Arbitration & Mediation

Waging War, Collateral Damage & Arbitrated Resolutions

By Victoria Pynchon

I've directed my readers to Adir Waldman's fine book Arbitrating Armed Conflict before.  Now that there is pitched battle in the Middle East with significant civilian casualties, I once again recommend Adir's book to anyone who wishes to look beyond taking sides. 

The following summary is from Juris Publishing where the book remains available for purchase. 

In Arbitrating Armed Conflict Adir Waldman examines a previously unstudied, yet critically important, experiment in international law.

In April of 1996, Israel and Lebanon reached an extraordinary written Agreement: armed conflict between the Israel Defense Forces and the Lebanese terrorist militia Hesbollah would continue, but both forces would be bound to an explicitly agreed upon set of rules intended to protect civilians.

To support this unique international pact, the parties established an equally unique arbitral institution—the Israel-Lebanon Monitoring Group—to hear and resolve complaints regarding breaches of the Agreement.

Through a series of confidential interviews with highly informed participants, Mr. Waldman casts the first light on this exceptional system of international and military law. In addition, this volume presents a complete collection of decisions rendered by the Israel-Lebanon Monitoring Group, a true gold mine of previously unpublished material, as well as a highly confidential internal memorandum obtained by the author. In a day and age of seemingly unbounded conflict, the lessons of this system, with both its pitfalls and its virtues, will prove crucial, and this book an indispensable guidebook to that system.

Accessible to the lay reader, this book is sure to be of interest to a wide audience — scholars, practitioners of international and military law, students of political science and foreign relations, observers of the Middle East and the wider public in general.

Now more than ever the international community should consider potential solutions to the Orwellian term "collateral damage" as a product of  inevitable border wars, solutions that will, at a minimum, make an effort to protect the innocent.

Full post as published by Settle It Now Negotiation Blog on December 29, 2008 (boomark / email).