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Secrets in the Desert: The Necessity of Secret Talks in the Peace Process

© lawhawk

While major meetings between various world leaders receive major headlines around the world, the majority of breakthroughs occur between negotiators at preliminary meetings. Secrecy is one of the best ways of ensuring a breakthrough since news of that breakthrough could result in an undermining of the positions of the negotiators. This is especially the case when dealing with the Arab-Israeli Conflict.

While United States President George Bush received credit for getting the Arab States, Russia and Israel to meet in Madrid to create a framework for resolving the conflict, the key negotiations occurred during a series of secret meetings between PLO and Israeli negotiators in Oslo, Norway. The ability to keep the meetings secret allowed both sides to develop positions that were more acceptable to the other side. Israel had always considered the PLO to be a terrorist organization with its twin goals being the destruction of Israel and the creation of a Palestinian State. By entering into negotiations with them, Israel made a sharp departure from its long-standing policy and if this had been made public at the time, it could have led to a vote of no confidence in the government and paralyzed the peace process.

Similarly, the PLO would have been seen as compromising its goals by negotiating with a country which it believed was not supposed to be there. Radical elements would see this as a reason to attempt more terrorist activities and shake up the leadership in the PLO, including possibly trying to kill PLO Chairman and Palestinian Authority Head Yasir Arafat. It should be remembered that the PLO is not one big happy family, but is rather made up of several groups, the largest being Arafat's Fatah faction. Several other factions are smaller, but they are geared toward violence, not negotiation.

It is also interesting that the US played a low key role in the breakthroughs at Oslo. The US entered into the formula the PLO and Israel created as a way of smoothing the path and allowing the agreement to be cemented between them. Money guarantees through the IMF, World Bank, United Nations and various countries, including the US, allowed both the PLO and Israel to show that they gained something from the deal. The US lined up the credit and support for the additional loans and money guarantees and the US continues to influence the region's leaders through advancing credit and money lines in order to bring about stability.