Historians of the Arab-Israeli conflict often describe certain episodes as a "missed opportunity" to reach an agreement between Israelis and Arabs. The problem of these descriptions, however, is that the term “missed opportunity” is not defined and mainly used for political reasons in order to blame one side in the conflict for missing the opportunity to achieve peace. The paper is part of a comprehensive research, which has been recently completed (but not yet published), on plausible missed opportunities in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The study covers some 28 successful and unsuccessful episodes of negotiations in the conflict from the first agreement signed between Faysal and Weitzman in 1919 and until the Olmert-Abu Mazen talks in 2008. The aims of this research are two-fold: First, to offer a working theoretical model of how to assess a missed opportunity. On the basis of the proposed definition, the paper will show the number of opportunities missed by Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab states. And second, to apply this definition to several case studies in the Arab-Israeli conflict. In this paper, I will mainly focus on the Arab Peace Initiative, which had been launched by the Arab Summit in Beirut in March 2002. Based on hitherto unpublished material and oral interviews, this paper will offer a historical analysis of Israeli and Arab/Palestinian behavior and decision making with regard to the Arab Peace Initiative from its launching in 2002 and until the present. The main conclusion of this paper is that Israel had indeed missed an historical opportunity to promote a dialogue with the Arab League, which could have led to a comprehensive peace agreement.

Since the early stage of the Oslo process, the Palestinian National Authority Security Forces (PNASF) have exerted a pivotal role throughout the Palestinian self-government experience. Key asset for the implementation of security arrangements, the Palestinian security organizations were required to operate to enforce internal security, dismantle terror infrastructures, and quell any source of political opposition to the Peace Process. The operational coordination with Israel’s military and security devices deployed in the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territory) constituted the center of gravity of Israel-Palestinian National Authority (PNA) security dialogue, critical to both parties’ interest to secure the transitional phase. Nevertheless, the outbreak of al-Aqsa Intifada (September 2000) wreaked collapse on Oslo security coordination and concurrently provided external actors with leeway to gain leverage on the Palestinian security decision-making process. “Peace through security” became the equation shaping the diplomatic and public discourse, and the assumption for engaging international sponsors to a renewed Palestinian state-building endeavour. A conceptual framework for the Palestinian Security Sector Reform (SSR) was thus outlined under the Road Map initiative (April 30, 2003). Accordingly, reforms were devised as the essential pre-condition to resume strategic and operational security cooperation with Israel, and to consolidate a “[...] sustained, effective Palestinian security performance”, aiming at the stabilization of Palestinian institutions and internal political layout. Thereby, the Hamas electoral victory (2006) and its takeover of the Gaza Strip (June 15, 2007), disclosed the political dimension embedded with an internationally-sponsored Palestinian SSR. Ever since, the alignment of interests between fundamental players – donors community, Israel, PNA – conforms SSR programs and the PNASF operations in the West Bank. Necessarily, this paper would challenge the current SSR setting and the PNASF operational framework, not responding to basic Palestinian security needs. This paper would argue how SSR programs have helped building up Palestinian counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency capabilities, and how PNASF operations impact on the internal political and social dynamics while providing security to Israel. Finally, this paper overviews the lines of operation of Palestinian National Authority Security Forces, it outlines the operational coordination with Israel’s military and security devices, and demonstrates how the PNASF operational framework produces intra-Palestinian Human Rights violations.

On July 28, 2013, Israel agreed to release 104 Palestinian prisoners, clearing a final hurdle to re-starting Israeli and Palestinian negotiations after a three-year hiatus. This gesture, seen as long overdue by the Palestinians, was seen as giving into terrorists by the Israelis. Given the fact that many in the Israeli governing coalition openly oppose a two-state solution, and Palestinian frustration with the U.S.-led negotiation process led to its bids for statehood at the United Nations in 2011 and 2012, what explains the parties’ return to the negotiating table? Twenty years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, Israeli settlements have dramatically expanded, Palestinians are internally fragmented, and little to no progress has been made on the core issues under contention. Given these inopportune aspects, along with a general opinion among many policy makers and scholars that the Oslo peace is highly problematic, if not defunct, why are the parties coming to the table now? In order to answer this question, we will explore contending negotiation and decision-making models, including the concept of “ripeness”, utility maximization versus risk aversion, the framing of risky choices, and the contingency model for third party interventions. After applying different explanatory models to the case of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, we will discuss their strengths and weaknesses and ascertain which model best fits the current reality.

A unique public opinion survey was designed and implemented in the West Bank in the summer of 2013, to correspond with the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords (Sample, N=832 responses). The study explores a number of social, economic, and political issues, as seen by Palestinians. The survey also focuses the extent to which the Israeli occupation affects the daily lives of Palestinians in the West Bank to include: the economy and job creation, education, social structure, gender equality, political future and potential full statehood, among other issues. In addition, the respondents were asked a variety of questions to measure how they feel with regards to the practices of the Palestinian Authority, the Hamas/Fatah divide and its social ramifications, the approval ratings of key figures in Palestinian politics, how they see the Arab revolts, the US Foreign policy and its role in the peace process, the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement, the overall conditions in the Palestinian Territories, and the future of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Israel’s parliamentary system remains resilient despite a volatile political climate in which governments regularly confront crises and subsequent legislative efforts to consolidate fractious parties and change how leaders are elected. The current system is unlikely to change, however, even though nearly half of Israel’s parliamentarians are new, ambitious and reform minded. This paper is animated by a series of interlocking questions and puzzles about the rise of new elites and continuity of the Knesset as a mainstay in Israeli politics. What explains the electoral success of a new breed of politicians who lacked legislative experience and backing of traditional parties? Why have their starkly divergent views on domestic and foreign policy issues not transformed the Knesset into a weak squabbling body? Why have parliamentarians who campaigned on themes of change so far played by the rules of the game and not pursued fundamental government reform? The principal argument is that the inclusion and cooptation of a “new guard” has opened new channels of both dissent and patronage. This argument is based on Vilfredo Pareto’s conception of elite circulation and his theoretical insight that the lack of social mobility among the governing elite causes a degeneration of a regime’s political structures. This paper seeks to show how this injection of “new blood” into the Knesset helps preserve the country’s parliamentary system. In this light, it touches on the rise of “new elites” elsewhere in the Middle East in order to generalize about political change and regime resilience in a broader regional perspective. The paper is based on original research in Israel from July 2012 to July 2014. The author conducted dozens of interviews with Members of Knesset across the political spectrum.