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Begin New Search Topic Conflict Resolution Content Type Policy Brief

731. Sharon's Victory: Implications For The Peace Process And U.S. Policy

Author:
Robert Satloff
Publication Date:
02-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
The Israeli people spoke in the most dramatic and convincing fashion. Viewed in the U.S. context, Ariel Sharon won a larger share of the vote — 62.5 percent — than any presidential candidate in history. Essentially, Israel voted to express one word: "enough!" — enough violence, enough concessions, enough perception of weakness. They were particularly voting against Barak, both personally and against the policies that characterized his government (dating not only to Camp David but as far back as the earliest days of his cabinet). Certainly, much of yesterday's vote was against Barak more than it was a vote for Sharon; just as Barak's 1999 landslide was less a vote for him than it was a vote against Bibi Netanyahu; just as Netanyahu's 1996 squeaker was less a vote for him than it was a vote against Shimon Peres. Now it's Sharon's turn.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Foreign Policy, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, and Israel

732. Special Policy Forum Report; Imagining A Likud Foreign Policy

Author:
Dore Gold
Publication Date:
01-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
February marks ten years since the end of the Gulf War. The situation in the Middle East today is vastly more dangerous than in 1991. The favorable regional conditions in 1991 that allowed the current peace process to begin have been reversed. Three key trends are the following: After Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War, it was placed under UN monitoring and extensive sanctions, thereby removing a major threat from Israel's calculus. Today, the situation is drastically different, with the absence of UN inspections for more than two years and the deterioration of sanctions against Iraq. In 1991, Iran was still recovering from its exhaustive war with Iraq and could not fully participate in regional, specifically Arab–Israeli, affairs. By contrast, Iran is currently testing intermediate-range missiles and is expressing its strategic weight in places like Lebanon, where it has increased its support to Hizballah. In 1991, the USSR was crumbling before its eventual collapse and was no longer in a position to offer strategic and military support to the enemies of Israel, while its successor — the Russian Federation — has more or less acquiesced to U.S. positions on the Middle East. Since 1996, however, Russia has taken a contrary approach to many U.S. policies and leadership in the region, in particular with regard to Iraqi sanctions and weapons inspections and the transfer of missile technology to Iran.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, International Relations, Foreign Policy, Peace Studies, and United Nations
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Iraq, Middle East, Israel, Arabia, and Lebanon

733. Time Running Out On Clinton Proposals

Author:
David Makovsky
Publication Date:
01-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
Meetings this week between Israeli and Palestinian security and political personnel notwithstanding, time has virtually run out for any Israeli–Palestinian peace deal. It is important to note that the issue is not just one of time, even though President Clinton leaves office next Saturday. Top Clinton Administration officials have made clear that the Palestinians have engaged in "delays" since the December 23 ideas were tabled. Seeking to avoid the international disapproval that mushroomed in the wake of last summer's failed Camp David summit, Yasir Arafat came to Washington with an apparent "yes, but" view of the proposals. However, this approach seems clearly to be little more than a public-relations tactic.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Migration, and Sovereignty
Political Geography:
United States, Washington, Middle East, Israel, and Palestine

734. Special Policy Forum Report; Inside Clinton's Peace Proposals: A Textual Analysis

Author:
Robert Satloff
Publication Date:
01-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
While the White House has made no comment on the substance of President Bill Clinton's proposal for Israeli-Palestinian peace, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and the Palestinian Jerusalem Media and Communication Center (JMCC) have published what they say are respectively the Israeli and Palestinian minutes of the president's December 23 oral presentation. What is striking is that the two accounts agree on every substantive point. These accounts provide a sound basis for knowing what in fact Clinton proposed.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Foreign Policy, and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, Israel, Palestine, and Jerusalem

735. From Bilateralism To Internationalization: Security Implications Of The U.S. Bridging Proposals

Author:
Robert Satloff
Publication Date:
01-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
With President Clinton due to meet Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat today for a last-ditch diplomatic effort, attention is focused mainly on two aspects of the U.S. bridging proposals: the division of Jerusalem and the future status of Palestinian refugees. In contrast, little attention has so far been devoted to the security aspects of the U.S. proposals. While less emotive, security issues need to be central to U.S. concerns about the viability of any "final status" accord and its impact on U.S. interests and allies. It is difficult, however, to assess this aspect of the proposals because so many key security issues were evidently not raised by the President in his pre-Christmas oral presentation to the two sides. They may have been the subject of previous or subsequent discussions among the parties, but they were not on the President's core agenda.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Foreign Policy, and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, and Palestine

736. "Déjà vu all over again?" Why Dialogue Won't Solve the Kashmir Dispute

Author:
Arun R. Swamy
Publication Date:
10-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
The intensification of a long-standing dispute between India and Pakistan over the state of Kashmir has become the cause of international concern. The stakes for these nuclear-armed rivals are high. Each views Kashmir as the validation of its national ideology; each fears that giving it up will result in serious domestic turmoil. Moreover, each country has plausible legal arguments for its claims along with a long history of grievances. The deep differences over Kashmir that divide the two countries have so far proven intractable, and following September 11 the movement toward confrontation accelerated. There has never been a more urgent need for international attention to Kashmir. While diplomatic engagement seems necessary for a resolution of this dispute, past results indicate that simply pressuring the two sides to talk may be disastrous. In order to avoid such results, any effort to intervene in this dispute must be undertaken with an awareness of how it evolved, why it has been so difficult to resolve, and what kinds of solutions to it might realistically be pursued.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution and Security
Political Geography:
South Asia, Asia, and Kashmir

737. New Balkan Policy Needed

Author:
Robert D. Greenberg
Publication Date:
04-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Foreign Policy In Focus
Abstract:
In the first months after the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) entered Kosovo in June 1999 and the Kosovar Albanian refugees returned to their homes, the minority Serbs and Gypsies became the victims of Albanian revenge attacks. The few Serbs who have remained in Kosovo live in scattered enclaves under the protection of KFOR troops. Nevertheless, sporadic violence has continued to erupt, including the bus bombing in February 2001 killing Serbs heading to a religious event. KFOR has been unable to stop the violence from spilling over Kosovo's borders to Macedonia and to Serbia's Presevo Valley region, which has a sizable ethnic Albanian minority. Meanwhile, Macedonia has closed its border with Kosovo, raising the likelihood of a serious economic crisis in Kosovo that could induce further instability there.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Foreign Policy, and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
United States, Eastern Europe, Kosovo, Balkans, and Albania

738. Palestine and Israel

Author:
Stephen Zunes
Publication Date:
02-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Foreign Policy In Focus
Abstract:
There is a widespread assumption that resolution of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is extremely complex and that the U.S. has been and still is the best hope for peace. The reality, however, is just the opposite.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Foreign Policy, International Law, Peace Studies, and United Nations
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, Israel, and Palestine

739. ICAR Newsletter, Volume 13, Number 1

Author:
Dennis J.D. Sandole, Sandra I. Cheldelin, Sara Cobb, Ho-Won Jeong, Christopher Mitchell, Richard Rubenstein, Abdusabur Abdusamadov, Giselle Huamani Ober, John W. Holman, Catalina Rojas, Ellen Kabcenell Wayne, and Louis Kriesberg
Publication Date:
12-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University
Abstract:
On Aug. 15, 2001, ICAR welcomed our new director, Sara Cobb, by sending her to represent our institute at a threeday combined retreat of the President's Council (comprising the president and senior staff members, deans, and directors) and George Mason's Board of Directors. Within days we learned that her energy and enthusiasm for ICAR's agenda was contagious and welcome. With academic year 2001–2002 beginning the following week, she has hardly had time to catch her breath.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Human Rights, and Peace Studies

740. Afghanistan — Offensive Spring

Author:
Caspar Fithin
Publication Date:
05-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxford Analytica
Abstract:
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers yesterday began a visit to western Afghanistan to assess the country's deepening humanitarian crisis. Extreme drought and an intensification of the country's chronic war following a winter lull in fighting are likely to exacerbate famine and displacement of population. However, despite the emergence of a disaster which the international community will find difficult to ignore, UN sanctions against the Taliban, which controls 90% of the country, have done nothing either to curtail the movement's depredations against the population under its control or dampen its enthusiasm for a spring offensive. Peace for Afghanistan remains unrealistic as it enters its ninth year of civil war. Indeed, in the short term the total collapse of the country's agricultural system is likely to produce an influx of new recruits for this cycle of violence. However, evidence of a growing fractiousness within the Taliban could result in an emergence of a more moderate faction amenable both to dialogue with the international community and an accommodation with opposition forces.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Migration, Politics, and United Nations
Political Geography:
Afghanistan and Asia