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By Martin Bunton

It may be premature to completely write off the recent round of the US-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The talks faltered earlier this month when Israel failed to release a batch of prisoners, part of the initial basis for holding the negotiations launched last July. The rapidly disintegrating diplomacy may yet be salvaged. But the three main actors have already made it known they will pursue their own initiatives.

They each may think that their actions will allow them to accumulate more leverage, maybe help position themselves in anticipation of a resumption of bilateral negotiations which, for over twenty years now, has been directed towards establishing a Palestinian state living peacefully alongside Israel. But it is also possible that the steps the parties take will instead deepen the despair of a two state framework ever coming to fruition.

Benjamin Netanyahu

The United States will focus their attention to other pressing issues, such as securing a deal on Iran’s nuclear program. Progress on this front may encourage, perhaps even empower, the Obama administration to resume Israeli-Palestinian negotiations later in its term. But the chances of their success will depend less on yet another intense round of shuttle diplomacy by US Secretary of State John Kerry, and more on whether a distracted Obama presidency will be prepared to pressure Israel to end its occupation. True, Obama enjoys the freedom of a second term presidency (unconcerned about the prospects of re-election). So far however he hasn’t appeared at all inclined to challenge Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As for Israel, the Netanyahu government will take steps to make life even harder for Palestinians under occupation, and no doubt further entrench its settlement infrastructure in the West Bank, the territory on which Palestinians want to build their own state. Netanyahu, now one of the longest serving prime ministers in Israeli history, has provided very few indications that he is willing to enable the Palestinians to build a viable and contiguous state. He appears confident that the status quo is tenable, and that occupation and settlement of the West Bank can continue to violate international law without facing any serious repercussions. The more likely outcome of such complacency, however, is the irrevocable damage inflicted on the prospects of a two state solution and the harm done to Israel’s security, possibly subjecting it to a wide ranging international boycott movement.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian government, led by Mahmoud Abbas, will desperately strive to ensure that the breakdown of talks not lead to the collapse of his Palestinian Authority. Abbas may seek to use this opportunity to lessen the overall reliance on US sponsorship and achieve Palestinian rights in international bodies such as the UN and the International Court of Justice.  This move may placate the growing number of Palestinians who until now have angrily dismissed Abbas’ participation in American-sponsored bilateral negotiations as doing little more than provide political cover to the on-going Israeli occupation, begun almost 50 years ago. But the majority of Palestinians will continue to disparage of how the pursuit of their national project has been paralysed by the weakness and corruption of their leaders and the absence of a unified government and coherent strategy.

Mahmoud Abbas

Though no side wants to be blamed for the collapse of negotiations, it is easy to see how a cycle of action and recrimination could scupper all attempts to revitalize them. More to the point, however, is to ask whether the steps taken will end up burying the very prospects of a two-states solution to the century long conflict which the negotiations are supposed to achieve.

Martin Bunton is an Associate Professor in the History Department of the University of Victoria and author of the recently published The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2013).

The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday, subscribe to Very Short Introductions articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS, and like Very Short Introductions on Facebook.

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Image credits: (1) Benjamin Netanyahu. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons; (2) Mahmoud Abbas. By World Economic Forum from Cologny, Switzerland (AbuMazem). CC-BY-SA-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The post Kerry On? What does the future hold for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process? appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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And this is why you want a professional to help negotiate a contract.

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Jessica

Kent Jones is Professor of Economics at Babson College and the author of The Doha Blues: Institutional Crisis and Reform in the WTO.  The book highlights the real stumbling blocks to trade liberalization and highlights the way around them, in light of the collapse of the Doha Round.  Jones outlines the practical steps that must be taken before the World Trade Organization can achieve accord.  In the excerpt below, Jones begins to outline the problems the Doha negotiations have faced.

Why have the Doha negotiations been so painfully slow and unsuccessful so far?  A review of recent commentary and analysis seems to indicate that the difficulty has many roots, as shown by the following list of contributing factors:

1. -Multilateral trade negotiations have become too unwieldy to manage effectively. Membership in the GATT grew dramatically from the 1960s to the 1980s, and the WTO as of 2009 had 153 members, a large number to manage in a consensus-based decision process. In addition, the number of issues has grown with the expanded scope of the WTo coverage into agriculture, services, and “behind-the-border” trade issues.
2. -The single undertaking was a good idea in principle, but it doesn’t work in practice.  In order to provide the widest possible scope of trade-offs that would provide each member with a stake in the negotiating outcome, and to avoid the fragmentation of the GATT system of codes, the WTO was founded on the principle that “there is no agreement until everything is agreed.”  In conjunction with the unwieldy scope of membership and agenda issues indicated in the first item above, some argue that forcing the negotiating outcome into a single, balanced package for all members is virtually unachievable.
3. -The balance of power in trade negotiations has shifted in favor of large developing countries.  The United States and the European Union had dominated trade negotiations for many years, and while they remain the world’s leading traders (both in imports and exports), their relative importance in trade has diminished, and many faster-growing developing countries, such as India, Brazil, and China, are now asserting greater influence over the WTO negotiating process.
4. -The Doha Development Round was oversold as a trade negotiation to promote development. Leading developed countries agreed to present the Doha negotiations as a “development” round in order to provide developing countries with a strong incentive to participate.  Yet the WTO is not a development agency, even if it plays an important part in development.  It was impossible for the Doha Round to fulfill the expectations of a trade round presumably focused on development goals.
5. -Developing countries are “mad as hell” and won’t take it anymore.  In conjunction with the previous item, many developing countries were disappointed in the outcome of the Uruguay Round, in which they expected large gains from liberalization of textile and clothing trade in exchange for commitments on the protection of developed countries’ intellectual property and on other “behind the border issues.”  The delayed textile/clothing trade liberalization, in which China won the lion’s share of gains, combined with the potentially large costs of intellectual property protection and the financial cost of
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