ABSTRACT
Since the signing of the historic accord between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in September of 1993, there has been general recognition of the role that unofficial efforts have played—directly or indirectly—in making this agreement possible. This chapter briefly describes the operation of a series of problem-solving workshops organized by the author that have brought together politically influential, but non-official, Israeli and Palestinian participants since the 1970s. The cumulative experience of these workshops is summarized in a list of assumptions about the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These workshops and similar “track-two” interactions between Israelis and Palestinians, organized over the years by a variety of unofficial third parties, have helped lay the groundwork for the recent breakthroughs on the political level.
