Arabs Israeli/Palestinian coexistence Israeli/Palestinian Conflict

RULES OF THE BAZAAR: A LOOK BEHIND THE ARABS’ CULTURE OF NEGOTIATING VIS-A-VIS THE ‘PEACE PROCESS’……..

 

The next time you hear about “the need to jump start the negotiations between Israel and the Arabs”, just remember this article. The one thing about the Arabs that is worth admiring, is their enduring patience, especially in the market place, and it’s exactly that, what the West lacks in their ignorant demands for the Israelis to “end this thing”. In Middle East bargaining, the first side that blinks, loses in the deal. KGS

NOTE: Thanks to Dennis Mitzner for the heads up on this article.

An excerpt from :

No Peace, No Peace Plans, No Price for Peace

 (A Short Guide for Those Obsessed with Peace) 

[…] In Middle Eastern bazaar diplomacy, agreements are kept not because they are signed but because they are imposed. Besides, in the bazaar of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the two sides are not discussing the same merchandize. The Israelis wish to acquire peace based on the Arab-Muslim acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state. The objective of the Arabs is to annihilate the Jewish state, replace it with an Arab state, and get rid of the Jews.

To achieve their goal, the Arabs took to the battlefield and to the bazaar diplomacy. The most important rule in the bazaar is that if the vendor knows that you desire to purchase a certain piece of merchandize, he will raise its price. The merchandize in question is “peace” and the Arabs give the impression that they actually have this merchandize and inflate its price, when in truth they do not have it at all.

This is the wisdom of the bazaar, if you are clever enough you can sell nothing at a price. The Arabs sell words, they sign agreements, and they trade with vague promises, but are sure to receive generous down payments from eager buyers. In the bazaar only a foolish buyer pays for something he has never seen.

There is another rule in the market as well as across the negotiating table: the side that first presents his terms is bound to loose; the other side builds his next move using the open cards of his opponent as the starting point.

More here

3 Responses

  1. Dealing with them is a waste of time. Manage them like a poor neighbor and move on.
    I was going to say let the Arab League deal with them from now on, though it is obvious the Arabs don’t care.

  2. True. In negotiating with arabs, coming to an agreement is the worst thing you can do as it only tells the other party that they will be able to get more. That’s exactly how Arafat behaved in negotiations. Israel and the westerners would think they had finally arrived at a deal but really they just telegraphed to Arafat that he could get more from them. So he would abandon what everyone thought had been agreed upon and start another round of violence.

    So, as in haggling you don’t negotiate untill you agree, you negotiate untill you dissagree. When you are prepared to abandon the whole negotiation is when the merchant aquiesces to the price you are willing to pay.

    The only way to come to a conclusion is to put your foot down and refuse to give another inch. And then prove it.

    But the nature of negotiation itself prevents arabs from agreeing to recognize Isreal. It is also why jerusalem is so gosh darned “important” to them. It is ONLY important to them because Israel wants it. Because of that they will proclaim it to be the most important thing to them in order to get an undending stream of smaller concessions.

    Thats standard negotiation strategy for everyone. You make the other party think the important things are unimportant and that the unimportant things are important. So they will not realise they are conceding too easily to the thing you really want.

    The upshot is as long as they think they can get another square inch, the arabs will never ever formally recognize Israel or give up their %100 disingenuous claim that they want Jerusalem. As long as Israel wants those things they can be used to garner a constant trickle of whatever the Fakestinians want.

    If all jews were removed from jerusalem and Israel financially the west bank, the PA would find something else that was oh so gosh darned important to them.

    The silver lining to this relization is that it means the PA doesn’t really think they will ever get right of return – so they may not really want it. The louder they screech for something the less important to them it probably is ;).

    It also means they don’t really want Jerusalem. If Israel took over the entire city they would screech about it but not spend blood and loss of international sympathy from using terroism over it (maybe some to make people think they were serious but enough to put themselves in danger).

    I doubt anything I said would actually be news to Israeli negotiators as I strongly suspect Israel and others do understand the arabs and the general tactics of negotiation better than they let on publicly.

  3. (maybe some to make people think they were serious but enough to put themselves in danger).

    Should have been

    (maybe some to make people think they were serious but NOT enough to put themselves in danger).

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