Examining Conflict Management Strategies

The violent clashes that erupted in September 2000 between Israel and the Palestinians developed into a protracted low-intensity confrontation. The confrontation exacted a heavy human toll on both sides, inflicted severe economic damage, and raised the level of mutual enmity and mistrust to levels that are hampering dialogue, not only with regard to the resolution of the conflict but even about its very management. Neither side expected that it would last so long or escalate so fiercely; it did so because of the failure of both sides to conclude it rapidly or even to moderate its intensity. International peacemaking efforts were equally fruitless. The conflict again entered the realm of the intractable, dominated by uncontrolled violence.

The failure of the Oslo process, the reversion to violent confrontation, the sense of impasse, and the failure of the efforts to terminate the violence or at least to diminish its intensity prompted the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies to examine the management of the confrontation by the sides during the five years of its duration (2000-2005). The research team examined the causes of the confrontation, the goals of the sides and their perceptions of the confrontation at different stages, the distinctive characteristics of the confrontation as a low-intensity conflict, the management strategies adopted by the sides, and the reasons for the failure of the efforts to terminate or moderate the confrontation.Consideration was also given to more controlled alternatives to manage the conflict and facilitate a transition from management to resolution.