No new format for peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians can succeed unless it carefully considers the reasons behind the failure of past negotiations to ensure that the same mistakes are not repeated. The following highlights some of the more prominent reasons behind the collapse of prior Israeli–Palestinian negotiations:
Disagreement on Rules of Engagement. Given their stark disagreement on various issues, each side insisted on rules of engagement that could serve their own strategic interests first. For example, Israel insisted that the negotiations must first consider its vital national security concerns, whereas the Palestinians wanted to negotiate borders first to establish the parameters of their state.
In addition, both sides have failed to delink the conflicting issues, arguing that nothing is agreed upon unless everything is agreed on at the same time. Moreover, by not setting aside, or “banking,” any conflicting issue over which they have reached an agreement, it made it difficult to make significant progress as every time they entered into new negotiations, they had to start from scratch.
