Steve: My impression is that your group has identified the variables that might affect the way the peace process goes. In fact, you probably have too many to factor into any one scenario. One way to proceed might be to divide the variables into First Order and Second Order variables: First Order variables would be those in which a change would have direct and immediate consequences on the peace process; Second Order would be those in which change would have an indirect and/or longer-term effect. You rightly have problematized the question of just what direction your vectors might take. This distinction would add intensity as a second element of the vector.
My first cut at the hierarchy of driving forces ranks Israeli-Palestinian bilateral factors as the most important and regional and global factors as secondary. Competition between global powers (USA, Russia, China) is currently not intense. None of them see the bilateral Israeli-Palestinian conflict as instrumentally critical to their broader strategic competition with each other. None see their security as centrally tied to this conflict, and, consequently, while interested not even the United States will commit enough resources at this point to overturn the forces driving the bilateral bargain. Competition among regional states is substantial, but the conflicts that do not involve Israel do not involve states powerful enough to project their competition into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For example, Iranian v. Turkish, or Iranian v. Saudi Arabian, or Syrian v. Iraq, or India v. Pakistan might tangentially connect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, mostly in the realm of rhetoric and symbol manipulation. None of these states, however, are strong enough to see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an instrumental regional manifestation of their broader strategic conflict. The primary determinants of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiation process in the short-term are the conflicting ambitions and calculations made by Israelis and Palestinians. Forces at the global and regional level will affect these bargaining calculations, (affecting both relative coercive leverage and positive reassurance) but they will not impose additional sources of conflict. My examination of global and regional forces, will follow my construction of the primary bilateral dynamic. I do not think global and regional factors will upset the short-term prediction I will make for the bilateral Palestinian-Israeli relationship. They may play a big role in shaping longer-term predictions.
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Iraq, Middle East, Israel, and Syria
There are two issues I want to raise regarding our basic approach of focusing on driving forces to trace scenarios and predict outcomes. First is the question of the time frame of the outcomes to which we are driving. I ask this with particular reference to the "violent collapse" outcome. There are numerous permutations here that we need to differentiate. I'm not adept enough to graph it on the computer, but here are the permutations: Two versions of violent collapse: violent collapse as some sort of end state for whatever our timeframe is, or violent collapse as an intermediate outcome which then comes back together and leads to "two state" or "autonomy"; If violent collapse as an intermediate stage, then what conditions make an ensuing path to Palestinian state more likely, and what conditions for autonomy? Or what 's the story line for getting to either of these without going through violent collapse? And what are the parameters and criteria for what we mean by "violent" (Singer and Small had their figures for how many deaths equal a war; how many equal "violent") and by "collapse", as distinct from pause or suspension of talks?
Several interesting observations came out of our first conference. We realized that the mainstream academic view on the Middle East peace process has changed dramatically—from a belief that there would never be a peace to confidence that the peace process would not be derailed. In trying to make predictions that are not driven by newspaper headlines, we used a fairly uncontroversial laundry list of systemic variables, but we could not agree on which way they would effect the outcome. My aim in this memorandum is to review my past views on the Middle East peace process as an exercise in exploring what changed—both in the Middle East, and in my own implicit assumptions. I will amend my conclusions about the past by examining what has happened since the Oslo Accords. Finally, I will suggest, by way of conclusion, what driving forces will affect the future.
The two-state solution includes continuing but declining violence over time against Israeli and Palestinian civilians as the Palestinian state becomes entrenched and its legitimacy and authority grows, Palestinian leaders develop a commitment to the status quo, and the opposition in Israel reluctantly accepts the permanence of a Palestinian state. If the Palestinian state is poorly institutionalized, violence against Palestinian and Israeli citizens may well increase over time.
Steve asked each of us to do the following: "Each participant will return to the next meeting with arguments on these seven driving forces. These arguments will include: Logic: what is the causal logic by which the driving force impacts on the intervening and dependent variables. Probability: what is the probability estimate of the effect. Hierarchy: is there an identifiable hierarchy among these driving forces.
The election of Benjamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister of Israel threw into flux the Middle East peace process. What in early 1996 seemed to many observers the almost inevitable "working out" of a decades-long conflict that had gradually become unsustainable on all sides, was by late 1996 seen more clearly as part of a contingent unfolding set of events which could drive the region in more than one direction, including backwards toward explicit conflict and even war. This presents unique theoretical, analytic, and policy opportunities.
The Hebron agreement is now finally in place. During the months that it took to reach that point, some must have been reminded of what the nineteenth century British Prime Minister Lord Palmerstone once said about the Schleswig-Holstein question: there were only three people who understood it - one of whom was dead, one was in an asylum, and he himself had forgotten it.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, International Relations, and Sovereignty
The stability of Saudi Arabia (and the Persian Gulf as a whole) is crucially important to the world's industrial countries. According to the Gulf Center of Strategic Studies, "oil is expected to account for 38 percent of all the world consumption of energy until 2015, compared to 39 percent in 1993. Increasing world-wide demand for oil, now about 74 million barrels per day, is projected to rise by 2015 to about 110 million" (Gulf Report, London, July 1997). Over 60 percent of the world's proven oil reserves are located in the Persian Gulf, and Saudi Arabia alone controls 25 percent of the total.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Foreign Policy, Economics, Energy Policy, Politics, and Religion