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Interestingly, this is as much Israel’s goal as Palestine’s. As the Israeli PM, you actually spend a lot of your time thinking about the living conditions of the Palestinians. The game may not be terribly popular with Israeli hawks; but then it won’t be popular with Palestinian hawks either, as peaceful coexistence is the only way to win.
The game is carefully non-partisan, but still highly asymmetric, – your options are quite different depending on which side you play. In both cases, victory is defined as maximizing your political standing with two groups of people, but they aren’t the same groups. The Israeli Prime Minister has to win the trust of the Israeli people and the Palestinians too. The Palestinian Authority President has to win the trust of his own citizens, and also, rather than the Israelis, the world community. (I don’t know why the designers made that part asymmetric. Perhaps they felt that no Palestinian leader could ever win the trust of the Israeli people; but on the other hand it seems equally improbable that an Israeli leader should ever win the complete trust of the Palestinians. I’m guessing that this design decision reflects the fact that Palestine will really be a nation when the rest of the world considers it to be one… regardless of what the Israelis think.)
The game shows you two numbers, which represent your level of political support in each group to which you are responsible. You start with both at zero, and the numbers can vary from –50 to 100. To win, you have to bring both up to 100. You lose if either number drops to –50. As a result, you cannot act only in your own people’s interest; you have to take a broader view. That alone makes the game unusual and interesting. Every few days you can take an action or respond to a recent event. Some events are positive or neutral, but many are acts of violence by people outside your control – often Palestinian militants, sometimes extremist Jewish settlers. Each side’s options are divided into security measures, political actions, and construction initiatives, and there’s a wide variety of choices to make. The Israeli side has the benefit of more money and direct control of those issues that most strongly affect the Palestinians: curfews, border controls, trade restrictions, and so on. The Israeli PM can send or withdraw the army at will, bulldoze Palestinian homes, order missile strikes, and bring a great panoply of security measures to bear. But he can also, after suitable diplomatic maneuvering, invest in Palestinian reconstruction and infrastructure, thus improving the quality of life in his volatile and hostile neighbor. I found the Israeli side comparatively easy to play, even on the highest difficulty setting, simply because it has the most flexibility. |
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