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Back Channel Negotiation
Secrecy in the Middle East Peace Process
Anthony Wanis-St. John
Cloth $39.95s
| 978-0-8156-3275-7
| 2010
Choice Outstanding Title 2011
"This is a very important, engrossing work for professionals and lay readers interested in how international diplomacy works behind the scenes. Highly recommended."—Choice
"Back Channel Negotiation is an excellent marriage of
history and critical thought and is an important resource
for scholars of conflict resolution."—Peter Weinberger,
author of Co-opting the PLO: A Critical Reconstruction of the Oslo
Accords,1993–1995
"Large scale conflict is always complex, and Back Channel
Negotiation is a rare and brilliant example of accepting
and using that complexity. Starting with a detailed
and thoughtful narrative of back channel negotiations in
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Wanis-St. John then builds
convincing and provocative theory tightly linked to that
narrative."—David Matz, University of Massachusetts, Boston
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Anthony Wanis-St. John is assistant professor at American University in
Washington, D.C. He is an advisor to the United States Institute of Peace
and has consulted with the World Bank. He has facilitated several workshops
for Palestinian and Israeli official negotiation staff and advisors.
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Wanis-St. John takes on the question of whether the complex and often
perilous secret negotiations between principal parties prove to be
instrumental paths to reconciliation or rather roadblocks that disrupt the
process. Using the Palestinian-Israeli peace process as a framework, the
author focuses on the uses and misuses of "back channel" negotiations.
He discusses how top-level PLO and Israeli government officials have often
resorted to secret negotiation channels even when there were designated,
acknowledged negotiation teams already at work. Intense scrutiny
by the media, pressure from constituents, and the reactions of the public
all become severe constraints to the process, causing leaders to seek out
such back channels. The impact of these secret talks within the peace
process over time has largely been unexplored. Including interviews with
major negotiators and policymakers on both sides and a detailed history
of the conflict, Wanis-St. John analyzes the functions and the consequences
of back channel negotiations. The book reveals the painful irony
that these methods for peacemaking have had the unintended effect of
inflaming the conflict and sustaining its intractability.
View other series books on Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution
6 x 9, 360 pages,1 figure, 7 tables, notes, bibliography, index
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