Midterm Essay Assignment:

Political Science 210
Fall, 2001

Professor Paul Gronke

Handed out: October 5, 2001
Due back: October 12, 2001

You are an advisor on Middle East policy to President George Bush. The President is concerned with recent developments, and believes that without some new U.S. action, the Middle East peace process could irretrievably break down. You have been asked, as a social scientist, to help Bush understand the roots of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. In particular, he would like to know why both parties don't see the obvious advantages of a peaceful resolution to this conflict - Palestinians would have a homeland, and Israelis would have peace.

Read the two articles attached and analyze the Israeli/Palestinian conflict either as a 2-party prisoner's dilemma or as a decision tree with no more than 2 players and 2 choices (peace and war). Your analysis should address how this model helps explain the situation, and what options the model suggests. In addition, you should consider the limitations of this model in capturing the situation. You may supplement this information with your own research, but this is not necessary.

Hint: make sure you clearly delineate the preferences of the parties and what the goals ("peace" and "war" really entail).

Your assignment is to write a three page memo to President Bush. Your memo should be no longer than three pages, double spaced. The memo is to be delivered to Lois Hobbs in CC112 (first floor Vollum) no later than 4 pm on October 12th.

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Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin's dream is to see a pan-Arab opposition to Israeli occupation of the territories. (Hatem Mousa/AP Photo) Common Ends?
Hamas and Israeli Prime Minister Sharon May Both Be Pushing for War

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/mideast010802_hamas.html

News Analysis
By John K. Cooley

August 2 — Hamas, one of the most influential Islamic groups in the Palestinian territories, and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon are clear enemies, but the violence each is responsible for ordering may lead to the same result: full-scale conflict.

According to Israeli and Arab regional commentators, such a conflict could enable Sharon to forcibly reoccupy parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip currently administered by the Palestinian Authority.
It would bring closer an objective the hard-line Sharon has vainly sought since Israel's birth in 1948: destruction of the Palestinian nationalist leadership under Yasser Arafat, and the creation of a weak, divided Palestinian entity, subservient to Israel.

The so far futile hope of Hamas' founder-leader, wheelchair-bound quadriplegic Gaza cleric Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, has been clearly expressed: The entire Muslim world should aid the Palestinians to end the Israeli occupation by fighting a war, as some Arab states did in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982.

In short, Hamas wants the destruction of Israel.

An Arab victory, in the Hamas view, would enable the movement to replace Israel with an independent Muslim state of Palestine, operating under Koranic law.

Help From Arab Brethren

But while the governments of Egypt and Jordan have extended encouragement, cash, relief supplies and medical help, neither government — which signed peace treaties with Israel in 1979 and 1994 respectively — has shown any inclination to go to war with Israel. This, despite the mounting popular anger against Israel.

During the Clinton administration's U.S.-guided peace talks in the 1990s, the late Syrian President Hafez Assad came close to signing a peace deal with Israel and recovering its lost Golan region from Israel. But Assad drew back, convinced that Israel intended to retain control over scarce regional water resources.

Despite Israel's military superiority, Assad's reform-minded son and successor, Bashar Assad, retains his father's tough line. This includes granting Hamas and other militants a safe haven to plan and organize propaganda and armed resistance to the Israeli occupation.

But rather than free Hamas activists, who are funded in part by Syria's ally Iran, or other Palestinians to mount cross-border attacks on Israel from Syria proper, the Syrian forces in Lebanon use Hamas' ally Hezbollah as a proxy for continued guerrilla pressure against Israel.

On its part Iraq, alone among Israel's Arab adversaries never to sign any peace deal or armistice with the Jewish state, continues to encourage Hamas and Arafat's Palestinian Authority to keep up the fight against Israeli occupation.

Iraq distributes an estimated $25,000 to surviving families of Hamas suicide bombers and other "martyrs," according to local informants.

From Benefactor to Foe

Hamas emerged in the 1980s as an offshoot of the old Muslim Brotherhood, a militant organization founded in Egypt in the 1920s.

Equipped with a tough fighting arm, the Muslim Brotherhood fought Israel in the 1948 war. Their guerillas also helped oust the British from their occupation of Egypt in the early 1950s.

Today, the Brotherhood is formally outlawed in Egypt but continues to be influential in Jordan, where it lives on as Hamas.

Israeli authorities initially encouraged and secretly aided Hamas in the 1980s as a useful religious counterweight to Arafat's more secular Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in Gaza.

But Hamas turned against its Israeli benefactors during the first intifada in 1987. With the help of Muslim Brotherhood cadres, it created its fighting and terrorist wing, named the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades after the Palestinian leader who fought the British occupiers of Palestine in the 1930s.

Today, the organization continues to provide social and community services including the operation of schools and hospitals in the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas is especially popular in Gaza, where the economic conditions are worse than the West Bank.

A Challenge to Arafat

Although Hamas poses a challenge to Arafat's leadership, the aging Palestinian leader has been careful not to antagonize the organization fearing the wrath of Hamas' tens of thousands of supporters and sympathizers.

On its part, Hamas remains opposed to the Oslo peace process and in the run-up to the 1996 Israeli elections, launched heavy suicide attacks in Israel, killing 56 Israelis.

Their bloody attacks helped to elect hard-line Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister.

Like Netanyahu, Sharon has consistently and successfully used "peace with security" as a campaign slogan. But the election slogans have quickly faded into violence as Sharon's government, now committed to assassinating active Hamas and other Palestinian resistance leaders, threatens to bring the tottering Middle East peace initiatives to the brink of all-out war.

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Outside the Borders http://abcnews.go.com/onair/WorldNewsSaturday/wnt000722_mideast_abudis_feature.html

Control of Jerusalem is a key issue in the Camp David talks. (Eyal Warshavsky/AP Photo) At the Center of an Age-Old Argument Between Palestinians and Israelis

By Gillian Findlay

July 23 — If there is one thing that Hani Erekat wants from the Mideast summit taking place at Camp David, it’s the right to travel freely to Jerusalem — and to pray at one of Islam’s holiest sites.

Jerusalem is the city both Israelis and Palestinians claim — both as a holy city and a political capital.
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“Jerusalem is 500 meters from here,” Hani says. “I cannot go and pray.”
Hani is Palestinian, and he lives in Abu Dis, which is just outside Jerusalem’s boundaries. His family has been there for 700 years, but without an Israeli permit, he’s not allowed in.
“People from all over the world come to see it, but me as Palestinian, as owner of this property, I cannot go and pray there,” he says.
Instead, Hani prays at his local mosque.
Two miles up the road is a sprawling Israeli settlement, and the residents often drive into Jerusalem to pray. When they do so, they often stop at the gas station owned by Hani.
“We always chat and talk, we always discuss issues, we always discuss peace,” he says.
Neither Side will Budge
Those discussions never get very far. Israeli Chiam Bentov, who buys his gas from Hani, lives in nearby Ma’ale Adummim. He and his family are unyielding in their belief that the land must not be returned to the Palestinians.
“I know Jerusalem means a lot to them, but it’s holy to Jews, too. We will never give it up,” says Bentov’s wife.
The settlers of Ma’ale Adummim and the Palestinians of Abu Dis have one thing in common: the fear that — under pressure — at Camp David their leaders will give away too much.
Hani’s fear is that Yasser Arafat will come home without Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.
“If he ever accepted that, I think he’d be risking his life. As he told President Clinton, ‘If I accept anything less than Jerusalem, the Palestinian people will shoot me.’ And he is right,” he says.
As he looks at Ma’ale Adummim, Hani says the settlers can stay, but only if they’re willing to live under Palestinian control.
The Bentovs say this should never happen.
“We’d be an enclave. They’d be shooting at us,” Bentov’s wife says.
Two communities linked by one road, and both sides know the stakes have never been higher.