The Skeptics of the Israeli-Palestinian Correspondence in the Light of the 2005 Oslo Oslo Oslo Peace Conference and Their Call for a Resolution
The political power of the Israel skeptics within the party is not known, with more than a year remaining until the presidential election. Their efforts have been fractious and disorganized, and they have little agreement on how much blame to lay at Mr. Biden’s feet or whether to punish him next November if he ignores their pleas.
In places like Capitol Hill, labor unions and liberal activist groups there’s a raw emotional divide that’s convulsing liberal America.
In protests, open letters, staff revolts and walkouts, liberal Democrats are demanding that Mr. Biden break with decades-long American policy and call for a cease-fire.
“We process pain, deprivation and cruelty personally, having either encountered it in our current lives or having had historical connections to it with our ancestors,” said Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey, one of the cease-fire resolution’s co-sponsors. We understand that conflict and violence do not have positive outcomes.
The focus groups concluded that no of those were acceptable to a majority of both Israelis and Palestinians.
“Israeli officials don’t seem to understand that part of the strategy is giving a political horizon for Palestinians, which is what a peace agreement would ostensibly be,” he said.
It’s hard to have peace talks when both sides don’t see the need to reach an agreement, as a fundamental proposition, says Alterman.
It ended in 2005 with a large number of dead Israelis and Palestinians, along with increased skepticism of the peace process on both sides. In the years since, the feelings seem to have prevailed, as evidenced by terrorist attacks and other incidents.
Israeli settlements are on land the Palestinians hoped would be part of their state in the West Bank.
And that has continued in the years since. The population of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, grew from 520,000 to more than 700,000 between 2012 and 2022, according to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The deal raised expectations for a two-state solution. But it quickly began to unravel after a series of events, including a 1994 attack on a mosque in Hebron by an American Jewish settler and Rabin’s assassination in 1995 by an Israeli settler opposed to the agreement.
In it, Israel officially recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and a partner in future negotiations, and the PLO renounced terrorism and recognized Israel’s right to exist.
U.S. President Bill Clinton brought Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin together in 1993 to negotiate the agreement that came to be known as the Oslo Accords.
There’s also the major question of Palestinian refugees of the wars of 1948 and 1967. The survivors and their descendants live mostly in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, and they claim to have the right to return to Israel. Israel views that right to return as a threat to its existence as a Jewish state and believes those refugees should go to the Palestinian state instead.
The two-state solution was baked into Israel’s creation but didn’t necessarily play out as planned, says Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Israel declared independence in May 1948. Five Arab nations immediately invaded the new country, prompting a major Israeli offensive and many months of fighting. The displacement of Palestinians resulted in the term “nakba” which means “catastrophe” in Arabic.
Israel gained territory that was four times the original size and now has control over many of the places that it used to be.
The partition plan was rejected by the Arab community, in part due to concerns about how much land and access to resources it would get. The Jewish community embraced the plan because it was legal justification for the establishment of Israel.
Jewish proponents of the Zionist movement began moving to Ottoman Palestine — which was predominantly Arab — in the late 19th century, seeking safety from European antisemitism in their ancient homeland. Many more followed suit after the Holocaust.
Israel has annexed the whole city of Jerusalem as its capital, while Palestinians claim East Jerusalem for the capital of their state — which makes for another logistical question.
Ross said that both Israelis and Palestinians aren’t going anywhere. “Somehow, given that, we have to find a way towards coexistence, and obviously, we’re not there now.”
Dennis Ross, who was the chief U.S. negotiator at the 2000 Camp David summit between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, told NPR that as heartbreaking as the situation is in the Middle East right now, eventually “there needs to be a day after.”
It was not possible due to failed peace talks, logistical questions, expansion of Israeli settlements, and a recurring clash between Palestinians and Israelis. The two-state solution has seen dwindling support from both Palestinians and Israelis over the years. And its prospects now seem dimmer than ever, in light of Hamas’ attack on Israel and Israel’s response.
President Biden said Wednesday that there is no going back to the status quo before Oct. 7 — meaning in part that when the crisis is over, there must be a view of what comes next.
Israel is preparing for a ground offensive after bombarding Gaza in response to Hamas’ attack. Humanitarian groups and foreign leaders are calling for a cease-fire. But what are the prospects for long–term peace?
It is too early to tell if the conflict will end in a peace agreement, though many Israelis think that Israeli politics will move to the right in the wake of Hamas’ attack which left over two hundred people dead in Israel.
That does not mean Israeli citizens are not pushing for peace. Sally Abed is a member of Standing Together, an organization that aims to improve Arab-Jewish relations within Israel, and she’s also a Palestinian.
“I really don’t want to think that we needed to endure such loss, such atrocities here in Israel,” she told NPR. “But maybe now I really hope that from this dark corner, we can have this shift in the paradigm on how we actually look at these wars and how, actually, we look at the Israeli control over Gaza and over the West Bank, and really have a different outlook on what our leadership actually should look like.”
Is it still possible to have a two-state solution for Israeli-Palestinian peace? A counterexample against the paradigm of domination and annexation
There are alternatives to a two-state solution — including a one-state solution, a confederation, annexation and maintaining the status quo — at least in theory.
He explained that if the one-state solution gives citizenship to all the natural- born residents of Mandatory Palestine, it doesn’t mean there’s a Jewish majority. “A substantial line of thought [in Israel] is that it’s more important that Israel be Jewish than democratic.”
In contrast, most Americans — 73% — would choose a democratic over a Jewish Israel, according to a University of Maryland and Ipsos poll conducted this year.
Many see the current reality as a single state. She points out the policies of the Netanyahu government that include exclusionary practices and annexationist policies such as a law that demoted Arabic to being one of Israel’s official languages and recent findings by human rights groups that its practices towards Palestinians amount to apartheid.
Some leftists and Palestinians support the creation of a democratic, secular country in which Arab Muslims would outnumber Jews. But some rightists and Israelis would prefer to see Israel annex the West Bank — either forcing out Palestinians or denying them the right to vote — which is illegal under international human rights law.
Activists like the group A Land for All argue that solutions based on separation have failed in the past and instead they are pushing for a confederal framework with the capital of Jerusalem and an open border.
Omer says there are “historical examples of life together in this space that is not within the paradigm of domination.” She acknowledges that it is hard to imagine things like that in this moment, but she believes there is need for change.
It depends on how the paradigm was before Oct. 7, and it is completely collapsing. “And all these contradictions just cannot be sustained anymore.”
Palestinians: a “Palestinian” as a defender of the First Amendment and principles of equality and democracy in the Jewish community
The name “Palestinians” needs to be named and then mechanisms put in place to compensate them for the historical injustice they have experienced, as well as ways of respecting Jewish citizens in the space through principles of equality and democracy.