Bargaining and Power: Israel and Palestine
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has existed for many years, and extends as far back as 1948 with the Arab-Israeli conflict. In recent years however, the amount of conflict and therefore necessity of negotiations and resolution is cause for one to consider a simplified network modeling the different interactions between the world’s nations. In particular, this post expounds upon the recent conflict of the Palestinian state bid, and the reactions each relevant nation has upon the bid. Since the conflict is global in nature, the number of variables involved would far exceed the scope of this post and therefore, extensive and necessary simplifications are made to create a working model. It should be noted that the resultant network graph and discussion is not meant to outline any potential action or opinions of the course of action any nation should take; rather the following is only for informational purposes.
The nations of the world can be viewed as one large network graph with each of the 193 member-states of the United Nations General Assembly as nodes that are connected to each other. In addition, various other non-member states can be connected to this graph, such as the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the Palestinian State to member-states which recognize them as a sovereign body. Between each edge that is modeled as any two given nodes or nations, there is a level of friendship, and while different issues evoke different relationships, the edges can be taken in this case to be specific with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian statehood bid.
The past month, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas submitted his proposal for a Palestinian state that re-divides the borders of current Israel and returns to the pre-1967 war borders. This would include the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and east Jerusalem. Before the general assembly of the United Nations, President Abbas received thunderous applause when giving his speech concerning the grievances of Palestine regarding Israel. It can also be seen with the 127 member-states that have recognized Palestine that she has the approval of a majority of the nations. However, as evidenced by the inequality of power in any given social network, many of these recognizing member-states may not be of great influence on the debate. Specifically, since the Palestinian bid must go through the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), these 15 nations hold an even greater leverage over the rest.
Specifically, in the context of a network, these 15 nations hold an “inner network” through which many nations would need to appease before any negotiations or resolutions can be made. One can imagine a circular “dummy” node through which each of the other 178 nations would need to negotiate with or pass through before dealing with any other nation regarding the issue of Palestinian statehood. Therefore, while a majority of nations may stand on one side of the Palestinian state bid, the result of this network topology prevents any real action from taking place. Indeed, it is as if each of these 15 UNSC members have an outside option that equaled or exceeded the actions of any conglomeration of non-UNSC nations. Consider the stability of this network, or rather instability, which is defined as a matching of two nations such that the two nations have a value less than 1, and where value can be seen as utility of a given negotiation or deal. In reality, no given pair of nations is stable, much less balanced, but in terms of the Palestinian conflict, it can be approximated that edges between France and the U.K. for example are stable, whereas edges between the United States and Palestine are not.
How can stability, and even balance be achieved? The solution lies in creating a valuation between two given nodes that sum to more than 1, where both parties are happy, understanding that certain nations such as the United States, stand to gain more in a given negotiation given its power in the network, than a country such as Mexico. Indeed, the root of all negotiations can be seen with a goal of obtaining a valuation between two nodes that sum to more than one, but given Palestine’s recent actions, it hopes to pose conditions on Israel that far exceed the given power that she has in the network currently. Indeed, should Palestine be in a position such as the United States and required something of Israel, there would be a very different outcome due to the understanding of power.
To make matters even more complicated, within the UNSC are 5 permanent member nations, China, Russia, France, UK, and the United States, each with power to veto, and thereby even greater power than normal UNSC members. It would be as if within the ring of 15 UNSC members lies a second ring of 5 members. Since the President Barack Obama has already promised to veto the Palestinian statehood bid, the bid will be a failure, and given the position of the United States in the world network, this is indisputable. So where does the world go from here? Already, more diplomacy has begun and currently the United States is asking Israel and Palestine once again to agree on a direct negotiation that would, in terms of network theory, achieve a valuation that exceeds 1. As world politics cannot be perfectly modeled due to the unpredictability of humans, the best results may not always be attainable, and it may be many years before a settlement can be made. However, the underlying theory behind network bargaining and power remains the same: while Israel and Palestine remain on equal footing and without many outside options, their resulting negotiations must result in roughly equal dividends. Should one state attain greater power than the other, then the game changes.
Sources: http://articles.cnn.com/2011-09-26/world/world_un-palestinian-statehood_1_riyad-mansour-palestinian-leader-middle-east-quartet?_s=PM:WORLD Secondary sources: http://articles.cnn.com/2011-05-19/politics/obama.israel.palestinians_1_israel-palestinian-conflict-borders-settlements?_s=PM:POLITICS http://articles.cnn.com/2011-09-21/world/world_un-general-assembly_1_palestinian-bid-palestinian-statehood-issue-peace-negotiations?_s=PM:WORLD http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/20/un-general-assembly-2011-palestine_n_972542.html http://www.chicagonow.com/real-politik/2011/09/president-obama-was-right-on-israel-and-palestine/