Israel and Palestine syllabus
The thing that gets me the most riled about Israel: The thing which I've put a lot of intellectual investment into - the thing I think has truth on its side and therefore I must endeavour to prove. Modelling the Israel-Palestine issue as game theory, at this stage Israel (and US + most casual observers) see the game being played this way: Israel is rewarding Palestine for "good" behaviour, punishing the bad behaviour in its process to improve the situation for the average Israeli. The one big assumption that everybody seems to be making is that it is a two player game - that blocking off borders, and assassination attempts are equivalently punishing the Palestinians for doing the wrong thing - the wrong thing being primarily terrorist strikes. Surely it makes a lot more sense to see it as a multi-player game, where some actions are rewarding terrorist groups while punishing the "Palestinian Authority" (what a misnomer that is!) and visa versa. This makes a BIG difference to what constitutes good policy in Israel (and in the near future Iraq as well!). Please tell me that you DON'T think there are only two sides to this "Game".
This link however argues that it is a prisoner's dillemma type two player game run repeatedly. The two entity model repetitive prisoner's dillemma has the major fault of not counting the third party terrorist organisations. Now since these are primarily funded by outside countries completely outside of the control of Israel and PA (because as you know, he who pays the piper calls the tune) they must be considered as a third entity with fairly different scoring alternatives. Where as the PA would have benefitted substantially from the Oslo/Camp David accord(if it worked), the third party terrorist organisations would have lost influence, especially if they stopped attacking Israel. A win for these third party terrorist organisations is essentially the "destruction" or making illegitimate of Israel. I think this can be modelled in a three dimensional matrix, where the PA can choose to attack or negotiate, the third party terrorists can choose to attack or not to attack, Israel can choose whether to attack or negotiate. Note that even when the PA was heavily armed, it was (EXTREMELY) doubtful whether they would wage war against the third party terrorist organisations. If it came to a choice (at a police/soldier level) of shooting Israelis or shooting their "own" they would shoot the Israelis. I'm not just speculating about that - there was a couple of examples during the Oslo peace process of it. This three d game theory model effectively gives the third party terrorist organisations complete veto over any peace deal that involves them stopping their attacks. The reason that they would temporarily stop is to loosen some of the security measures and/or find new holes. If there is anyone in the blogosphere interested in game theory, this is the one to research. While there are groups like Hizbullah (which is Iran-backed) that are backed by countries that haven't made deals with Israel, no deal that requires the PA to stop attacks are possible. Maybe if this model was played out, and compared to what has happened over the last few generations, it would fit perfectly, whereas the two entity model (or the three entity model with USA as the third party) fails to predict the non-signing of Oslo/Camp David, for instance.
Well this is the starting theorem of my thesis, borrowed from one of those links of people who have gone down this path:
One of John Nash's simple but great insights into 'games with N players' is that any persistent situation you observe is an equilibrium.
Since simple two player modelling would show that it would have been clearly a good strategy for both sides to sign OSLO, obviously the external factors have to be considered.
Are both sides pursuing a sub-optimal strategy? Nash would say no, this has been going on for years, they must be pursuing optimal strategies given the game in front of them.
I would add that one of Israel's possible strategies is to put a wedge between "PA" and "external terrorist forces" with the view that they may start battle against one another. This would clearly be a big win for Israel and a big loss for the other two parties. Without "changing the rules" the "external terrorist forces" would have had no impediment to striking even if a signed deal such as Oslo had taken place. In such case PA would have the dismal choices of joining in (breaking signed promises), starting war against said external forces (big loss), or ignoring it losing both the moderates and hardliners in his own constituency (suicide). Clearly, Arafat foresaw this well in advance and had decided in advance to join in (with some extra time bought to better position his own terrorist forces)- hence the afformentioned correlated behaviour between the various palestinian groups.
Since I've simplified all external terrorist forces into one entity, it needs to be defined well. These forces are not the actual countries themselves, so even if countries seem to be warming to peace, their Israel rhetoric is the best proxy for how they will push their money handles to the terrorist organisations. While Jordan, Egypt, and the new Iraq are improvements in this regard, Syria/Lebanon & Iran will almost certainly be spoiling influences in this current road map proposal. I suggest my concluson will be that the USA must concentrate on putting the screws on these countries' links to palestinian terrorism in a much bigger way well before engaging in a new round of peace talks. I suggest that Syria may be the next target for the US military to intervene in anyway. Perhaps just putting the screws on Iran may be enough to deter their groups.
It is interesting to note how the persistent situation in Northern Ireland was influenced positively by 9/11. The IRA lost almost all its funding and support from USA citizens overnight. The general IRA sympathetic population there was also revulsed enough to stop being sympathetic to any home-grown terrorism. The attacks in Saudi Arabia also had the same effect of starving that source of support for terrorists.
This link however argues that it is a prisoner's dillemma type two player game run repeatedly. The two entity model repetitive prisoner's dillemma has the major fault of not counting the third party terrorist organisations. Now since these are primarily funded by outside countries completely outside of the control of Israel and PA (because as you know, he who pays the piper calls the tune) they must be considered as a third entity with fairly different scoring alternatives. Where as the PA would have benefitted substantially from the Oslo/Camp David accord(if it worked), the third party terrorist organisations would have lost influence, especially if they stopped attacking Israel. A win for these third party terrorist organisations is essentially the "destruction" or making illegitimate of Israel. I think this can be modelled in a three dimensional matrix, where the PA can choose to attack or negotiate, the third party terrorists can choose to attack or not to attack, Israel can choose whether to attack or negotiate. Note that even when the PA was heavily armed, it was (EXTREMELY) doubtful whether they would wage war against the third party terrorist organisations. If it came to a choice (at a police/soldier level) of shooting Israelis or shooting their "own" they would shoot the Israelis. I'm not just speculating about that - there was a couple of examples during the Oslo peace process of it. This three d game theory model effectively gives the third party terrorist organisations complete veto over any peace deal that involves them stopping their attacks. The reason that they would temporarily stop is to loosen some of the security measures and/or find new holes. If there is anyone in the blogosphere interested in game theory, this is the one to research. While there are groups like Hizbullah (which is Iran-backed) that are backed by countries that haven't made deals with Israel, no deal that requires the PA to stop attacks are possible. Maybe if this model was played out, and compared to what has happened over the last few generations, it would fit perfectly, whereas the two entity model (or the three entity model with USA as the third party) fails to predict the non-signing of Oslo/Camp David, for instance.
Well this is the starting theorem of my thesis, borrowed from one of those links of people who have gone down this path:
One of John Nash's simple but great insights into 'games with N players' is that any persistent situation you observe is an equilibrium.
Since simple two player modelling would show that it would have been clearly a good strategy for both sides to sign OSLO, obviously the external factors have to be considered.
Are both sides pursuing a sub-optimal strategy? Nash would say no, this has been going on for years, they must be pursuing optimal strategies given the game in front of them.
I would add that one of Israel's possible strategies is to put a wedge between "PA" and "external terrorist forces" with the view that they may start battle against one another. This would clearly be a big win for Israel and a big loss for the other two parties. Without "changing the rules" the "external terrorist forces" would have had no impediment to striking even if a signed deal such as Oslo had taken place. In such case PA would have the dismal choices of joining in (breaking signed promises), starting war against said external forces (big loss), or ignoring it losing both the moderates and hardliners in his own constituency (suicide). Clearly, Arafat foresaw this well in advance and had decided in advance to join in (with some extra time bought to better position his own terrorist forces)- hence the afformentioned correlated behaviour between the various palestinian groups.
Since I've simplified all external terrorist forces into one entity, it needs to be defined well. These forces are not the actual countries themselves, so even if countries seem to be warming to peace, their Israel rhetoric is the best proxy for how they will push their money handles to the terrorist organisations. While Jordan, Egypt, and the new Iraq are improvements in this regard, Syria/Lebanon & Iran will almost certainly be spoiling influences in this current road map proposal. I suggest my concluson will be that the USA must concentrate on putting the screws on these countries' links to palestinian terrorism in a much bigger way well before engaging in a new round of peace talks. I suggest that Syria may be the next target for the US military to intervene in anyway. Perhaps just putting the screws on Iran may be enough to deter their groups.
It is interesting to note how the persistent situation in Northern Ireland was influenced positively by 9/11. The IRA lost almost all its funding and support from USA citizens overnight. The general IRA sympathetic population there was also revulsed enough to stop being sympathetic to any home-grown terrorism. The attacks in Saudi Arabia also had the same effect of starving that source of support for terrorists.
posted by Marco Parigi at 2:15 PM
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