Fifteen Eighty Four

Every few years, hope briefly returns to the Middle East. Negotiators meet behind closed doors, world leaders speak of a historic opportunity, and commentators predict that peace may finally be within reach. Then the talks collapse, violence resumes, and another generation grows up believing that the conflict is simply irresolvable.

Must it always be this way?

That question inspired me to write Resolving the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict: A Critical Study of Peace Negotiations, Mediation and Facilitation between Israel and the PLO. Instead of asking who was to blame I speak of responsibility and asked: what conditions are necessary for successful peace negotiations, and why have they been so difficult to achieve?

The volume represents the convergence of my lifelong journey as a peace activist and over three decades of academic research in political philosophy and socio-legal studies. My aims in writing this book were threefold: to analyse the most important peace junctions since Oslo 1993 and explain why the negotiations did not translate to a full peace package; to outline the keys for successful negotiations, mediation and facilitation, and to offer a comprehensive and doable peace proposal.

The search for answers took me far beyond published accounts. Over more than a decade, I examined declassified archival materials across the Library of Congress and the archives in London, Jerusalem and Oslo, alongside conducting more than one hundred firsthand interviews with heads of state, diplomats, and negotiators across ten countries and the United Nations. Together, these sources reveal why negotiations failed and why some moments came remarkably close to success. The interviews, together with my writing on peace and conflict resolution, will soon be available in the Israel State Archives (Raphael Cohen-Almagor Collection: Peace Processes between Israel and Its Neighbours).

One conclusion emerges consistently: peace is never produced by goodwill alone. It requires a tripartite foundation: strategic preparation before talks begin, trust-building during the process, and faithful implementation afterward. To understand why some negotiations succeeded while others failed, I developed an analytical framework that combines insights from political philosophy, negotiation studies, leadership analysis, and conflict resolution.

The book examines every major stage of the peace process, from the initial breakthroughs and implementation lessons of Oslo, through the structural deadlocks of the 2000 Camp David Summit, to the Annapolis process, identifying recurring patterns that help explain both success and failure.

Although the book is grounded in history, it is ultimately about the future. The devastating events since October 7, 2023, have transformed the political landscape. Understanding why previous peace efforts faltered is essential if future negotiations are to have a greater chance of success. The final chapters consider what these historical lessons might mean for diplomacy after October 2023, including regional normalisation and the future governance of Gaza.

Studying history cannot guarantee peace. It can, however, help us avoid repeating the mistakes that have repeatedly allowed opportunities for peace to slip away. My hope is that this book will encourage readers to think differently about one of the world’s most enduring conflicts and help ensure that, when the next opportunity for diplomacy emerges, it is approached with greater historical understanding, strategic preparation, and political imagination.

Professor Raphael Cohen-Almagor is a Visiting Academic at the UCL Faculty of Laws and Senior Associate Research Fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI). His new book, Resolving the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict, is available now from Cambridge University Press.