IPCRI – The Joint Israeli-Palestinian Think-Tank

Creating Coherence and Impact

IPCRI’s Reorganization for 2005

Aim of Reorganization

IPCRI is seeks to significantly increase its ability to have a direct impact on the development of public policy that affects directly the developments in the Israeli-Palestinian arena.

Forward

The new political circumstances in the region create an enabling environment for the development of a political horizon with sufficient possibilities to break the deadlock of the past four years. A new willingness to seriously consider political re-engagement at the local level coupled with an international readiness to support the process may provide the impetus to bring an end to the violence, or at least to significant lower its level, and to get the sides back to the negotiations table.

At this time, IPCRI remains one of the only truly joint intellectual endeavors that has not ceased to successfully bring Israelis and Palestinians of significance together to pursue means and ways of advancing peace. IPCRI’s focus during 2004 has been the development of policy options for the leaders in the region and in the international community to leverage the Israeli disengagement plan into a bi-lateral internationally assisted political process that could lead the sides back to the Road Map.  During the past two months, this effort has been devoted to the writing, distribution and advocacy of several policy papers that have been distributed to decision makers.

The Reorganization Process – Developing IPCRI’s Comparative Advantage

The re-organizational structure within IPCRI has enabled the creation of a broad-based think-tank activity including within it a group of highly dedicated and experienced Israelis and Palestinians with years of direct experience in policy making and implementation. The creation of the STAT – the Strategic Thinking and Analysis Team (see Annex I with list of names) is formulated to bring to IPCRI the combined experience of years of these expert’s hands-on conflict resolution, negotiations, and policy development practices. STAT members include former director generals of government ministries, retired military and security personnel, leading professors from various universities, civil society leaders, and other professionals. STAT brings the synergy of the best and the brightest – joining together individuals and organizations in partnerships of local Israeli and Palestinian expertise from academia, civil society, government and the professional world. Recognizing the need to focus on results, the STAT is dedicated to produce new ideas and thinking, developing and organizing conceptual maps for creating breakthroughs in policy proposals. IPCRI aims at influencing policy and therefore dedicates equal attention to the development of ideas and to ensuring that those ideas enter the political and public debates and decision making arena.

 Reorganization Guide – the Flow of Ideas into Policies

The Guide for the Map

1. Ideas and proposals for policy directions are first developed by Israelis and Palestinian staff members of IPCRI within the Strategic Affairs Unit of IPCRI. These ideas are developed into a conceptual organizing rationale and are prepared for presentation to the STAT – the Strategic Thinking and Analysis Team.

2. The STAT challenges the concepts and the organizing rationale, develop the basic concepts and go into depth through the development of policy directives. This is an interactive process involving brainstorming and the exploration of ideas, and concepts and leads to the development of coherent policy proposals.

3. Through the cooperation with others in local and international think-tanks, IPCRI’s ideas are brought together with the ideas of others.  This enables broadening the thinking, challenging the concepts and fine-tuning the development of policy proposals and papers.

4. The SAU consolidates the ideas and concepts and prepares written policy documents taking in all of the inputs from the meetings of the STAT and the international and local cooperation with other think-tanks.

5. Policy papers are circulated amongst members of the STAT for comments and improvements and are prepared for final distribution to policy makers.

6. Depending on the nature and content of the policy papers, the distribution policies are determined. Policy papers of sensitive nature are distributed first to limited distribution lists of the most senior policy and decision makers in Israel, Palestine and within the International Community. Later these papers can also be distributed to the public at large. Papers with less sensitive content can be distributed directly to policy and decision makers at the same time as being distributed to the public.

7. Working with public relations consultants, IPCRI is seeking a much broader and strategic public impact than ever before. With the assistance of the consultants, distribution and advocacy strategies are being developed.

8. Working with academia, IPCRI is seeking to create an interactive evaluation research component that will provide on-going data aimed at improving the work while at the same time producing academic research of significant relevance in the professional field of conflict management and resolution theories and practices. Providing added-value, this will enable the production of serious academic publishable documents that will enrich the professional discipline with real hands-on experience in cross-cultural, cross-boundary conflict assessments, conflict management, and conflict resolution and in the field of developing and marketing public policy.