Mediating the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process: Current Prospects and Alternative Frameworks

This policy brief examines the reasons for the continued stalemate of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which started more than two decades ago. In particular, it assesses the ubiquity of American mediation as an integral part of the peace process and its role in the evolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the early 1990s. By looking at the characters of third-party mediation in the conflict and the unique traits of past and present American diplomatic efforts, this policy brief suggests that the current paradigm of American engagement with the peace process, which has rarely been scrutinised in the past two decades, may not be conducive to the achievement of Israeli-Palestinian peace. The current efforts of Secretary of State John Kerry indicate that American mediation is no more likely to be successful in 2014 than it was ten or twenty years earlier. Accordingly the policy brief proposes alternative frameworks which may complement or supplant the current American approach to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. It thus provides essential conceptual and policy tools to facilitate a deeper understanding of the vagaries of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the ways in which mediation can be harnessed to mitigate some of its key intricacies. As a policy analysis of conflict resolution, the insights in this policy brief also serve as important building blocks in the Helsinki process toward an effective policy of the Middle East as a WMD/DVs Free Zone.