There is a thick layer of negotiation history in this Middle East conflict. The
buildup is substantial and appears to be on an accelerated pace. More and more
plans are presented and discussed as time goes by, and each proposal seems to
be zooming in on the precise, narrowly defined issues at hand. The elaborate
efforts to form negotiation positions and present them in public arenas have
brought some success too. Encouraging signs point to common agreement among
the parties and, more important, to their mutual recognition of shared interests.

The positional bargaining strategy remains far more central and completely
dominates the negotiation environment. Yet, for all the energy in planning and
proposal-generation, there have been few achievements of joint agreement by
parties. By contrast, principled negotiation techniques continue in the background
and are treated as peripheral formulas that may be useful if all else fails. This
recommended strategy has yet to receive true testing in the Arab-Israeli dispute;
it simply has not been applied as a full-scale effort. Thus, the bulk of negotiation
buildup is derived from positional bargaining, affecting the parties who are by
now hardened and worn by the roles and rules captured by this traditional
approach to conflict resolution.

Principled negotiation entered late into this picture and requires, in any case,
a significant shift in negotiation orientation; the standard mindset for thinking
about discussing issues with an adversary is derived from positional negotiation
perspectives. The principled approach, in short, has experienced but a tiny start.
However, basic ideas in principled negotiation--(a) the notion of mutual trust;
(b) creative-idea generation to invent options of mutual gain to the disputants;
and (c) the development of principles as precedents--have deeper roots in un-
derstanding and analyzing the Arab-Israeli conflict and resolution approaches.
In the next chapter these themes are developed further to illustrate how negotiation
is sustained in broad, principled bargaining categories yet is pursued, usually,
in positional bargaining games.

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