Mediation in the Middle East

Mediation in the Middle East has a long and troubled history. Only once has it been successful: during the 1978 Camp David conclave under the tenacious management of President Jimmy Carter. The peculiarities of this sequestration à trois (Carter, Menachem Begin, and Anwar Sadat) help to explain why mediation has not worked since—as it did not in Camp David in 2000 (Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak, and Yasser Arafat).

The most critical difference between the Camp David conferences was the desire of Israeli prime minister Begin and Egyptian president Sadat to be forced into a deal. Indeed, they may have arrived at the Maryland mountain retreat with the basic outlines already in hand or, more precisely, in mind. Yet, they insisted on haggling over each and every detail, a strategy that entailed fits of pouting and threats of failure to force Carter to intervene in favor of this or that side. Essentially, they had already made their decisions, however, as indicated by Sadat's surprise visit to Jerusalem in November 1977 during which he made his famous proclamation, "No more war!" The secret negotiations between Cairo and Jerusalem took place thereafter.

At Camp David I, Carter merely had to execute the moderator's classic tasks and seize clear opportunities. One honest-broker negotiating tactic that Carter used was to detect and then articulate the compromise or transcendental solution hidden in a seemingly irreducible clash over particulars. A second approach was to push the players into a desired outcome by threatening the recalcitrants with the loss of U.S. benevolence, allowing the "victim" to tell his home audience, "I resisted, but for the greater good of the country, I decided to yield." The third tactic was the disbursement of side payments to compensate both antagonists for their real or pretended losses. Thus, Carter promised ample financial aid to Israel and Egypt, specifically, sophisticated U.S. arms (F-16 aircraft and Abrams tanks) to Egypt, which in the past had had to rely on less-than-state-of-the-art Soviet equipment.

Yet, one must not neglect the basics that made Carter's mediation possible. The conflict between Israel and Egypt, two established and strong states, centered on a piece of barren land that the Israelis did not really need—the Sinai Peninsula—provided that a party stronger than the two contenders would supervise and guarantee demilitarization. In return for relinquishing the Sinai, Israel got what it craved most—maybe not real peace, but nonbelligerency that has lasted for more than 30 years. For the first time since the birth of Israel in 1948, Israel's strongest foe had left the Arab coalition. The result was not so much "land for peace" as "Sinai for strategic advantage."

In more general terms, the Egyptian-Israeli instance offered a clear "saddle point," as labeled in game theory—a resting point in the matrix of Pareto optimality. Yet, none of these conditions exists in the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is why mediation has proven futile so far. First, not just land is at issue, but also legitimacy and the exclusive possession of it. Although opinion data show that a majority of Israelis favor a Palestinian state in principle, no such data has been collected from Gaza and Ramallah. Indeed, evidence points to the opposite. On the symbolic level, official Palestinian maps show a Palestine extending from the river to the sea. On the rhetorical level, Palestinian leader Arafat prevaricates, if not dissimulates, on recognition of Israel. Terrorism against civilian targets inside Israel, as well as the frank admissions of Hamas and similar organizations, spell out the point in blood—the true quest is not for Hebron, but for Haifa. For the Israelis, Arafat's insistence on a Palestinian right of return compounded the existential threat. Indeed, Camp David 2000 was dead the moment Arafat claimed such a right for the refugees of the wars of 1948-1949 and 1967 as well as for their descendants. The Israelis correctly saw this statement...