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Drawing on linguistic impoliteness, this paper examines offence giving and taking in Twitter Diplomacy in the Middle East, explicating how Twitter affordances shape the context in which offence can be employed strategically in diplomatic communication. The dataset includes all the tweets posted by the Iranian Foreign Minister over a period of 10 years (totaling 659 tweets). The argument expounded in this paper is based on two assumptions. First, impoliteness notions can be effective in analyzing and theorizing diplomatic Tweeting in the times of crisis. Second, diplomatic offence can be employed to manage conflicts and legitimize foreign policies. The results show that diplomatic offence is characteristically explicit, which is vital to index the offender's disaffiliation from the target's values. Offence giving is used to present self-image through attacking the adversary's identity or values, whereas offence taking is utilized to moralize international politics through foregrounding the adversary's moral idiosyncrasies or legal violations. In effect, diplomatic offence is used to do impression management that aims at gaining moral capital. Twitter affordances allow the affective and moral stances associated with offence giving and taking to be publicized to online and offline audience, encouraging them to align with the producer's values and political standing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Rising expectations for exceptional customer experiences demand strategic amalgamation of cross-functional, customer-focused teams (marketing/sales/service departments). However, the long history of interface conflicts between functional teams continues to attract research attention. Past research has given more attention to conflicts between marketing and sales teams than to triadic interface conflict between custom-focused teams and their sub-conflicts in a business-to-business (B2B) sales process. The purpose of this research paper is to quantify the triadic interface conflicts and associated sub-conflicts between customer-focused teams, discuss conflict resolution strategies and perform a sensitivity analysis (SA) to give a fuller account of functional team conflict. Design/methodology/approach: Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) based in the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is proposed for identifying and resolving conflicts in customer-focused team interfaces. A group of 30 managers of a large electronics company participated in this research. The authors collected the data from customer-focused team managers during training sessions on interface conflicts and conflict management/resolution strategies. The authors perform SA to test the robustness of conflict resolution strategy rankings. Findings: The findings reveal that managers adjudge task as the most crucial conflict attribute driving teams apart, followed by lack of communication. For the sub-conflicts, managers considered how to do the task as the most important conflict attribute, followed by lack of regular meetings. For conflict resolution strategies, managers regarded collaboration or integration as the overall best strategy, followed by compromise. Leveraging the AHP-based MCDM to resolve customer-focused team interface conflicts provides managers with the confidence in the consistency and the robustness of these solutions. By testing the SA, it is also discovered that the final outcome stayed robust (stable) regardless when the priorities of the main criteria influencing the decision are increased and decreased by 5% in every combinations. Research limitations/implications: This study examined only a large B2B company in the electronics industry in African and Middle East settings, focusing on interface conflicts among customer-focused departments. Future research could address these limitations. Practical implications: This paper advances our understanding of customer-focused team interface conflicts in a B2B sales process. It also provides valuable insights on effective management of major and sub-interface conflicts. This paper provides a framework for and practical insights into how interface conflicts that are prevalent in marketing, sales and service sectors can be resolved to improve customer experience and business performance. Originality/value: This study contributes to the literature by developing an AHP-based MCDM, which not only extends our conceptual understanding of the interface conflicts between customer-focused teams by emphasizing their triadic nature but also provides valuable strategies and insights into the practical resolution of such conflicts in a B2B firm's sales process. Methodologically, SA is valuable to ensuring the robustness of the conflict resolution strategies' rankings that will influence relevant pragmatic decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to address the issues raised by hidden conflicts in a charismatic-led organization. The paper investigates the transformation from a management paradigm of quelling conflict artificially through charismatic leadership to a paradigm of negotiation that favors participation, systematicity, the multiplying of innovation sources and synchronization. The research is based on a specific approach to action research aimed at revealing the inherently masked conflictive energy, and contributing to a more sustainable, peaceful and well-performing construct. Design/methodology/approach: The framework is a specific approach to participatory action research that the authors call socio-economic intervention research. Findings: The results of the research support the proposition that while charismatic leadership quells conflict and jeopardizes the sustainability of the organization, socio-economic intervention research can help transform conflicts into cooperation in this type of organization. Originality/value: The main contributions relate to shedding light on the hazards of denying conflict in charismatic-led organizations, and the importance of systemic negotiation in transforming conflict into cooperation in the Middle Eastern cultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic and environmental structures of countries are greatly impacted by domestic and foreign conflicts. To promote sustainable development, it is crucial to understand the spatial impact of these conflicts on the ecological footprint of a region. With a focus on Middle Eastern and African countries, this paper investigates the impact of such conflicts on their environments, taking into consideration the unique spatial features of their ecological footprints. Using a spatial econometric model, the study assesses the contributions of ecological footprint determinants, particularly internal and external conflict indicators, across 46 Middle Eastern and African countries from 2001 to 2019. The results indicate that internal conflict can lead to increased pressure on natural resources and ecological systems in neighboring countries, while energy use and economic growth impose a significant ecological burden both domestically and abroad. While urbanization and resource rents were found to reduce the ecological footprint, trade openness was found to be nonsignificant. Conflicts such as war, foreign pressure, civil war, and civil disorder were found to have a significant negative impact on the environment, suggesting that reducing these conflicts would improve environmental circumstances. The findings highlight the need for conflict resolution measures to achieve a sustainable environment in the Middle Eastern and African regions and have implications for other countries facing similar issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The figure of the interpreter in conflict is as interesting as it is elusive to the rest of the profession and academia. One of the regions that has caught the attention and the interest of scholars is the Middle East. The literature tends to focus on one specific category - locally recruited interpreters - and the application of different theoretical concepts to their role and consideration by the parties involved, and does not delve too deeply into the intricacies of the specific role of other categories of interpreter in this context. Also, the existing narratives do not always frame this role through the typology of the conflict in which it is developed. This paper identifies narratives included in the literature that represent interpreters working in armed conflicts in the Middle East in order to examine the different existing categories. The paper then draws on the results of a qualitative study carried out with staff interpreters at an international organisation with the aim of completing this categorisation. Our focus will be on the characteristics of the different categories of interpreter in terms of their involvement in the different stages of the conflict, their positionality, working conditions, status and recognition by the parties involved in the conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper critically analyses a contradictory phenomenon experienced by local-level conflict resolution initiatives in Israel and Palestine. Despite their widespread utilization in other contexts of inter-communal conflict, facilitated contact interventions, including citizen dialogue and arranged encounters between Palestinians and Jewish Israelis, are being rejected and publicly denounced by many within the Palestinian and Israeli conflict resolution community in this case. This paper contributes to an understanding of this rejection by investigating arguments in favour of and against planned contact intervention initiatives through an analysis of interview narratives from 40 respondents working for peace and conflict resolution organisations in Israel and the West Bank as well as secondary research reports. Our analysis reveals deeply conflicting viewpoints. Arguments in favour of contact-based strategies suggest that they have the potential to disrupt an entrenched status quo of asymmetry-inspired social segregation. Conversely, arguments against suggest that these conflict resolution initiatives are struggling to level power asymmetry and bypass the structural and historical drivers of violence. In response, this paper introduces a grounded proposal for conflict resolution inside asymmetric conflict that emerges from the interview narratives of practitioners, themselves, regarding effective strategies, the nature of agency, and the scope of influence of local-level contact-based conflict resolution initiatives inside asymmetric conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the Near East as a case study to describe how religious identity became a source of preference formation and a cause of social cleavage. It formulates the concepts of identity-sharing groups and resource-sharing groups to bridge between religious identity's social-psychological aspects and its socioeconomic effects. The paper then argues that social cleavages among religious identity-sharing groups generated informal institutions that are incompatible with the abstract formal institutions of the nation-states of Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. That incompatibility hobbles efforts of formal state institutions to promote economic development, and instead restrains economic growth by intensifying existing conflicts among groups. It suggests that a state that could promote economic development would be the one that recognizes and supports the informal, localized institutions and allows those of them with common features to evolve into abstract formal institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The title of this paper reflects both the process and the outcome of the current undertaking. Frustrated with the current state of the Middle East but encouraged by earlier attempts at modeling complex problems, the authors participated in a panel discussion assembled to address the conflict and propose a possible road-map to peace. However, the participants of this project did not come to a single course of action that will result in peace in the Middle East but did reach a consensus agreement about a resolution that needs to be managed. This paper explores the process, the outcome and the factors that influence the decision as well as potential pitfalls. The Analytic Network Process (ANP), a well known multicriteria decision making approach, applied frequently in recent years to examine conflicts around the world, is used in this analysis. It provides a framework for synthesizing judgments on the diverse aspects of the problem represented in the structure of the decision. It pieces together these judgments in a holistic and logical way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, much of the public discourse regarding conflict in the Middle East has pondered the possibility of military intervention, but far less attention has been paid to the optimal mechanisms for conflict mediation. There remains considerable confusion in the study of conflict resolution about how to locate the right time, or 'ripe moment' for this type of third-party involvement. This is a crucial area of policy relevant research. When attempting to model ripeness, most of the literature has relied on expected utility models of decision-making and found that crucial but nebulous factors that are important in the MENA region, such as conflicting parties' psychology, religious and political beliefs, as well as grievances compounded over time, cannot easily be incorporated into the framework. This paper offers a plausibility probe to highlight the potential of an augmented approach. Using Poliheuristic (PH) Theory that reflects the non-compensatory nature of political risk, it creates a litmus test for third-party mediation based not on what conflicting parties aim to achieve, but what outcomes and processes they must avoid. The result is a relatively simple identification of 'bad' timing, as well as theory-informed mechanisms designed to help practitioners generate better conditions for mediation. This probe contributes to our understanding of the relationship between political fragility and conflict in the MENA region by indicating how political fragility might be conceptualized as a process that can be mapped and perhaps interrupted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This paper aims to locate, describe and analyze the mechanism and impact of women's informal role within the formally male-only Sulha - a prevalent, inter/intra-communal dispute resolution process practiced by Muslim, Christian and Druze Arabs in Israel and in many other regions of the Middle East and the Muslim world. Furthermore, this paper seeks to explore the way men's formal roles and women's informal roles interact within the Sulha's strict patriarchal settings. Design/methodology/approach - The first section of this paper uses interviews, participant observation and existing literature to locate, describe and analyze the specific ways in which women informally participate in and impact on the Sulha process. The second section uses a questionnaire, interviews, existing literature and analysis to examine the attitudes of men and women regarding women's current and future roles in Sulha. Findings - The paper demonstrates that the formal (male-only) visible part of the Sulha process coexists alongside a significant, yet mostly invisible, informal contribution of women - at each stage of the process. Furthermore, the paper shows that both men and women are cognizant of the informal role women play in Sulha, and that both men and women are open to a possible future expansion of the role of women in Sulha, including into formal roles. Originality/value - The paper highlights the need to seek and evaluate informal, sometimes invisible, yet significant contributions of women to traditional dispute resolution processes in strict patriarchal cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the arms accumulation and armed forces build up in large areas of the Middle East which became one of the principal features of international politics. It addresses the issues on the relationship between arms accumulation and instability, of arms control and the political process and on what areas in which arms control could be effective. The several level of conflicts raging in the Middle East includes the competition among the Arab states for position of power, the competition between the superpowers and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

This paper provides a diagnostic account of the nature and severity of the trans-boundary water resources conflict in the Middle East and how it is intertwined with issues of high politics. The concepts and analytical framework provided in this paper represent universal principles that, while applying to the Middle East water conflict, are also reflective of and applicable to many other disputes over natural resources around the world. This aspect about the research is particularly of great interest to the quest and scope of many other researches, considering the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is regarded as the sine qua non from which many troubling aspects emanate in different part of the Middle East and beyond. By outlining the problem and the root causes and nature of the water crisis in arid regions, this paper seeks to provide evidence of lack of equitable water sharing in the status quo water allocation and ample justification for the need to apply equitable principles to promote cooperation and peace. More precisely, this research will reflect on the way in which conflicting representations of hydrological resources have created tension, conflict, and injustice in general, with particular emphasis on the Middle East water conflict issues of the occupied territories, namely the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows how the American planning for the war in Iraq of 2003 lacked the use of major academic and scientific disciplines. Some basic theories and principles in the field of nationalism and ethnicity studies as well as the field of Middle Eastern studies were supposed to guide the planning for the post-war era in a better way. The goals of the war were originally very ambitious and included 'conflict transformation' which implies facilitating changes in the social and political structure of Iraq and the Middle East, but it has now changed to the more modest goal of 'conflict management' which focuses on containing violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to shed light on the indigenous population's approaches to mediation and ADR. How they managed to maintain integrative negotiation and peaceful relations with each other as well the environment is of particular interest. While emphasizing the role of mediation, this paper also argues for the importance of reviving these indigenous techniques of negotiation, mediation, and water dispute resolution. Going beyond the question of state sovereignty and land and natural resources entitlement, this paper poses an entirely different set of practical issues by seeking to address the following questions: How did the indigenous people of the Middle East manage to adequately share scarce water resources while coping with conflict? What values do the Arabs and Israelis share and how can they be integrated into more efficacious practical conflict resolution policies? Which principles of the indigenous practice could be incorporated in water conflict negotiation to deter conflict and facilitate cooperation? What dynamics of negotiation could be learned from the indigenous practice? And finally, the paper evaluates whether or not incorporating modern and indigenous approaches together can be applied to the current Arab-Israeli water dispute to advance agreements towards a more comprehensive and stable stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are some kinds of violent conflicts between factions in which one generation of belligerents trains a successive generation to continue and! or enlarge the scale of conflict in an arena where the hostilities are internecine A model is developed of the devolution of internecine conflict using the lexicon of game theory and the simple mathematics of probability Assumptions pertaining to the behavior and attitudes of factions are transcribed into mathematics to formulate a theory of conflict resolution The theory is general enough to be applied to the struggles in the Middle East as well as to warfare among youth gangs The chief proposition to emerge from the analysis demonstrates how the statistical incidence of aggressive and peaceable factions varies over time The time path has the characteristics of a stochastic process with estimable parameters [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Active and protracted conflict settings demonstrate the need to prioritise the peace through health agenda. This can be achieved by reorienting attention toward gender diverse leadership and more effective governance within health systems. This approach may enable women to have a greater voice in the decision-making of health and social interventions, thereby enabling the community led and context specific knowledge required to address the root causes of persistent inequalities and inequities in systems and societies. Methods: We conducted a qualitative study, which included semi-structured interviews with 25 key informants, two focus group discussions and one workshop with humanitarian workers in local and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), United Nations (UN) agencies, health practitioners, and academics, from Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and Latin America. Findings were then applied to the peacebuilding pyramid designed by John Paul Lederach which provides a practical framework for mediation and conflict resolution in several conflict-affected settings. The purpose of the framework was to propose an adapted conceptualisation of leadership to include women's leadership in the health system and be more applicable in protracted conflict settings. Results: Five interrelated themes emerged. First, perceptions of terms such as gender equality, equity, mainstreaming, and leadership varied across participants and contexts. Second, armed conflict is both a barrier and an enabler for advancing women's leadership in health systems. Third, health systems themselves are critical in advancing the nexus between women's leadership, health systems and peacebuilding. Fourth, across all contexts we found strong evidence of an instrumental relationship between women's leadership in health systems in conflict-affected settings and peacebuilding. Lastly, the role of donors emerged as a critical obstacle to advance women's leadership. Conclusion: Continuing to empower women against social, cultural, and institutional barriers is crucial, as the emerging correlation between women's leadership, health systems, and peacebuilding is essential for long-term stability, the right to health, and health system responsiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing water technology and management systems is not sufficient to cope with the water shortage, where political decisions might be considered as a critical element in this context. The Euphrates–Tigris basin has been suffering for decades from political instability and mismanagement. The tension over the water allocation that was on the negotiating table since the 1960s ended with no substantial agreement between the riparian countries (Iraq, Turkey and Syria). The objective is to evaluate the impact of the political dimension by creating a conceptual model for the hydropolitical cycle, addressing the importance of the negotiation concepts to reach an agreement; the research also aims to develop a strategy that might support the transformation from conflict to collaboration. The approaches of situation map and systems thinking have been implemented to build the model. The tools of negotiation skills have been adopted to assist the water conflict. The results describe the challenges within different levels and demonstrating the hydropolitical cycle and adding a sustain toolkit to the theory of water conflict and transformation management. Moreover, the paper produces the structure and workflow of establishing the Global Water Security Council. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing competition over water resources has caused political disputes among stakeholders and has brought conflict resolution in the focus of negotiation processes. In these cases, bankruptcy rules for redistributing an asset when it is not sufficient to meet all claims could be applied. In this paper, we develop a new bankruptcy rule for water resources problems that considers agents' contribution to the total resources as well as their claims, which is in accordance with the UN Watercourses Convention (1997), as important factors for reallocation. Using the Euphrates River and a hypothetical case from the literature as examples, the new rule is compared with four alternative rules. The results show that the novel solution is potentially more powerful to help solving conflicts over river sharing problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

B O b n November 18-20, 2018, Annabel Herzog (Professor of Political Science at the University of Haifa in Israel) and I (Professor of Religion and Political Science at Temple University) organized a conference at Haifa, titled "Asymmetry, the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, and Abrahamic Peace." It deals with the visions, theories, and ethics of those who clamored for a return to Zion - but in a context that acknowledged that the resettlement of the land of Israel could be accomplished in diverse settings operating under distinct ethical, political, and theological auspices. Its political economy could run the gamut from authoritarian socialism to democratic socialism to liberal capitalism and monopolistic capitalism. [Extracted from the article]

Conflicts are socio-political pressures that alter wellbeing, social structure, and economic sustenance. However, very limited studies have assessed the long-term impact of conflicts on environmental sustainability. This study investigates the role of internal and external conflicts on ecological footprint in the Middle East and North African countries (MENA) over the period 1995–2016. Here, we test whether the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis is valid for MENA countries during the period of internal and external conflicts—characterized by energy disasters and deteriorating income levels. Using robust econometric tools based on 12 MENA countries, the results show that income growth has negative impact with evidence of inherent heterogeneity across quantile distribution of ecological footprint. However, the positive impact of the square term of income decreases ecological footprint, thus, confirming U-shaped relationship between income and environmental indicator across MENA countries. The results further show that excessive energy consumption is attributed to a rising level of urbanization, while increase in conflicts stimulates environmental degradation. These findings are essential for effective conflict resolution and environmental policies across conflict-prone countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Middle East and especially the region surrounding Israel has been caught in a continuous conflict with far-reaching consequences for nearly a century now. Although the international conflict there has mostly ceased, violence still occurs, and its impacts are very much tangible for the residents of the Palestine, East Jerusalem, and Israel itself. Therefore, the following will examine one of the most determining wars in the 20th Century, the Six-Day War, and how it has shaped the region. To maintain a more objective perspective, sources from Israel, Palestine, and international organisations such as the UN have been employed. Having examined the evidence, the conclusion has been reached that the most significant and detrimental impacts of the Six-Day War have been felt by the Palestinians, specifically in the realms of economics, politics, and human rights. However, the impacts of the war on other groups, including the Bedouin and Jews, which are often overlooked, have also been examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do private firms act beyond "business as usual" and proactively build peace? Firms are largely absent from the conflict management literature, despite studies suggesting their importance. What conditions encourage firms to actively prevent or resolve violent conflict? Are such actions interdependent with ongoing international conflict prevention and management efforts? I argue international efforts encourage corporate conflict management-related activities since conflict management interdependencies can decrease the costs of conflict management, while increasing the benefits and success of their efforts. In addition, firms respond to gaps in governance and instability, especially when they are norm entrepreneurs or their reputation is threatened. I test these arguments on original cross-national data of conflict management-related efforts by large, domestic firms in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa from 1999–2013. The findings bring large-N empirical analysis to a topic dominated by case studies and emphasize the need for conflict management scholars to account for the role of the private sector in our studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strategic map of the Middle East is slowly changing, with traditional powers retreating from the regional management and with the expanding power vacuum in the region. Lately, growing attention is focused on emerging powers such as China that have capabilities and potential to increase their engagement in regional politics and conflict management. However, the question is if China as the most powerful of contemporary emerging powers and an important trade and energy partner of Middle Eastern countries is willing and able to take on the role of an extra-regional leader that will stabilize the regional order. This article explains motivations behind Chinaʼs Mid-East policy and shows that although China is increasing its presence in the region, it is not yet ready to become a major force in shaping regional politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fantasies and especially excessive or ‘phantascistic’ fantasies, as they are referred to here, have the power to suppress within political communities, consciously and unconsciously alike, inner antagonisms in times of crisis. More precisely, they help to blur aporias within the ideological structures of a community through the evocation of a sensus communis (Kant) that establishes the community anew, similar to an act of religious conversion. Their impact on the space of reasons is analysed in this article as one that does not take part in the game of giving and asking for reasons, but operates in the background of communal reason via an emotionally and clandestine ‘code’ of what it means to be ‘We … - We who we are’. Next to theoretical elaborations of how and why these phantascistic fantasies are produced, the theory will be further explained through a series of exemplifications demonstrating the way that it has played out across a long history of conflict in the Middle East and a shorter history of contemporary politics in the United States. Through all of this, the aim is to illustrate how very concrete excessive fantasies have an impact on a body politic's form of enjoyment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Quasi-mediation diplomacy’ refers to the role a ‘mediating’ state plays in international activities to defend its commercial, political and diplomatic interests rather than core security and strategic interests. This type of mediator acts without seeking to dominate; to follow rather than to lead; to partake in the revision of the agenda rather than setting it; and, to encourage conflict de-escalation in lieu of determinedly engaging in conflict resolution. The dynamics of China’s quasi-mediation diplomacy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) depend on their relevance to China’s vital commercial interests, the scope of China’s influence, the level of the great powers’ consensus and the intractability of crisis settlement. Through a comprehensive interchange of the above-mentioned variables, China-styled quasi-mediation diplomacy rests on risk-aversion, revealing divergent forms which can be categorized at four levels, namely, multifaceted intervention, proactive involvement, limited intercession and indirect participation. These four categories of China’s quasi-mediation diplomacy shed light on China’s discreet participation in the MENA conflict resolutions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How do female residents of the Middle East's largest cities solve their everyday problems? And under what conditions do women use the state to resolve local disputes? Squatter settlements and other 'informal' neighborhoods often exist outside of effective state authority, leaving residents to develop parallel forms of legality. This is particularly true for female residents of these neighborhoods who may experience marginalization as a result of their socioeconomic status as well as prevailing gender norms. This article examines avenues for problem solving and conflict resolution employed by women in the low-income neighborhoods of Cairo and Istanbul-the region's largest megacities. Using an original survey of 2400 women in four low-income neighborhoods across the two cities, we find that women in Turkey are much more likely than their counterparts in Egypt to turn to the state to handle local problems, especially for issues associated with criminality. When Egyptian women do choose to use state channels for dispute resolution, they only do so when they are well-connected to local elites, suggesting the critical mediating role played by a woman's social capital. Religious authorities are not seen as a primary tool for conflict resolution in any of the sampled neighborhoods, challenging the conventional wisdom about the role local Islamic interlocutors play in low-income Muslim communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This abridged version of the proposal developed for Friends of the Earth Middle East presents the design for an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians to share water in a physically realistic, ecologically sustainable and socially equitable manner. Existing arrangements are, at best, inadequate and, in some cases, counterproductive. The proposal relies upon ongoing monitoring and mediation to achieve equitable and sustainable use. It presents why and how an agreement on water can be reached now, before resolving the full range of issues required in a Final Status Agreement between Israel and Palestine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Middle East Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone (NWFZ) proposed by Iran in 1974 and was extended in 1990 by Egypt to include biological and chemical weapons. It states that the Middel East zone free of all weapons of mass destruction could end the instability and conflict in the Middle East region. The authors suggest the need for the civil society's help to build a worldwide consensus that all weapons of mass destruction are total unacceptable.

Arab states gave support to the extension of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1995 on the condition to hold negotiations to create a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. The international community was expecting, particularly after the 2010 NPT Review Conference, the MEWMDFZ conference to be held in December 2012 in Helsinki, but it was postponed. What precludes progress are inextricable nature of disarmament and peace processes, and the difference in priorities of key states. However, further postponement would adversely affect the international nuclear nonproliferation regime, and regional security and threat perceptions. This piece gives the background and current status of the plans to create a MEWMDFZ, presents the bottlenecks and offers recommendations based on the principles of conflict resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collective honor in Middle Eastern crowds may serve as an important basis for both conflict and conflict resolution between security forces and crowd members. To investigate this issue, we extended a social–cognitive model of crowd behavior to account for the role of honor in social identities and relations, and tested the model in two studies. In Study 1, we collected critical incidents representing crowd experiences in the Middle East. The interview data were coded to include security actions that escalate force and those that generate understanding or exhibit restraint. Study 2 used a scenario-based interview procedure to test the hypothesis that Middle Eastern civilians and Americans with no Middle Eastern cultural experience hold differing beliefs and expectations about crowd reactions to security force actions. The results showed that escalation of force against the crowd led to an increase in the level of conflict more often than not, whereas attempting to understand the crowd or exhibiting restraint tended to decrease conflict. Middle Eastern expectations were largely congruent with these findings, whereas American beliefs diverged. The results have implications regarding the cultural and cognitive determinants of crowd behavior, and for the management of crowds by regional governments and in international peacekeeping situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The is article discusses the relationship between community-based human rights advocacy practice and peace education to understand how their intersections can promote social work practice that addresses domestic conditions significant to the advancement of sustainable peace between societies in regions of acute political conflict. A training program for social workers engaged in community-based human rights advocacy practice in the Middle East is described. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines the place of national narratives and metanarratives in reconciliation between parties to an identity conflict and the role the media play in this process. The article introduces a conceptual framework demonstrating the relationship between metanarrative and national narratives and applies it to the case of Mohammad al-Dura in September 2000. It analyses items from two Israeli newspapers (Yediot Aharonot and Ha’aretz) and three Palestinian newspapers (al-Quds, Alayam, and al-Hayat al-Jadida) as well as news reports published online by two Israeli portals, YNET and WALLA!, and the talkbacks received in response to the coverage. The analysis illustrates the role the media, and more specifically Palestinian regular media and the Israeli talkbacks, have played in amplifying the national narratives and reinforcing the colliding metanarratives. On the other hand, the Israeli media have, by and large, proved the article’s thesis that narratives in an identity conflict can be handled differently. By deconstructing the narrative to its constitutive components, raising questions regarding the reliability of one’s own national/official version, and showing readiness to incorporate the narrative of the “other” into one’s own narrative, the media have played a potentially positive role in the reconciliation process between Israelis and Palestinians. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article analyzes the Water Allocation System (WAS) and the Multi-Year Water Allocation System (MYWAS), which the authors state are methods for imposing water policies that emphasize societal needs over private needs. The article states that the WAS system was developed in the 1990s by the Water Economics Project, a joint venture of countries such as the U.S., Israel, and Jordan, which was facilitated by The Netherlands. The author focuses upon the use of the MYWAS model in resolving water disputes among Israel, Jordan, and Palestine, and the author's contention that the MYWAS model demonstrates a rational approach to water resource conflict. The article discusses the author's views on the ways in which the MYWAS model can be an example of efficient and sustainable water management.

In most long-lasting conflicts, each party's grievances increase while the concessions they are willing to make decline in number, quality, and perceived value. Both parties lose sight of what they are willing to settle for, generally exaggerate their own needs, and minimize the needs of the other side over time. But, it is precisely the matter of trading that needs to be made more concrete and of higher priority for both sides, if a meaningful resolution is to be found. Without a formal way of trading off the concessions and packages of concessions, both sides are likely to suspect that they are getting the short end of the bargain. After the parties have agreed to a trade, very specific binding language about the terms of the agreement, clear implementation policies, and outside guarantors are needed. The worth of the concessions traded, as perceived by both the giver and receiver, need to be accurately determined and recorded. All of this requires going beyond verbal descriptions of the concessions to more broadly include their economic, social, geographic, humanitarian, and historical worth. It is critical that all of these need to be translated into priorities derived in terms of the different values and beliefs of the parties. Priorities are universal and include the diversity of measures in terms of which economic, social, and other values are measured. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) provides a way to perform such an assessment with the participation of negotiators for the parties. It is a positive approach that makes it possible to reason and express feelings and judgments with numerical intensities to derive priorities. It has been used productively in the past to deal with the conflicts in South Africa and Northern Ireland and with other controversies throughout the world. With the assistance of panels of Israeli participants and Palestinian participants brought together in 2009 and 2010, AHP was applied for the first time to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The process makes it clear that moderation in different degrees by both sides is essential to arrive at acceptable agreements on concessions proposed and agreed upon by both sides. AHP makes it possible to evaluate moderate and extreme viewpoints and determine their effect on the trading of concessions. The results obtained encourage us to advocate its use in the negotiation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on a fourfold distinction among international relations approaches to security and peace (offensive realism, defensive realism, defensive liberalism and offensive liberalism), which is applied to understand differing regional dynamics of conflict resolution, particularly in two key regions: Europe and the Middle East. The shift from realist to liberal assumptions, it is argued here, is the foundation for conflict resolution. The combined effect of the realist mechanisms produced 'cold peace' in Europe, while the liberal strategies warmed the peace considerably, eventually producing a 'high-level warm peace'. More specifically, it was overlooked offensive liberal mechanisms which made an especially major contribution to the emergence of warm peace on the continent through the successful imposition of democratization on the key state for European security, Germany. Defensive liberal strategies then played a very useful supportive role in warming the regional peace. In the Middle East, in contrast, some of the conditions for the application of the realist approaches emerged after the 1973 war, and even then only in the Israeli-Egyptian context, and somewhat more broadly after the end of the Cold War and the 1991 Gulf War. But the conditions for liberal strategies are still missing even though a defensive liberal strategy has been tried in the l990s and an offensive liberal strategy was applied since 2003. Thus, only a cold peace could emerge, and even that only partially due to the relative weakness of the realist mechanisms in the Middle East in comparison to the Western European case during the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on political factionalism between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East, particularly on the lack of political cohesiveness between them. It notes that political factionalism and the intense personal rivalry among factions have prevented majority support for a leader or a political party. It also notes a misconception between Israelis and Palestinians about their national aspirations, requirements, and their ultimate intentions as it is shown in the case of Netanyahu's coalition with Sash, Yisrael Betanu, and other right -wing elements in Israel same with Mahmoud Abbas's support with Fatah and Hamas in Palestine. Moreover, it was emphasized that Israelis and Palestinians lack determined, visionary, and courageous leaders to make necessary concessions.