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The Arab—Israeli conflict, which at first had a zero-sum, protracted nature, has changed over time because of effective conflict management that has made conflict reduction and even resolution possible. Following an adaptation process in response to the outcomes of the Six Day War, and the shifts from suppression to regulation, and vice versa, both sides experienced after the Yom Kippur War some learning process by which they became ready to transform their mode of thinking in the conflict. However, without the active encouragement of the USA, the learning process could not be developed. However, the Arab—Israeli conflict is not a single conflict, especially when analyzing and evaluating movements toward new forms of behavior in a given conflict system. The differences in the rate and scope of learning in each conflict influenced differently the shifts in conflict management, and from conflict management to conflict resolution. An initial learning process proved to be necessary for shifting from regulation to institutionalization, but this was not sufficient to move from institutionalization to resolution. There was a need for a further and deeper learning process to enable conflict resolution.

The rapid transition from an attempt to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the Camp David conference (July 2000) and in the Taba talks (January 2001) to renewed large-scale violence (from the end of September 2000) raised doubts about the possibility that the conflict could be resolved in the near future. The failure to resolve the conflict prompted researchers and policymakers to theorize that time was not yet ripe for a solution and that the only option is therefore to manage it—or, more precisely, to manage the violent confrontation that the conflict spawned in the past few years.1

After long years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which in the terminology of international conflict studies can be described as intractable and was marked by a multitude of violent acts—peaking in the Lebanon War (1982) and the intifada during 1987–1993—Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) decided to launch a political process aimed at resolving the conflict. This process was a breakthrough that was made possible largely in the wake of the emergence of a new Israeli conception holding that it was possible, under certain conditions, to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The disengagement plan of Israel’s prime minister, Ariel Sharon, can be described as an alternative Israeli strategy to the management of the violent confrontation with the Palestinians. This initiative (dating from December 2003) was intended primarily to moderate the violent confrontation that erupted almost three years earlier, by means of a unilateral decision by Israel. The new move was embarked upon after other strategies failed and the possibility of cooperation with the Palestinians in managing the conflict were perceived as unrealistic, in the light of the rejection of Yasser Arafat as a partner. The disengagement, although presented as a unilateral plan, was the most creative initiative since the onset of the confrontation in September 2000 and had the greatest potential to modify it.

This volume represents an important new step forward in the fields of conflict resolution and peace studies. Its essays argue that, while conflict resolution is well equipped to bring about temporary settlements and brief periods of peace in volatile situations, conventional conflict resolution techniques are not capable of building long-term stability. Instead, the authors contend, practitioners of conflict resolution need to focus more on reconciliation (the restoration of confidence, friendship, and harmony between rivals) than on mere conflict resolution. Whereas traditional conflict resolution has focused primarily on halting quarrels with agreements between leaders on each side of a conflict, reconciliation techniques shift the focus in two ways. First, they take more of a grassroots approach, building agreement among the members of rival communities, not only between leaders. Second, reconciliation takes a long-term view of dispute resolution. While the authors acknowledge that the role of traditional conflict resolution is important in stopping violence and tension, they argue that, in order to achieve stable peace, negotiators and practitioners of conflict resolution must focus much more on what is to be done after an agreement among leaders is reached.

This study will discuss the problems of value complexity in shifting from war to peace and the modes of coping with the shift in the Israeli peace-making experience with Egypt throughout the years 1977 to 1982. Peace-making, which often requires painful concessions, tends to be a value conflict situation that causes the decision-maker to experience a state of psychological distress because of inconsistency in his value system, forcing the decision-maker to use different mechanisms to cope with the value conflict. So confronted, the decision-maker will try to resolve the conflict. If that does not work-but he is persuaded of the need to adopt the new policy, despite its conflict with others' values-he will try to avoid the conflict; and if that does not work, he will accept the value conflict and the judgment of history on the grounds that the achievement of the higher valuepeace-is worth the sacrifice in other values.

Ever since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, its decision-makers have been fully aware of the impact of the international system on the ArabIsraeli conflict. Interests of external powers in the Middle East had to be taken into consideration in the formation of Israel's foreign policy. During the War of Independence the threat of British intervention on behalf of the Arab states was seriously contemplated, and a decision made to exercise self-restraint in order to avoid military confrontation.' David Ben-Gurion, Israel's Premier and Minister of Defense, was convinced that Israel must not provoke the intervention of a great power by means of its military action. While Israel had no other alternative but to fight the Arabs, war with a great power was far from inevitable.2 The question of external constraints in Israel's foreign and defense policy was rendered more acute in the early 1 950s, following the military deterioration along the armistice lines. This was aggravated by the failure of Israel's preliminary effort to obtain arms and security guarantees. The interrelationship between conflict management and consideration of great-power constraints produced two distinct schools of thought among Israel's decision maker in the early 1950s. Ben-Gurion espoused a hawkish and activist approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict, while minimizing the prominence of external constraints. Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett represented a doveish and more restrained line of conflict management, attributing great importance to foreign powers, the United Nations and international public opinion.3 This study aims to examine the emergence of these two approaches to management of the Arab-Israeli conflict, while analysing the actual impact of external constraints on Israel's foreign and defense policy between 1954 and 1956. It is argued that had the United States better understood Israel's defense problems, providing it with arms and security guarantees, it could have exercised greater influence over its foreign policy. Possibly the downfall of Sharett, the establishment of the Franco-Israeli alliance and even the 1956 war might have been prevented.

Bar-Siman-Tov, Y. Crisis Management by Military Cooperation with a Small Ally: American-Israeli Cooperation in the Syrian-Jordanian Crisis, September 1970. Cooperation and Conflict, XVII, 1982, 151-162. The aim of this study is to examine the American—Israeli military cooperation in the Jordanian-Syrian crisis of September 1970, as an illustrative case of crisis management by military cooperation with a small ally, in a situation where there are inadequate conditions for the effective employment of direct coercive diplomacy by the major power. The U.S. role in the resolution of the crisis became effective only when it demonstrated clearly that it had a credible means to manage the crisis. The military cooperation with Israel increased tremendously the American credibility and therefore its coercive diplomacy bargaining position in the crisis. The U.S. succeeded in employ ing its military cooperation with Israel as an effective means of crisis management. because the preliminary conditions for that strategy were present. The U.S. had a local ally with its own interests, motivation and capability to act as a 'crisis manager assistant'. The main negative result of the crisis for the U.S. was Israel's increased bargaining power. When a superpower is unable to protect its vital interests by use of its own direct coercive diplomacy and needs to rely on the assistance of an ally, it has no choice other than to accept the increased bargaining power of the ally.

(1988). The Bar‐Lev line revisited. Journal of Strategic Studies: Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 149-176.

dependence between two states: 'If B is highly dependent on A for something of great economic value to him, and A is not similarly dependent on B, the latter is vulnerable to the threat of having the receipt of the valued object suspended. He is subject to the coercive exertion of economic leverage.'2 The effectiveness of economic sanctions as a political tool is contingent upon change in the target state's behaviour and/or commitment on its part to avoid such behaviour in the future. However, a strong consensus exists in the literature that economic sanctions alone have been ineffective in the fulfilment of their