In the late 1960s, and especially after the 1973 war, peace and conflict-resolution organizations (P/CROs) concerned to resolving the Arab–Israeli conflict, peacefully began to emerge in Israel, and in the 1980s, P/CROs became an integral, although mainly unpopular part of Israeli political life. P/CROs’ activities included consciousness raising and protest, dialog promotion, some professional service provision, and the articulation of propeace arguments. Discord amongst P/CROs over the Oslo Accords of 1993, and the conservative turn taken by the Israeli government and society after Rabin's assassination, left Israeli P/CROs weak and ineffectual by the mid 1990s. Furthermore, they had always been hamstrung by the public's perception of the P/CRO political agenda as naïve and idealistic, by their extraparliamentary status in a country that prioritized parliamentary politics, and by their homogeneous membership – older, middle class, highly educated, urban, secular Ashkenazi Jews, many of them born in the USA. While the Israeli government ultimately took advantage of the propeace attitude fostered by the P/CROs and adopted much of the program advocated by P/CROs, it consistently denied them any credit for or role in the peace process.
Keywords: extraparliamentary status, homogeneous membership, Israel, Oslo Accords, P/CRO activities, P/CRO political agenda, peace and conflict-resolution organizations (P/CROs), Rabin's assassination