Game theory for a breakthrough, Tuesday, October 11, 2005

With a fourth Israeli in four years winning a Nobel, the papers were full of huge pictures of Hebrew University Professor Robert Aumann, co-winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize for Economics for his lead role in advancing game theory, which was loosely explained to the Israeli public reading the tabloids as the most modern form of decision making for very complex situations.

A religious Jew with a Biblical white beard, Aumann told Israel Radio that he belongs to Professors for a Strong Israel, and that he doesn’t see any solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict ‘because the Arab leaders, not the Arab people, will not give up their hatred of our presence here … so our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren will unfortunately continue to have to fight to live here.’ Of course, he didn’t win the Nobel for peace, he won it for economics.

Ever optimistic, Shimon Peres, the co-laureate for the 1994 peace prize with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat for the breakthrough – and ill-fated -- Oslo accords, commenting on the flurry of Israeli Nobel laureates (last year, two Israelis won for chemistry), said he could imagine Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas winning a shared Nobel for peace.

It sounds farfetched, considering how they missed their appointment to meet today, and would certainly require a breakthrough from both sides. The missed appointment sent U.S. Undersecretary of State for Near East Affairs, David Welch, into the fray. It’s a long title for the point man responsible for covering the Arab-Israel conflict for U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He flew in earlier this week as it became apparent the Sharon-Abbas meeting looked like it was heading for the rocks.

At first he probably tried to bridge the differences between Sharon’s lawyer, Dov Weisglass, and the veteran Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, as they tried to set an agenda, but failed. Sharon was apparently being tightfisted, arguing that politically he could not be seen making concessions now to the Palestinians so soon after the disengagement, and with a budget vote in the Knesset coming up – and he still has the Likud rebels threatening his majority (though the Labor Party continues to shore up his coalition, doing the statist thing to do, as party leader Peres says).

So, Welch went to work on two key politicians ostensibly behind Sharon – Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, who has made not releasing prisoners ‘with blood on their hands’ one of his mantras, and is powerful in the Likud central committee; and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, still somewhat of a political novice, but the defense minister nonetheless so he must appear to be Mr. Security. And Welch was expected to meet with Sharon this afternoon.

But already by noon, there seemed to be an announcement of a breakthrough – not toward a meeting, but over a concept: For the first time, claimed Palestinian Minister for Prisoner Affairs, Sufian Abu Zayda, the Israelis are showing readiness to reconsider the entire concept of the Palestinian prisoners.

In an interview with Israel Radio, he said that for the first time in Palestinian history, Israel was ready to consider changing its policy and moth even recognize Palestinian security prisoners as POWs. He did not deny that the PA had been seeking the release of Samir Kuntar, a particularly notorious prisoner because a mother smothered her own child to keep the baby quiet as Kantur and his friends roamed through the house after killing her husband in their Nahariya neighborhood in the ‘70s. The Hezbollah is working to get him back. The PA was also asking for the release of the highly popular Marwan Barghouti. That is a red flag for the Israelis, considering Barghouti was sentenced by the Tel Aviv District Court to life in prison for orchestrating murderous attacks in the Jerusalem area, during the first 18n months of the intifada. On the other hand, he is an Abbas backer – and would easily come in first place if his name is on the ballot in the Fateh primaries.

‘But the prisoners is an issue much bigger than Samir Kuntar or Marwan Barghouti,’ said Abu Zayda. ‘Yes, Samir’ been in jail more than 25 years and that’s enough, and Marwan’s trial was in our eyes political, but this is a bigger issue,’ implying it was part of the test of nascent statehood – could its freedom fighters be recognized as such by Israel. ‘And for the first time, the Israelis are saying they are ready to think about the prisoners in a different way,’ said Abu Zaydeh comment – made at eleven, it led the noon and one o’clock

Welch was telling the Palestinians that Israel will make just such an adjustment in its definitions of Palestinian prisoners rather than just ‘blood on the hands’ – if the PA continues to assert its authority as the only legitimate bearer of arms in the territories under Palestinian control. And despite all Bush’s problems back home, U.S. diplomatic power in the Middle East, especially in Jerusalem, is ultimate power.

The Abu Zaydah comment could be as wishful thinking as Peres. Or not. Three leading commentaries from the three Hebrew papers all called on Sharon to take a bold step – not a unilateral change on the ground, but one in the thinking about the Palestinians, as partners, trust them to solve their own problems and help them establish their democracy, instead of hindering that by hounding the Hamas. For three hours, Abu Zaydeh’s comment led the news, but by two in the afternoon, multiple life sentences handed down to some Palestinians for murder was leading the news on Israel Radio, business as usual. Abu Zaydah’s statements were reiterated however.

A breakthrough, for real? Hard to believe. But it’s what Sharon wanted – to see what happens when he changed the map by leaving Gaza to the Palestinians. To change the rules of the game. A different prime minister might have asked the Nobel laureate for economics, to deliver a brief lecture on game theory, perhaps the most complex mathematical exercise in the current human endeavor. Instead, farmer Sharon called and praised Aumann for his accomplishments in more or less the same tone with which he spoke last season to Pinni Gershon, the Maccabi basetball coach who took the team to the top of the European league.

But maybe Sharon doesn’t need such a lecture, perhaps his supremely accomplished tactics getting the disengagement as a subject for Israelis to fade even faster than Arafat faded from the forefront of Palestinian consciousness, are proof of his innate understanding of game theory, with its calculations of constantly changing choices to be made.

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