SAI's Scenario Planning Program assesses the likely evolution of any particular conflict over the next five to ten years and, on that basis, develops unorthodox solutions. Backed by a team of local and international scholars, the program generates ideas that are refined through a consultative process with stakeholders in the conflict, including grassroots actors, political leaders and international organizations.

The Scenario Planning Program is motivated by the fact that the paradigmatic shift from Oslo-era negotiations to Disengagement-era unilateralism has not provoked an analytical reappraisal in the policymaking sphere. The last several years have seen numerous proclamations about the “irreversibility” of the occupation or the “impossibility” of cooperative power-sharing between Palestinians and Israelis, but a lack of rigor has tended to render these little more than ideological posturing. By drawing the lens back from a narrow focus on Israel and Palestine, we seek to situate the conflict in a global context to explore what both partition and integration (as well as the shades of grey in between) have to offer policymakers.

The Scenario Planning Program aims to impact short and long-term analysis within all classes of stakeholders – formal and informal – within any particular conflict, but specifically within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Our legal and policy analysis, the debate they create, and our assistance in providing responses to questions that arise from that debate are intended to reverse the rampant pessimism about the future of this, and other long-standing conflicts, and offer new tools for imagining alternative futures.