Table Of ContentNegotiating under Fire
Negotiating under Fire
Preserving Peace Talks in the Face of Terror Attacks
Matthew Levitt
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
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Copyright© 2008 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Levitt, Matthew, 1970–
Negotiating under fire : preserving peace talks in the face of terror attacks / Matthew
Levitt.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7425-5162-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-7425-5162-8 (cloth : alk. paper)
eISBN-13: 978-0-7425-6566-1
eISBN-10: 0-7425-6566-1
1. Arab-Israeli conflict—1993—Peace. 2. Hebron Massacre, Hebron, 1994. 3.
Terrorism—Influence. 4. Crisis management. I. Title.
DS119.76.L4753 2008
956.9405'4—dc22 2008013966
Printed in the United States of America
(cid:2)™
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
In Memory of
Maurice and Sara Tessler
Ray and Alma Koch
Meier Lichtenstein
Jeffrey Rubin
~
In Honor of
Dina, my guiding light
(cid:2)
Contents
Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Chapter 1 Introduction 1
Chapter 2 The Hebron Massacre 17
Chapter 3 The Wachsman Abduction and Murder 75
Chapter 4 The 1996 Suicide Bus Bombings 129
Chapter 5 A Focused Comparison of the Goldstein,
Wachsman, and 1996 Bombings Crises 197
Chapter 6 Conclusion: Toward a Theory of Crisis Management
under Conditions of Ongoing Negotiations 233
Notes 247
Index 321
About the Author 339
vii
(cid:2)
Foreword
Matthew Levitt has written an interesting book. Negotiating under Fire may
be a catchy title, but it is surely much more than that. In a world of national
and sectarian conflicts, we may more and more face the challenge of sus-
taining negotiations in the midst of continuing fire and warfare. I say this not
as an academic observer, but rather as someone who was the lead American
negotiator in the Arab-Israeli peace talks from 1993 to 2000. During that
time, we endured ups and downs and spikes in Palestinian terror and Israeli
responses (both preemptive and retaliatory) to that terror. And all the while,
we had to find ways to preserve talks and their credibility without losing sight
of the purpose of the negotiating process.
Although much has been written on conflict resolution and negotiations,
Matthew Levitt’s book fills a major gap in the field: he offers a systematic
analysis of what it takes to sustain a negotiating process in an ethnically
based conflict in which crises, particularly given determined opponents of
peace, are inevitable. By offering a definition of what constitutes an acute
crisis—and leader perceptions of crisis intensity—he creates a framework in
which to evaluate how different crises may affect a negotiating process.
Moreover, to understand what is most likely to affect the sustainability of a
negotiating process in crisis, he identifies three variables: policy legitimacy,
negotiator authority, and perceptions of the other side’s credibility. The
greater the legitimacy of pursuing conflict resolution, the authority of the ne-
gotiators and their ability to withstand challenges, and the belief each side
ix
x (cid:2) Foreword
has in the other, the more the negotiating process can be preserved even in
acute crisis.
I find his conceptual approach extremely useful. I was on the front lines
for each of the cases Levitt explores: the Hebron massacre of February 1994,
the kidnapping and murder of Corporal Nachshon Wachsman in November
1994, and the string of suicide bombings from late February to early March
1996 that killed sixty-one Israelis and wounded hundreds. I know what we
had to do to save the negotiating process, and Dr. Levitt has done a superb
job of analyzing each case and then offering a focused comparison to draw
lessons from the comparison. His lessons offer a very useful guide for manag-
ing a negotiating process in circumstances in which one can anticipate ef-
forts to disrupt and undo the process of trying to end the conflict.
Unfortunately, the existing literature is simply lacking when it comes to
insulating or protecting the “process” of conflict resolution. Much has been
written on conflict resolution and the difficulties of engaging in it. Until
now, however, little attention has been given to the fact that negotiating
processes for resolving historic conflicts require their own strategy for success
given the inevitable crises they will confront. The literature on negotiations
themselves tends to focus on what is necessary to get to “yes” or on how to
strategize in the negotiations but not on how to sustain negotiation processes
in ethnically based historic conflicts.
Fortunately, Levitt offers very useful prescriptions for protecting the nego-
tiating process. For example, his suggestion that there be pre-negotiations
that focus specifically on potential or likely threats to the negotiating process
and agreed responses to and mechanisms for coping with the contingencies
is on the mark. I wish we had employed such approaches—rather than hav-
ing to scramble in a crisis to develop such coping mechanisms.
Similarly, while his suggestion to engage in pre-negotiations on the core
issues of the conflict to provide more of a sense of direction may prove diffi-
cult given the reluctance of each side to reveal much about their true bottom
lines, Levitt’s general point, nonetheless, gets at something very basic: pre-
negotiation is needed to focus the parties on what is possible and the stakes
involved so each side understands well the consequence of the negotiating
process collapsing. And that can be the role of a back-channel either as part
of a pre-negotiation or parallel to the formal negotiations. Such a back-chan-
nel can be used to explore the issues that each side can deal with and a se-
quence for when they might do so. Here having each side understand what
is particularly sensitive to the other side (and why) will create far better
awareness of what each side can handle and a better appreciation of what is-
sues to take on and when to do so.
