A consensus seems to be emerging on a new kind of peace process. Many of the most prominent meetings and summits meant to bring about peace have failed, even when at first both parties were optimistic--for example, the 1993 Oslo Accords or South Korea's Sunshine Policy. The reason these talks failed was due to internal strife within the separate entities, usually due to radical groups unwilling to compromise. This is underscored by the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Rabin by a radical Israeli group after signing the Oslo Accords, and the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat after the Camp David Accords. This trend is also clearly evident in the recent 2007 Annapolis Conference, when Israeli Prime Minister Olmert and Palestinian President Abbas agreed on a two-state solution and outlined a way to settle the conflict over the next coming years. However, after the 2009 Israeli elections, the Annapolis Agreement holds little importance. Prime Minister Netanyahu is not committed to a two-state solution. In fact, within 8 hours of taking office as Foreign Minister, ultra-conservative Avigdor Lieberman reversed 2-years of progress by stating the Annapolis Conference held "no validity."
But the ineffectiveness of peace agreements is nothing new. What is new is diplomats attempting a fundamentally different peace process that is less of a process and more of an event.
North Korea
This new kind of peace agreement is most evident in Bill Clinton's recent "surprise trip" to North Korea. Though overtly a non-political rescue mission for captured journalists, the Obama administration was heavily involved. Korean media reported Clinton delivered a message from Obama to Kim Jong-Il. The last time an ex-President made a surprise visit to North Korea, former President Jimmy Carter returned with a nuclear deal called the "Agreed Framework" which de-escalated tensions between the two countries. The Agreed Framework eventually failed for the same reasons the Oslo and Camp David Accords failed, though North Korea benefited from US concessions in the meantime.
Many speculate Clinton proposed to Kim Jong-Il (with whom he had dinner) Obama's "comprehensive package" deal. The comprehensive package is a new kind of peace agreement because it is all-or-nothing--the West would recognize N. Korea and in return N. Korea would cease its nuclear efforts. Past agreements such as the Agreed Framework or Annapolis Conference were based on an action-for-action format, allowing entities to back out of the agreements. The action-for-action format leaves peace agreements susceptible to domestic political opinions that often derail these processes. The all-or-nothing format is designed to eliminate these risks, though we will not know for some time what actually occured in Pyongyang.
Israel-Palestine
The Arab-Israeli negotiations are also increasingly taking the all-or-nothing format. The driving force behind this is the Arab states, which have been badly burned by step-by-step negotiations in the past (which I discuss here).
Prince Saud of Saudi Arabia said July 31st after a meeting with the US Secretary of State, "Temporary security, confidence-building measures will... not bring peace. What is required is a comprehensive approach that defines the final outcome at the outset and launches into negotiations over final status issues." The next peace agreement to come out of the Middle East is likely to come unexpectantly, propelled forward by domestic Israeli sentiment (since they are currently the bottleneck regarding settlements and there is already some evidence of Israel moving away from its position on this issue, see here), and brokered by US envoy George Mitchell. The next question is whether there will be anyway to ensure an all-or-nothing deal is not broken by radical domestic pressures the same way the action-by-action agreements were derailed.
