Ingredients of a Successful Track Two Negotiation

Abstract

During three days in 2003, an Israeli–Palestinian group met in London to negotiate the draft of the “Geneva Initiative,” which offered a potential final status agreement between Israel and Palestine. In this article, I analyze the video recording of these unofficial negotiations and examine how the framing and conduct of the talks enabled significant progress toward reaching an agreement.I describe six main framing techniques used by the mediators: calling the meetings an “exercise,” which reduced restraints on the participants and enhanced their flexibility, avoiding deep historical issues to focus solely on future‐oriented pragmatic solutions, allowing the participants to discuss any topic they chose while deliberately avoiding crucial narrative issues, convincing the participants that this track two negotiation was crucial for the future of official Israeli–Palestinian relations, accentuating the parties' understandings and agreements with each other, and building a sense of superordinate group identity among the participants, to encourage cooperation.These components were the key “ingredients” for the first — and still the only — (unofficial) detailed proposal for an Israeli–Palestinian peace agreement. They provide lessons that could improve the success of other track two negotiations.

Healing dialogue: Can the techniques and practices of Track Two diplomacy play a role in resolving public health conflicts?

“…9 Because of the difficulty in assessing or measuring just how these dialogues influenced and impacted negotiations, several scholars dedicated research to understanding the conditions under which Track Two dialogues could be viewed as "effective" 10 or "successful." 11 What successful peace processes look like is notoriously difficult to define. This question has recently been complicated further by a "normative turn" in Track Two literature 12 that seeks to understand how Track Two can engender greater inclusion 13 and local ownership.…”

Toward a Normative Turn in Track Two Diplomacy? A Review of the Literature

“…This process‐oriented thinking and intentional approach to change in Track Two diplomacy in turn influenced the way Track Two scholars thought about transfer. Studies in this period also focused on understanding what “success” looks like in a Track Two initiative (Pearson d'Estree, Fast, and Weiss 2001; Fisher 2005; Benziman 2016) and how to measure it empirically (Çuhadar 2009; Böhmelt 2010; Çuhadar and Dayton 2012; De Vries and Maoz 2013; Jones 2019).…”

The Normalization of Hatred: Identity, Affective Polarization, and Dehumanization on Facebook in the Context of Intractable Political Conflict

“…Northrup describes Level 2 intervention as a change in the communication patterns of the parties in an intractable conflict. Attempts at Track 2 negotiation between Jews and Arabs (Benziman, 2016) and reconciliation-aimed intergroup encounters (Ron & Maoz, 2013) are examples of this intervention. According to Northrup, changing the way parties interact might enable them to see each other differently, promoting listening, understanding, and reduction of seeing the other as a threat.…”