Lessons Learned in Mediating Peace Between Israel and the Palestinians

I am reading The Truth About Camp David: The Untold Story about the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process by Clayton Swisher. This is a modern history of the events in the Clinton administration from 1999 to 2000 concerning US attempts to mediate peace between Israel and Syria and Israel and the Palestinians. The conventional wisdom and media reported that the collapse of each of these mediations was due to the intransigence of Hafez al-Asad, the leader of Syria, and Yassar Arafat, the leader of the Palestinian Authority. What Swisher portrays is something very different.

Swisher interviewed dozens of people on all sides of the mediation, including former Secretary of State Madeline Albright and other high level officials in the US, Syria, Israel, and in the Palestinian Authority. As the story unfolds, we begin to see that the fundamental problems were not the intransigence of Asad and Arafat. Instead, the problems were caused by the unskilled, unprepared, biased, and incompetent team of mediators fielded by the United States. Any experienced commercial or family mediator reading this book will cringe at the rookie mistakes made time after time by the U.S. mediators, including the sitting President of the United States. The ethical mediation principal of impartiality and neutrality was completely abandoned as we learn how Dennis Ross, the chief mediator on the US team, was grossly biased in favor of Israel. President Clinton, desperate for an opportunity to end his administration on a high note in the aftermath of the Monica Lewinsky affair, essentially misrepresented offers and counter-offers to the representatives of Syria and the Palestinian Authority in the hope that he could force a deal. The mediators misread the parties time after time, ignoring cues and emotional data that any reasonably competent mediator would have seen. The utter lack of transparency, authenticity, and integrity of the mediation process is breathtaking when one considers the stakes of the negotiation.

We are led to believe that the people in charge are mediating and negotiating international disputes, conflicts, and wars because they are the best, the brightest, the most experienced, and the most knowledgeable. The Truth About Camp David is a chilling wake-up call that when those in power have little professional expertise, knowledge, or experience in mediating  deep and intractable conflicts, bad things happen. This is a great book of how not to conduct any mediation and especially how not to mediate deep, serious, and difficult international conflicts.

As the Obama Administration again attempts to mediate peace between Israel, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Authority, let us hope that it brings in skilled, experienced, competent mediators and not political hacks or diplomats using 18th century techniques and processes. What is needed is a modern mediation and negotiation approach based on best practices. Otherwise peace will be unattainable.

It's Not About "Show Me the Money!"

So many disputes and conflicts, especially in the business world, seem to be about money. If a debt is owed, then it probably is about the money. In just about every other dispute, money may be important, but it is not driving the conflict.

Last week, I mediated a case that demonstrated this in a classic way. John (not his real name) claimed he was owed $48,000 on a contract. Bill (not his real name either), said , "No way!" They had a written contract with an attorney's fee clause. In California, that means that if you win, you have the right to ask a judge to award you your attorney's fees. By the time the case came to me for mediation, John had spent $38,000 in attorney's fees and Bill had spent $55,000 in attorney's fees. The combined fees nearly doubled the amount they were fighting over!

John demanded his full contract amount plus his attorney's fees. He was not going to "rollover" for Bill. He was owed the money fair and square, and by God, he was going to fight for every last dime. Bill, of course, believed that he didn't owe John anything and had many technical defenses to John's lawsuit. Bill wanted to be paid his attorney's fees to settle the case.

This one didn't settle. Both men were more interested in protecting their own sense of self-esteem than about the money. On a cognitive rational level, they each knew they would spend far more money with their lawyers than they would ever recover. On an emotional level, however, conceding to the other guy's demand would be an unacceptable blow to ego. Since emotions are far more powerful than cognitive rational processing, the fight was not about the money. It was about the need to be right and prove the other guy wrong.

This is a classic conflict pattern found in family disputes as well as in international conflicts. The need to protect face and boost self-esteem is fundamental in all of us. I have observed that people with a strong sense of identity and self-esteem tend not to be enmeshed in conflicts as much as others. On the other hand, those with a lesser sense of identity and lower self-esteem fight when they feel their identities are being threated.

What's really interesting is that giving someone respect costs nothing financially. Yet that can be the hardest thing to do when you feel like you are being disrespected.