FOREWORD

by Dennis Ross

FOR SOMEONE WHO WORKED CLOSELY WITH URI SAVIR DURing Israel’s negotiations with its neighbors in the 1990s, it comes as no surprise to me that he would write a book on why we must revolutionize the way we approach peacemaking and how we can do so. I say this because, as a negotiator, Uri Savir brought not just skills, creativity, and insight to the task; he brought empathy and compassion as well.

Uri, first and foremost, is an Israeli patriot. But he is also a humanist. He believed that peace with Israel’s neighbors was in Israel’s national interests. He believed in a peace of mutual interest, not a peace of surrender. He believed in a peace of openness, with reconciliation and cooperation, not a cold peace of isolation and separation. He believed in a peace in which each side could gain, not one in which he would necessarily get the better of his counterparts. (That did not mean he would let them get the better of him or his country.)

Throughout the Oslo process, Uri saw peace as most enduring if it reflected the self-interest of both sides. Peace could not be a favor that one side did for the other, nor could it represent a sacrifice of something so basic that one side could not sustain or fulfill the commitments made.

Uri was not sentimental in his negotiating, but he worked hard to understand the needs of the other side—whether it was in his negotiations with the Palestinians or with the Syrians. For him this was not a sacrifice but a hardheaded way of achieving what Israel needed; the more he could demonstrate that he understood what the other side needed (and could explain it), the more he could explain what he needed on his side to be responsive. He took a long view of peacemaking, always having a strategic vision of where he wanted to go and not letting short-term tactics undercut his longerterm direction.

For someone who labored so hard to make Oslo work, only to see it come crashing down years after his efforts from 1993 to 1996, it is not surprising that Uri would ask questions about its demise and try to learn the lessons that might be applied to peacemaking today. Many such questions are embedded in this book, and they help explain the model for peacemaking that he proposes. For example:

• Why was it so hard to produce a peacemaking process that gained public support and acceptance of the peace narrative?
• Why did the opponents of peace, especially those who used violence and terror, always seem to have the upper hand?
• Why was such a narrow approach taken to peacemaking, putting a premium on security but not on building civil society or the economic underpinnings of peace?
• Why wasn’t the region and the international community enlisted to more effectively support the peacemaking process?
• Why weren’t the donor countries and their private sectors called on to invest in joint economic developments between Israelis and Palestinians, not only to produce economic peace dividends but also to foster a new psychology of cooperation and joint ventures?
• Why wasn’t more done to connect the two societies and the youths in those societies? Peace, after all, is made between peoples and not just among national abstractions.
• Why was the strategy for implementation of agreements so limited and always so vulnerable to being frustrated?

Although I may be posing these questions more explicitly than Uri does in the book, he offers answers to these and other questions to help explain why Oslo and other such efforts to resolve historic conflicts have not succeeded. Uri presents not just a new model for peacemaking but also a strategy for pursuing it.

He calls for a “participatory peace” in which citizens are integrated into the effort. He speaks of the need for “glocalization,” in which the new reality of decentralization from national governments is recognized and in which cities across national boundaries and around the globe are enlisted to work together on common problems. He refers to the need to develop a “peace ecology” in which the culture of peace and cooperation is nurtured, as opposed to the traditional mind-set that sees peace agreements as more formal and geared only toward the cessation of conflict. He focuses on “peace building” not just peacemaking, arguing that building peace through connecting societies, promoting common economic ventures, and creating sports and cultural programs among the youth will do more to make peace a reality than simply talking about it.

Finally, Uri calls for “creative diplomacy,” the need to bring many different local, regional, and international actors into the process. In addition, he offers a new tutorial on how best to negotiate. This is a book that offers not only a new taxonomy of terms for peacemaking but also a new theory about what is required and how to do it.

Uri is not motivated only by the failures of the past. Instead, he is deeply troubled by the new threats he sees emerging in a globalized world in which there is an enormous underclass left out and left behind—a reality that fosters anger, alienation, and frustration and that broadens the appeal of those ready to engage in apocalyptic terrorist acts. Ongoing historic conflicts also create a fertile breeding ground for suicidal attackers, and the potential marriage of the worst weapons with actors ready to commit unspeakable acts of terror on a mass scale creates very plausible doomsday scenarios. Uri starts the book with such a scenario in mind, to explain why we must take a revolutionary approach to peacemaking.

Uri is focused not only on resolving historic conflicts but also on thinking about how we use the tools of globalization—the new means of connecting citizens and the new focal points of power, such as mayors less hamstrung by bureaucracies—to overcome the international divides that create a context for conflict.

Not every reader of this book will buy the argument that security can be downplayed relative to the need to promote cooperation. But this is not a book that requires acceptance of every detailed proposal. Instead, it is a book that requires us to stretch our minds and decide that it is time to modernize our approach to peacemaking—just as war has always commanded new technologies, new innovations, and new doctrines.

When Uri Savir says it is time to modernize our approach to peace, he is surely correct. When he tells us we need a peace barometer or a new talisman for implementation of peace agreements, we ought to listen. His book charts a new course for peacemaking that is desperately needed. For someone who has waged the battle for peace along with him, I share the view that we need a revolutionary approach to peacemaking. One thing is for sure: leaders trying to resolve historic conflicts need help from within and from without to marshal the wherewithal to confront both history and mythology. Uri Savir is certainly doing his part to help.