As Mahmoud Abbas continues to reject Benjamin Netanyahu’s calls for a renewal of negotiations, and Israel’s relations with Sunni Arab states continue to improve, the idea of a regional peace conference has started to gain traction in some Israeli government circles. Eylon Aslan-Levy, citing past precedent, argues that such a conference is unlikely to succeed:
The last Arab-Israeli regional peace conference was a failure and a farce. In 1949, the United Nations convened a regional summit in Lausanne, Switzerland, to follow up on the armistice agreements at the end of Israel’s War of Independence. . . . [Representatives of] Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, and Lebanon . . . sat in one room and the Israelis in another for indirect talks: the Arab bloc refused to negotiate face-to-face. Since none of the Arab states wished to be seen as the side willing to make concessions, their diplomats ended up collectively reinforcing each other’s intransigence, raising the conditions for a deal impossibly high and obviating [the possibility of an] agreement. . . .
[A] regional peace conference establishes one side as a diplomatic cartel, so to speak. By foreclosing the option of separate agreements, where Israel could bargain for favorable terms, the Arab states can club together to raise the price of peace. . . . This cartel, however, is really a consortium of states. Negotiations, therefore, would have two stages: among the Arabs, to agree on a common position, and then with Israel. . . . [As at Lausanne, no one state] would want to be “outed” as the side that made the collective Arab bloc “blink first” on an ostensibly non-negotiable deal, thereby weakening its [own] hand. As such, the Arab states are liable [once more to] make the price [of peace] impossibly high.
Read more on Tower: http://www.thetower.org/3636-the-last-arab-israeli-regional-peace-conference-was-a-trainwreck-lets-not-try-it-again/