Possible Solutions for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Framework of Negotiations for a Hegemonic Coalition

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2012 in the subject Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict, Security, grade: 1,0, Ewha Womans University (Graduate School of International Studies), course: International Negotiations, language: English, abstract: Throughout history there have been many attempts to establish peace between Israel and Palestine but all of these attempts were to no avail. This term paper will examine the underlying problem why all these attempts could not lead to a mutually satisfactory solution and will then describe what needs to be done in order to establish a new and sustainable peace agreement between Israel and Palestine. To do so this paper firstly illustrates the historical background of previous peace negotiations before describing the complex relationship of Israel and Palestine on an internal, regional and external level. It will then look at the opposed positions of both parties and illustrates to what extent the model of the Prisoner¿s Dilemma can explain the situation that both sides are facing. Based on these findings ways how to potentially resolve this dilemma will be presented. The most promising solution of a Hegemonic Coalition that can put pressure on both parties to negotiate with each other over interests rather than positions will be explained in detail. Especially the framework under what conditions the negotiations should take place to avoid mistakes made by the Oslo peace negotiations will be addressed. Under consideration of that framework this paper develops a potential solution how the agreement between Israel and Palestine could look like to achieve peace between both parties. The Israel-Palestine peace process can be seen as a series of attempts to establish a lasting end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some of these attempts were more promising than others but until now none of them could establish peace between both parties.6 The decision tree in the appendix (Figure 1) helps to give a short overview of the main stages taken towards peace in the region. Throughout that paper some of these stages will need to be examined in further detail but for now this overview is sufficient to see that negotiations between both parties continuously failed mainly due to the unstable political environment within Israel and Palestine.