Let's Negotiate!

How do you know if you can negotiate with someone? Here are a few prerequisites for peaceful, friendly negotiation.

• Both parties must want a friendly outcome. Smile and a handshake. Mutual respect, if not friendship.
• The negotiation and resolution must be trustworthy. If the person might go back on his word, or if the person does not have the last word, or if the person might be replaced by another who will see things differently, could you trust the negotiation?
• Ideally, there should be a win-win outcome to the negotiation. The two possible outcomes cannot be so diametrically opposed as to not allow a simultaneous win.
• Each party should have a fall back position, a position better than an unfavorable negotiation. Not an all or nothing approach; not a take no prisoners approach.

The alternative to this type of negotiation is war: to use violence, fear, bribery and force to make your opponent suffer and bend to your will. This is, after all, the so-called point of war: to exert your will over your enemy.

The concept of Israel negotiating with the Palestinians is a case in point.

• No Respect. Palestinians have no respect for the Israelis, and, given a choice, would not be friends with them.
• Unreliable and untrustworthy. The Palestinians have a history of unreliability in the arena of negotiations, frequently going back on their word. And with many leaders, who is to speak for all of them?
• No win-win. Many Palestinians hold strong to the position of driving Israel into the sea, with no Jewish state in the Middle East. This is diametrically opposed to Israel's plan to persist.
• No fall-back. The Palestinian fall back position does not exist. If there cannot be total victory, then sacrifice of the lives of individuals is the plan. Suicide bombers. Firing rockets into Israel with the chance of death from retaliation. Death is not a fall back plan.

The warm, fuzzy negotiation or the hard-nosed negotiator cannot win where the basics are missing. We are about to see the failure of another attempt to negotiate the Israel-Palestinian issue due to a failure to understand what peaceful negotiation can and cannot do.