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Middle East and North Africa

Confidence-destroying Measures

By experts and staff

Published

Experts

Working toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, negotiators always seek “confidence-building measures” or CBMs. These moves are supposed to show good faith and convince the other side to undertake equal steps, or perhaps even more important to show the other side’s good faith.

Today the Kerry negotiations use prisoner releases as such a CBM, designed mostly to keep PLO chairman Abbas at the conference table. But the prisoner releases are not CBMs; they are CDMs, confidence-destroying measures. With some American pressure, Prime Minister Netanyahu has released a third tranche of long-serving security prisoners --murderers, to be exact.

The first thing this does is diminish confidence in the United States. After all, we never do this; we never release murderers or terrorists from our prisons for political reasons. That we expect Israel to do so teaches Israelis that we will ask Israel to take risks we would not take, and do not fully understand the security situation they face.

And the releases certainly diminish confidence in the Palestinians as peace partners. Today’s Daily Telegraph in London explains why: