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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the Lentz Peace Research Association in St. Louis for its financial support; the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at Wayne State University, and Professor Fredric S. Pearson for hosting me; as well as the organizations and universities that helped to organize the various rounds of the Minds of Peace Experiment
Notes
1. Keith Hamilton and Richard Langhorne, The Practice of Diplomacy – its Evolution, Theory and Administration (London: Routledge, 1995), 1.
2. One of the reasons is that in intractable conflicts, similar to the Israeli–Palestinian case, any progress in the peace process tends to increase the level of violence carried by extremists, radicals and professional spoilers. This is a dangerous side effect that can crash the whole process and enable the radical minority to dictate conditions for the rest of the population. Indeed, violence in almost any form carried on by enemies of the peacemaking process appeared during the multi-party negotiations of the 1990s in Northern Ireland and South Africa. For a further discussion on the Northern Ireland case, see George Mitchell, Making Peace (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 117. For a further discussion on the South African case, see Allister Sparks, Tomorrow Is Another Country: The Inside Story of South Africa's Negotiated Revolution (Sandton, South Africa: Struik Book Distributors, 1994).
3. See, for example, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and David Lalman, War and Reason: Domestic and International Imperatives (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992).
4. Sapir Handelman, Conflict and Peacemaking in Israel-Palestine: Theory and Application (London and New York: Routledge, 2011).
5. For example, I have discussed the political elite model which includes three channels of interactions: track-II diplomacy, secret diplomacy, and track-I diplomacy. See Sapir Handelman, “Two Complementary Views of Peacemaking: The Palestinian–Israeli Case,” Middle East Policy 15, no. 3 (2008): 57–66. For a further discussion, see also Hussein Agha et al., Track-II Diplomacy: Lessons from the Middle East (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 1–3.
6. For a further discussion, see Handelman, Conflict and Peacemaking in Israel–Palestine, 86–9 and Herbert Kelman, “The Israeli–Palestinian Peace Process and Its Vicissitudes: Insights from Attitude Theory,” American Psychologist 63, no. 4 (2007): 292.
8. http://www.seedsofpeace.org/about.
9. One of the symptoms of intractable conflict is well known as the mirror image effect: each side believes that the rival is not interested in peace and is not capable to discussing it, to say the very least. The ‘mirror image’ was discovered by the American psychologist Urie Bronfenbrernner during the cold war. For a further discussion, see Urie Bronfenbrenner, “The Mirror Image in Soviet–American Relations: A Social Psychologist's Report,” Journal of Social Issues 17 (1961): 45–56.
10. Public diplomacy is a controversial term. Recent studies have suggested that this new field of practice and research is based upon the relationship between three elements: government, media and public opinion. Creation of a major public negotiating congress, our proposal for a peacemaking institution that has the potential to create a positive change in the Israeli–Palestinian struggle, is designed to connect the three components: influencing the leadership, preparing the public for a new social order, and utilizing the media to promote the culture of peace in these two levels (leadership and people). For further discussion upon the very essence of public diplomacy, see Eitan Gilboa, “Searching for a Theory of Public Diplomacy,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 616, no. 1 (2008): 55–77; and Soroka N. Stuart, “Media, Public Opinion, and Foreign Policy,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 8, no. 1 (2003): 27–48.
11. As a citizen-based movement it also bears comparison to the social media change movements seen in 2011 across the Middle East, some more and some less effective in bringing about political and even governmental reforms and replacement.
12. If a public congress were to be formed, there would of course be challenges to determine a practical and equitable representation system for the selection of those to serve as citizen diplomats. One would want to promote appropriate diversity of backgrounds to assure that the recommendations of the congress are reflective of and acceptable to public opinion among the disputants. In this way the congress would carry significant and sufficient diplomatic/political weight. At the same time there would probably have to be sufficiently frequent turnover of representatives that they did not become an entrenched ruling body.
13. Often the delegations realize that they are not experts and sufficiently conversant with technicalities to commit to those such as how to move or remove settlements in the West Bank, but rather enunciate the basic premises under which such developments can and should be realized.
14. Compare Herbert Kelman, “Negotiation as Interactive Problem Solving,” International Negotiation: A Journal of Theory and Practice 1, no. 1 (1996): 106. Kelman claims that solution that addresses the fears and needs of the opposing parties does justice to each one of them.
15. The informal engagements are very important and even critical. They create opportunities to get to know each other, to develop personal relationships, to explain the different positions better, to explore possibilities to advance the formal discussion and to try to soften hardliners. For example, in the first round of the experiment (St. Louis, December 2008) the informal sessions, which were conducted in a Palestinian restaurant and a private house, helped to conclude three valuable agreements: “Declaration of Principles,” “Confidence Building Measures,” and “Agreement on Borders and Jerusalem.” To see the agreements visit: http://mindofpeaceexperiment.blogspot.com/2009/02 round-one-agreements_21.html. In addition to informal engagements the two sides also can make use of breaks in the discussion for private caucuses to better prepare their own positions and offers.
16. To view the agreements, visit http://mindsofpeace.org/.
18. For example, “Agreement on Borders and Jerusalem” that was reached at the first round of the Minds of Peace Experiment (December 2008). To see the agreement, visit http://mindofpeaceexperiment.blogspot.com/2009/02/round-one-agreements_21.html.
19. According to this perception, an effective peacemaking process becomes a discovery procedure. I was influenced by Friedrich Hayek perception of market competition. According to Hayek, an efficient competitive market, under a framework of general rules and institutions, creates a spontaneous order. In our context, one of the central questions is how to transform a destructive competition, an unproductive violent dialogue, to a constructive competition, negotiation by peaceful means. For a further discussion on Hayek's perception of market competition as a vehicle for new discoveries, see Friedrich A. Hayek, “Competition as a Discovery Procedure,” in New Studies in Politics, Philosophy, Economics and the History of Ideas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). For a further discussion on peacemaking as a constructive competition, see Handelman, Conflict and Peacemaking in Israel-Palestine.
20. See Sapir Handelman, ‘The Minds of Peace Experiment: A Simulation of a Potential Palestinian–Israeli Public Assembly’', International Negotiation: A Journal of Theory and Practice15 (2010): 520.
21. See, for example, I. William Zartman and Guy Olivier Faure, eds., Escalation and Negotiation in International Conflicts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).