An Inclusive Peace Process for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
The long-standing structure for negotiations within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has involved a limited number of high-level officials. Civil society actors, who are often among the most committed to ending the conflict, have thus been unable to share their perspectives on the core issues and help build societal support for the outcomes. Given the ongoing conflict that Israel and the Palestinians face, this paper explores the limits of existing and past negotiation structures, as well as the utility of a more inclusive process that would allow high-level actors to engage meaningfully with civil society groups.
This paper presents a departure from traditional negotiation approaches that exclude important segments of society and makes the case that a necessary condition for creating a sustainable peace process, and ultimately a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is the development of an inclusive structure for negotiation. It also provides current leaders with an applicable model for an inclusive peace process, supported by models tested in other contexts.
