In september 1995 , after months of tensenegotiations over what would be Israel’s first signifi-cant withdrawal from the West Bank, the Israeli delegation to the Oslo II peace talks unveiled beforetheir Palestinian counterparts the now infamous“Swiss cheese” map. The map was introduced just

24 hours before the agreement was to be signed. WhenYasir Arafat saw it, he stormed out of the negotiatingroom. Uri Savir, Israel’s chief negotiator at the talks,recalls the Palestinian leader’s reaction:

Arafat glared at [the map] in silence, then sprangout of his chair and declared it to be an insu≠erablehumiliation.

“These are cantons! You want me to accept cantons!You want to destroy me!”

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official oslo ii map The infamous “Swiss cheese” map.

Why have Israeli-Palestinian peace talksignored the importance of good mapmaking?

lessons fromtheswisscheesemap

lessons fromtheswisscheesemapby s h a r i m ot r o

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Said, who saw the agreement as a humiliating capitulation toIsraeli expansionism.

Some people claim that the Oslo process was deliberatelydesigned to segregate Palestinians into isolated enclaves so thatIsrael could continue to occupy the West Bank without the bur-den of policing its people. If so, perhaps the map inadvertentlyrevealed what the Israeli wordsmiths worked so diligently tohide. Or perhaps Israel’s negotiators purposefully emphasizedthe discontinuity of Palestinian areas to appease oppositionfrom the Israeli right, knowing full well that Arafat would flyinto a rage.

Neither is true. I know, because I had a hand in producing theo≤cial Oslo II map, and I had no idea what I was doing. Late onenight during the negotiations, my commander took me from thehotel where the talks were taking place to an army base,where heled me to a room with large fluorescent light tables and piles ofmaps everywhere. He handed me some dried-out markers,unfurled a map I had never seen before, and directed me to tracecertain lines and shapes. Just make them clearer, he said. No car-tographer was present, no graphic designer weighed in on mychoices, and, when I was through, no Gilad Sher reviewed mywork. No one knew it mattered.

Maps record facts but, whether by design or by accident, they also project worldviews andfunction as arguments. Every map reflects a set ofjudgments that influence the viewer’s impression

of the underlying data. The choice of colors and labels, the crop-ping, and the process of selecting what gets included and whatgets left out all combine to form a visual gestalt. A skilleddesigner can make peace seem inevitable or impossible, reassur-ing or terrifying, logical or jumbled.

For the visually aware reader, this point will seem obvious.Artists know that visual representations are as malleable as ver-bal ones. Peace negotiators tend to be passively aware that maps,like charts and photographs,can be crafted to emphasize a certainpoint of view. Since they can’t conduct a meaningful conversationabout borders without maps, however, they are forced to use atool they don’t know how to control, hoping that their good inten-tions will lead them in the right direction.

Many of the basic principles of information design parallelwell-known principles of good writing.“Vigorous writing is con-cise,” teach Strunk and White in their classic American prosemanual, The Elements of Style. “A sentence should contain nounnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, forthe same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessarylines and a machine no unnecessary parts.” The informationgraphics guru Edward Tufte makes similar points about graphicdesign, railing against what he calls “chartjunk”—the meaning-less visual noise that clutters so many computer-generated displays. E≠ective writing, say Strunk and White, reflects deliber-ate choices about micro and macro organization; good writersstrategically craft each sentence and paragraph so that the mostimportant ideas are placed in the most prominent positions.Tufte similarly shows how muting secondary and structural elements like arrows, grids, underlines, frames, legends, and

Up until that point, the Israeli team had insisted on focusingdiscussions with the Palestinians on the text of the agreement,which had gone through countless drafts—maps were o≠ limits.As one of the soldiers accompanying the Israeli delegation, Icame to appreciate the meticulous care with which the verbalcomponents of the agreement were negotiated. My dutiesincluded translating parts of the agreement from English (theo≤cial language of the agreement) into Hebrew so that, as soonas it was signed, it could be sent to the Knesset (Israel’s Parlia-ment) for ratification.

During the final weeks of the marathon negotiations, I wouldreceive the latest marked-up draft, update my translation, andreview my work with Gilad Sher, one of the delegation’s mostrespected attorneys. Every word mattered. Israeli troops wereslated to “redeploy,” not “withdraw,” from parts of the “WestBank,” not from the biblical lands of “Judea and Samaria.” Theagreement made no mention of a future Palestinian state; itstressed, rather, that the ultimate goal of the Oslo process was toreach “a permanent settlement based on Security Council Reso-lutions 242 and 338.” These resolutions demand that Israel with-draw from territories occupied in the 1967 war, including theWest Bank.

The Interim Agreement, the fruit of the Oslo II talks, divided theWest Bank into three areas: A, B, and C. Area A, which included theWest Bank’s major population centers but ultimately comprisedonly 3 percent of its area, would immediately come under fullPalestinian control. Area B, which included more sparsely popu-lated Palestinian communities and comprised 24 percent of theWest Bank, would be subject to joint Palestinian and Israeli con-trol. Area C, the rest of the West Bank, would remain under fullIsraeli control during the initial withdrawal stage, though fur-ther Israeli withdrawals from Area C were planned for laterstages. Many of the provisions in the agreement underplayed thefact that 73 percent of the West Bank would remain in Israelihands. (Area C, for example, was defined as areas “which, exceptfor the issues that will be negotiated in the permanent statusnegotiations, will be gradually transferred to Palestinian jurisdic-tion in accordance with this Agreement.”) Unfortunately, themain map accompanying the agreement communicated theopposite message.

The dominant visual elements of the map attached to the finalInterim Agreement are dozens of disconnected bright yellowblotches. Each is surrounded by a thick red line, further empha-sizing its isolation. Upon closer examination, you notice eightbrown blotches. The brown blotches mark Area A (full Palestin-ian control); the yellow archipelago is Area B (joint control). AreaC is absent from the key and there is no sign of the pre-1967 bor-der, ominously implying that the fate of the 73 percent of theWest Bank designated for further Israeli withdrawals hadalready been decided—in Israel’s favor.

Following Arafat’s dramatic walkout, the Israelis increasedtheir initial proposal for the yellow areas, Area B, by 5 percent,and the Palestinian leader signed the agreement. But his oppo-nents derided him for accepting the Swiss cheese map—a visionof Palestinian sovereignty punctured by holes. The o≤cial mapreinforced the arguments of Oslo’s harshest critics, like Edwardsu

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he told me that he did not believe this was the intention. Themap, he said, was produced during optimistic times, implyingthat its designers viewed the agreement as potentially good forPalestinians. Logically, then, the map should have seemed like astep along the way to a two-state solution; Area C should havebeen associated with Areas A and B, not with Israel. Instead, aswith the o≤cial Oslo II map, the map’s message belied itsauthors’ intentions.

Another map that associates Area C with Israel—though withvery di≠erent implications—is a map commissioned by Israel’sMinistry of Foreign A≠airs and produced by Koret Communica-tions. The company’s CEO, Reuven Koret, is also the publisher ofIsrael Insider, a pro-settler website that has vilified Ariel Sharonfor his plan to withdraw from Gaza. The site’s list of hot topics

includes “peace process” in quotation marks, reflecting therightist view that the process was a sham because no peace is possible.

Koret’s map clearly designates Area C, acknowledging that theagreement assigned a new legal category to it. But the territory’scolor unmistakably associates it with Israel, a di≠erent shade ofblue. The yellow and brown of Areas A and B (slightly larger onthis map because it illustrates a further Israeli withdrawal afterthe first Oslo II stage) implicitly associate them with Jordan tothe east. Such an association subtly alludes to what is known as“the Jordan option”—the idea that Palestinians do not need anew state because they already have one on the other side of theriver. (Most Israeli Jews dismiss this perspective, which is oftencoupled with a call for transferring Palestinians out of the Jew-ish state, as a dead end that will only perpetuate the conflict.)The frame, which includes the entire West Bank and just a smallportion of Israel, makes it seem as if the areas under Palestinian

shadows reduces visual clutter and helps to clarify the primaryinformation. Tufte advocates “a visual hierarchy.” When every-thing is emphasized, “nothing is emphasized; the design willoften be noisy, cluttered, and informationally flat.”

T he main conceptual challenge in mapping theInterim Agreement was how to depict Area C—the partof the West Bank that remained in Israeli control whenthe agreement was signed in 1995 but which was explic-

itly slated for further Israeli withdrawals, though the scope andtiming of these withdrawals would be determined at laterstages. As we have seen, rather than tackle this challenge, theo≤cial map ignored it, neglecting to mark Area C altogether.Since its signing, other mapmakers have struggled with how todepict the agreement, and inparticular Area C. The resultsdemonstrate how di≠erentlythe underlying data of Oslo IIcan be interpreted—and howdi≤cult it can be to modulatea map’s political symbolism.

Take, for an example at oneextreme, the map producedby Applied Research Insti-tute–Jerusalem, a Palestinianresearch institute that pub-lishes, among other resources,A Geopolitical Atlas of Pales-tine, a cartographic history ofIsraeli “colonization”and Pales-tinian dispossession.

In the ARIJ map, Palestin-ian-controlled areas seem likelittle spots floating helplesslyin a petri dish. Area C—thewhite space surrounding thegreen and salmon islands—isabsent from the key and is vir-tually indistinguishable fromIsrael. The pre-1967 border, which forms the silhouette of the areathat some critics of Oslo argued should have comprised the newPalestinian state, hovers accusingly in the background. ARIJ’smapmakers took care to label Palestinian cities with their Arabicnames, in some instances adding Hebrew or Western namesin parentheses: Al Khalil (Hebron), Ariha (Jericho), Al Quds(Jerusalem). The Jewish settlements in Gaza are labeled “JewishColony Area.” The map includes the safe passage routes linkingthe West Bank and Gaza, which were absent from the o≤cialmap (they were depicted instead in a separate map attached tothe agreement). But the ARIJ map also includes checkpoints, oneof the enduring military faces of the occupation.

When I first saw this map, I assumed that its authors inten-tionally designed it to argue that the agreement imprisonedPalestinians in what Oslo critics have called “apartheid-style Ban-tustans,” referring to the “cantons” that had enraged Arafat. Butwhen I spoke with Khaldoun Rishmawi, a unit director at ARIJ,

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arij oslo ii map Areas A & B are like spots in a petri dish. koret oslo ii map Evoking the “Jordan option.”

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full or partial Palestinian control (shades of gray). How could thesame man, thoughtful and aware enough to include thisnuanced map in his own book, sign o≠ on the infamous “Swisscheese”map in his o≤cial capacity as negotiator? I asked Ambas-sador Savir to explain the di≠erence between the two maps. Iwanted to know why the map in his book specifically delineatesArea C, whereas the original, o≤cial map did not. But he did notacknowledge a meaningful di≠erence.

W ill the authors of the next israeli-Palestinian peace agreement learn from the mistakes of Oslo? The signs are not promising.Of the various proposed peace plans that have

surfaced since the Oslo process fell apart in 2001, only one, theGeneva Accord, includes maps of whata final settlement might look like. Bythe time the accord was signed, I hadbecome a lawyer and had published agraphic guide to United States incometax law. I had also taught a seminar at Yale College on the fledgling field of visual communication and the law.When I saw the Geneva maps, myheart sank.

The Geneva Accord, though contro-versial, continues to play a pivotal rolein both societies’ e≠orts to end thebloodshed between them. It catalyzedAriel Sharon’s push for a unilateralIsraeli withdrawal from Gaza, and thenew Palestinian leadership’s princi-ples for a final settlement of the con-flict mirror the Geneva plan.

The crux of Geneva’s territorialcompromise is a plan for two states,based on the pre-1967 border, withone-to-one adjustments (Israel wouldreceive parts of the occupied territo-ries, in exchange for Palestinian sov-

ereignty over equal areas on the Israeli side of the border), plusa corridor connecting the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. A posi-tive vision of this two-state idea should leap from Geneva’smaps. Instead, the hodgepodge of versions in Geneva web ma-terials, printed pamphlets, and public-relations packets arefilled with chartjunk, arbitrary colors and labels, inconsisten-cies, and omissions. Flouting basic principles of visual rhetoric,Geneva’s maps obscure the simple reassuring elegance of theagreement’s proposed solution.

Several Geneva Initiative maps, for example, give visual prior-ity to meaningless yellow boxes containing the map’s title andcity labels. The maps also emphasize the pre-1967 border andthe outlines of the areas slated to be swapped. They are cer-tainly important elements, but the thick colored lines depict-ing them leave the viewer struggling to figure out what isbeing swapped for what. Geneva’s maps use red for the areasannexed to Palestine, which brings connotations of danger,

control are relatively large. The map’s title as it appears on theMinistry’s website is derived from the biblical names for the region(Judea and Samaria), which also carries political significance,asserting Jews’“historical right” to these territories.

The o≤cial map, ARIJ’s, and Koret’s all associate Area C withIsrael, making Oslo II seem, in one way or another, like a defeatfor Palestinians. At the opposite extreme, what would an Oslo-is-good-for-Palestinians version of the Interim Agreement looklike? How might a map argue, as some Oslo optimists did, that,though the agreement left Area C in Israeli control for the timebeing, the parties understood that most of it was designated forthe future Palestinian state?

Working with professional graphic designer Jonathan Corumof 13pt and using as our base a map published in American medi-

ator Dennis Ross’s memoir,The Missing Peace, I recently producedan alternative vision of Oslo II.

Jonathan and I chose colors that clearly associate Area C withPalestinian-controlled Areas A and B. We labeled all West Bankcities with their Arabic names, and we included the so-called“safe passage routes” linking Gaza and the West Bank.

Naturally,while those committed to a two-state solution to theconflict might have been reassured (perhaps falsely) by this pic-ture, it would have terrified the Jewish residents of Area C andtheir supporters.

Between these two extremes would be a moderate interpre-tation of Oslo that takes the open-ended fate of Area C at facevalue. Such a map exists, and shows up in an unexpected, buttelling place: The Process, the memoir of chief Israeli negotiatorUri Savir.

Here Area C—the hatched area—is unambiguously marked asdistinct from Israel (white) as well as from areas coming under

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motro/corum oslo ii map A two-state vision of Oslo II. savir oslo ii map The diplomat’s view.

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incorporated into Palestine are equal to areas in occupied terri-tory slated to become part of Israel. We marked the corridorwith what amounts to a visual placeholder, indicating that itsroute and form remain undetermined.

Israelis and Palestinians who support a two-state solution des-perately need a positive picture that captures and bolsters theirfragile conviction that peace is possible. If Israelis and Palestin-ians talk peace again, getting the maps right will require a col-laborative process of drafting and redrafting by the agreement’sauthors together with cartographers and graphic designers. Thisprocess would produce better graphics, and it would reveal newways of seeing and therefore thinking about the agreement. It iswell known that writing forces us to confront the limits of ourown understanding, exposing logical gaps and unresolved

details, richness, and complexity of which we are often unawarebefore putting pen to paper. Writ-ing also spurs creativity, helpingus see possibilities to which wewould otherwise be blind. Draw-ing does the same.

For this reason, negotiators whospontaneously scribble notes anddiagrams—as both Uri Savir andhis Palestinian counterpart AhmedQurei did during the Oslo process—should be encouraged. But to bee≠ective, o≤cial peace maps,whether they are part of a legalrecord, a blueprint for implemen-tation, or a public education e≠ort,must incorporate political, techni-cal, and artistic sensibilities. Soft-ware (Geographic InformationSystems, for instance) and techni-cians with no design training arenot enough. A visually illiteratenegotiator with a sophisticatedmapping program and a technical

assistant is no better equipped than a lousy writer with a state-of-the-art word processing program.

Good maps alone will not be enough to bring peace, but poordesign should not join the long list of pitfalls already burdeningthe peace process. Since the election this year of MahmoudAbbas as Palestinian president,a fragile informal truce has raisedhopes that, sooner or later, negotiators will again be arguing overpercentages of territory and safe passage routes. If the nextagreement’s maps make the same mistakes displayed by thoseattached to Oslo II and to Geneva, they will undermine thechances for success. If the new maps capture a vision that Israelisand Palestinians can live with, they may well tip the balance infavor of peace. n

Shari Motro is an assistant professor of law at the University ofRichmond and a senior fellow at Empax, a New York–based thinktank that studies the role of graphics in diplomacy.

aggression, and blood (the Hebrew words for “red” and “blood”share the same root). The country labels are also relatively promi-nent, which is good; Palestine is no longer a dirty word, andGeneva’s drafters were right to celebrate it. But repeating it twiceis a mistake. It threatens Israelis because the two “Palestines”appear to surround little, vulnerable Israel; it threatens Palestini-ans because it emphasizes the disconnection of the West Bankfrom the Gaza Strip.

The most egregious blunder in the o≤cial Geneva maps is their omission of the corridor connecting the two parts ofPalestine. The specific route and form of the corridor have notbeen determined, so including it on a map presents a graphicdesign challenge. Still, omitting it altogether sends the wrongmessage. What is required is a visual placeholder corresponding

to the verbal “to be determined” language in the text of theGeneva agreement.

I returned to my designer and together we tried to create amap that does justice to the spirit of Geneva.

This time I asked him to try a new color palette. The beigeand green of our Oslo maps reminded me of desert, militaryfatigues, and tanks. I wanted to create a di≠erent vision ofIsrael and Palestine, especially since this map is not only forinternal Israeli and Palestinian consumption. I wanted some-thing that would communicate to the world the lush, fertileface of the Holy Land (the area’s topography varies dramati-cally, ranging from rich forests in the north to rocky desert inthe south). We chose cool, calm hues from the Israeli and Pales-tinian flags, and we coded the land-swap areas so that they areclearly associated with the state to which they are slated tobelong. The key adds another critical piece of information:The size of areas on the Israeli side of the pre-1967 border

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geneva initiative map A study in “chartjunk.” motro/corum geneva map Peace as possible.

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