmert's offer meant risking a permanent political division of the Palestinian people. Hamas had stated repeatedly that it refused to renounce violence, to recognize previous peace accords, and to explicitly acknowledge Israel's right to exist. It would likely not accept the two‐state solution that Olmert's peace plan would have produced or cease its armed resistance against the Israeli state and thus Abbas had to believe that the agreement would be unsustainable.

Carter's unofficial intervention sought to address those risks. As a private actor unbound by the constraints on state actors, he was able to engage Hamas on the contested issues, discuss positions, and seek solutions that would diminish Hamas's desire to “spoil” the agreement and thus ease the pressure on Abbas. Carter's effort did not lead to an agreement, but it did contribute to progress on the issue of a two‐state solution on the basis of the pre‐1967 borders and it also clarified Hamas's position on a rapprochement with Fatah. In November 2008, Hamas and Fatah resumed talks on a unity government after twenty‐one months of deadlock, a major step toward Palestinian group cohesion. In July 2009, Khaled Mashal announced that Hamas, along with other Palestinian factions, had agreed to accept a Palestinian state with 1967 borders (McCarthy 2008; Solomon and Barnes‐Decay 2009). By that time, however, a more conservative Benjamin Netanyahu had succeeded Olmert in office, and Olmert's offer was moot.

The Israeli government accepted the 2003 Road Map for Peace only under restrictive conditions that rendered the plan ineffective. Given the international political climate at the time, the Palestinian Authority initially saw no choice but to accept the Road Map. But after the Palestinian public realized that the Road Map would not achieve their objectives and that Israel was unwilling to make important concessions, they abandoned Abbas's more moderate course and reunited behind Arafat and the Intifada — the absence of an acceptable negotiated solution to the conflict increased their cohesion.

Running parallel to the official peace attempts that led to the Road Map, the track two Geneva Initiative was well received internationally. Although Arafat reacted positively to the proposed accord that came out of this effort, Sharon denounced it as a threat to Israel's existence. But this nonofficial approach did manage to maintain the negotiation willingness of and group cohesion among the Palestinians. Instead of using the Intifada to improve their bargaining position, Palestinian representatives were willing to negotiate secretly and continuously for 2 years with Israelis, challenging the argument that Palestinians were unwilling to negotiate constructively.

In 2008, Abbas failed to respond to a peace plan proposed by Prime Minister Olmert that included several far‐reaching concessions to the Palestinians. He had sufficient reason to believe that Hamas would have spoiled a potential peace process with violence.

Jimmy Carter's shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East helped shift Palestinian internal dynamics and create greater cohesion among Palestinians. He focused on Hamas because he was convinced that peace was not attainable without its participation, and following their meetings with him several Hamas officials did change their positions to support a theoretical peace agreement between Abbas and Israel.

In both case couples, nonstate initiatives — the Geneva Initiative and Carter's shuttle diplomacy — enhanced the negotiation willingness and cohesion of the Palestinian side at two important moments in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. This crucial issue is often seen as secondary in official negotiations. The parties must organize support at home for any official agreement. An internal lack of cohesion diminishes negotiation willingness, prolonging the conflict and contributing to its intractability.

The cases examined in this article shed light on how actors outside of the official negotiations, such as NGOs and private individuals, can alleviate some of the negotiation dilemmas that arise when one of the negotiating parties is divided and fractured. Running parallel to an official negotiation process, nonofficial efforts can increase group cohesion in conflict parties, which may have a constructive effect on negotiation willingness and bring the disputants closer to peace.