Monitoring agreements and verifying implementation

FROM:

IN PURSUIT OF PEACE IN ISRAEL AND PALESTINE
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY PRESS – 2017
GERSHON BASKIN

Lesson learned: Protracted conflicts in which there is little
or no trust and confidence require external mechanisms to verify
implementation of the agreements, to ensure compliance, and to offer
external dispute resolution.

The Israeli-Palestinian agreements did not have any external mechanisms
to verify implementation, to ensure compliance, and to offer dispute resolution. The Declaration of Principles stated: “Disputes arising out of the application
or interpretation of this Declaration of Principles, or any subsequent agreements
pertaining to the interim period, shall be resolved by negotiations through the
Joint Liaison Committee (JLC) to be established. . . .

Disputes which cannot be settled by negotiations may be resolved by a mechanism
of conciliation to be agreed upon by the parties.”What happens when the sides cannot agree on how to resolve the disputes or disparate interpretations of the agreements? What happens if the sides are not capable of reaching an agreement on the mechanism of conciliation?

This is precisely what happened. Each side breached the agreements, or
interpreted their obligations or the obligations of the other side in different
ways, and then issued statements against the other side. The JLC was
incapable of resolving the disputes because it became the forum through
which each side raised it claims against the other—not for the purpose of
resolving the dispute but to “score points” against the other side.

When the breaches piled up so high, the JLC ceased to function, as did
most of the joint bodies that were formed through the agreements. There
was no mechanism established that could fairly determine which claims
were valid and which were less so. There was no external mechanism to
help the sides comply with the commitments they had made. There was no
external mechanism that could help bring about resolution of the disputes;
and thus, once the process of breaching the agreement became the norm,
there was little or no value in signing new agreements.

Signing new agreements nevertheless became part of the process—these
agreements mainly stated that the sides would undertake the implementation of agreements already signed in the past. At least two formal agreements were subsequently signed that were aimed at repairing the damages of formerly breached agreements (the Wye River Memorandum and the Sharm e-Sheikh Agreement), yet these agreements were also breached.

Throughout the process, the failure to resolve the disputes also emanating from a lack of external mechanisms led to further breakdowns in trust and confidence, which further limited the ability of the sides to continue negotiations on the core issues.

It seems that had the sides invented mechanisms involving acceptable third parties for processes of implementation verification, compliance assurance, and dispute resolution, perhaps breaches of the agreement would have been resolved from the start, and future disputes would have been contained and resolved. Leaving the verification, compliance assurance, and dispute resolution means to the two disputing parties alone sabotaged the process from within.