Israel Lebanon: A Case Study for Pra

Effective negotiation in the Middle East begins not with idealism or righteous vs evil, but with a clear-eyed understanding of stability, leverage, risk, and the interests that define each side’s bottom line. This short course explores the practice of real-world negotiation through the lens of two recent Israeli-Lebanese agreements, the 2022 maritime boundary accord and the subsequent ceasefire negotiations that ended the Lebanon front of the post-October 7 war. Using these cases, students will study how political, economic, and security incentives intersect in a region where zero-sum assumptions often prevail. The course will also examine the conditions under which negotiations succeed or fail, encouraging students to assess the use of leverage, timing, public opinion, and shared interests in negotiating complex agreements. Students will analyze how practical negotiation operates within deeply entrenched conflicts, focusing on the third-party negotiator’s tools and strategies to move actors from a “total victory” or “win-lose” outcome posture toward a “win-win” frame. By the end of the course, students will have developed a grounded understanding of the mechanics of deal-making in complex regional environments where war, political fragility, religious tensions, external pressures, and shifting alliances define the space for diplomacy. The course aims to prepare students to think like practitioners, drawing lessons from the Middle East’s most complex negotiations to understand what makes agreements work in practice. To register for this course, you must join the waitlist in Vergil and submit an application: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScF7jYVZIZc9icZaWaP2wm4RwI6bEIrXXAcGHW0FPTwkg1ieg/viewform