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No End in Sight: The Israeli–Palestinian Conflict Since Oslo
The difficult relationship between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs has a history that long predates the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and over time the struggle between these two peoples for control of a small territory on the Mediterranean has become ever more tangled, with superpowers, international organizations such as the UN, and other actors becoming involved in the controversy.[1] This case study addresses the recent years of the conflict, from the Oslo Accords of August 1993 to late 2021. This history raises a number of interesting questions concerning how seemingly intractable conflicts can be brought to an end.
The Oslo Accords, more formally known as the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, resulted from a long series of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), a group which used terrorism but nonetheless had received broad international acceptance as representing the Palestinian people. The Madrid Conference of October 1991 was hosted by the Soviet Union and the United States in the hope of moving towards a stable peace between Israel and all its neighbours. Inherently, however, Israel’s relationship with neighbouring Arab states was related intimately to the demands of the Palestinians. Over the following two years, several interlocked sets of negotiations, some public and others secret, occurred. The agreement that eventually emerged in Oslo was one of the most important in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Accords were signed publicly on 13 September 1993 in a White House ceremony hosted by US President Bill Clinton and attended by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.
The Accords were intended to provide an outline for the resolution of hostilities between the Israelis and Palestinians. The Israelis would allow a Palestinian Authority (PA) to be created that would govern most of the territories that Israel had occupied in the Six-Day War of 1967. Over the next five years the two sides would negotiate to reach a final agreement that would resolve any outstanding issues, including the status of the eastern portion of Jerusalem, which was claimed by both sides, and whether there would be a ‘right of return’ for Palestinians who had fled Israel during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence and their descendants. Later, in 1995, an interim agreement on the transfer of West Bank and Gaza territory to the PA, which sometimes is referred to as ‘Oslo II’, was signed.
The Situation After the Signing of Oslo
The framework constructed by the Accords quickly proved to be unstable. A key part of the agreement was an understanding that PA officials would vigorously police the territory under their control and prevent terrorist activity. PA President Yasser Arafat, who also remained chairman of the PLO and leader of the PLO’s Fatah faction, failed to do this. The PA was soon overrun with terrorist activity conducted by a variety of groups, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, an organization actually affiliated with Fatah.
In response to terrorist attacks, and in an effort to prevent future terrorism, Israel’s military, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), frequently launched military operations against targets located in the PA. These operations included what Israel refers to as ‘targeted killings’, the assassination of specific terrorist leaders. In addition, Israel continued to strictly control Palestinian movements from the West Bank and Gaza into Israel and Israeli settlements. This was intended to mitigate the danger presented by Palestinian terrorists, particularly suicide bombers, who would attempt to slip into Israel and attack civilian targets such as shopping malls and restaurants. Because of the geography of Israel and the PA, Israel’s security measures made movement within the PA difficult. The Gaza Strip and West Bank are not physically connected, and the layout of roads and checkpoints is such that often it was (and is) time-consuming for Palestinians to travel from one area of the West Bank to another. These travel difficulties, along with alleged disrespect and harassment by Israeli soldiers operating checkpoints, were resented by many Palestinians. Israel, however, argued that if the Arafat government was unwilling or unable to control terrorist activity within the PA and prevent attacks on Israel, then it was necessary for the Israelis to do so.
Complicating the issue, and creating further tension between the two parties, were the existence of Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and, especially, the West Bank. The settlement programme initially began after the Six-Day War, the 1967 conflict in which Israel defeated a coalition of Arab states and came into possession of the eastern portion of Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank (as well as the Sinai Peninsula, which was returned to the Egyptians as a result of the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt). Israel launched a programme to create ‘settlement’ communities and encourage Jewish families to move to these areas. This was seen as a security measure, placing loyal Israelis on tactically important pieces of ground which could be of value to Israel’s enemies, as well as a way to occupy space which many Israelis felt they were entitled to under previous arrangements and guarantees such as the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The settlements grew over time, and by the time the Oslo Accords were signed, hundreds of thousands of Israelis lived in these disputed territories. The negotiations that resulted in the Accords were often referred to as a ‘land-for-peace’ process—in essence, Israel trading territory to the Palestinians in exchange for a halt to the threat of terrorism. However, the Accords did not resolve the status of the settlements and the precise borders of a future Palestinian state, leaving these issues to be resolved at a future date.
The Stalled Peace Process
In September 1995, the Israelis and Palestinians concluded the Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza. The Interim Agreement, which set out the broad parameters for the handover of the West Bank and Gaza, in turn served as the basis for further negotiations. However, the sense that the peace process was moving forward was short-lived, as terrorism against Israel, as well as Israeli retaliation, continued.
In 1996, the Labour Party government—led at that time by Shimon Peres, who had become prime minister in 1995 after Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli extremist angered by Rabin’s peace policy—was succeeded by the Likud-dominated government of Benjamin Netanyahu. In his campaign, Netanyahu had called for a tougher stance in negotiations with the Palestinians, and his government was perceived internationally as considerably more hawkish than its predecessor. However, peace negotiations did not end altogether, and in October 1998, Netanyahu and Arafat agreed to the Wye River Memorandum. The Memorandum, a complex agreement which emerged from a series of meetings hosted by President Clinton, was intended to implement the 1995 Interim Agreement. However, execution of the provisions of the Memorandum stalled as terrorism continued and the Israelis and Palestinians accused each other of failure to abide by the various agreements.
In 1999, Netanyahu’s government, beset by various domestic scandals, fell and was replaced by one headed by Labour’s Ehud Barak. In July 2000, President Clinton made a final major effort to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace, hosting a series of meetings at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland. However, no final settlement was reached, and shortly thereafter the Second Intifada began. Most Western observers, including Barak and Clinton, blamed Arafat for the failure of the talks, but the collapse nonetheless was a devastating political blow to Barak.
The Beginning of the Second Intifada
The Second, or al-Aqsa, Intifada started in September 2000. Its catalyst was a visit to eastern Jerusalem’s Temple Mount area by Ariel Sharon, who headed Israel’s Likud Party. The hawkish Sharon was loathed by many Palestinians, but controversy remains over the degree to which the Intifada was pre-planned. Although pro-Palestinian sources generally portray the Second Intifada as a spontaneous uprising, many observers contended that the ‘October riots’ which marked the beginning of the Second Intifada were carefully prepared by Palestinian leaders who wished to take advantage of Sharon’s visit to spark violence and thus gain negotiating leverage over Israel.[2]
It is notable that the October rioters were mainly Arab citizens of Israel. When considering matters of domestic security, many Israelis have long worried about the loyalty of Israeli Arabs, and the riots heightened these concerns. The violence accompanying the riots was fairly intense, with over 50 Palestinians killed and hundreds of others injured. Israelis also suffered considerable losses, including the death of two reservists who became lost in the West Bank, were arrested by Palestinian police in the PA town of Ramallah, and then were dragged from the local jail and killed by a lynch mob.[3]
The First Intifada, which began in December 1987 and ended with the signing of the Oslo Accords, had been marked by confrontations between Palestinian teenagers and young men and Israeli security forces. Both Intifadas were very similar in most respects. Frequently, the violence would take the form of stone-throwing demonstrations by Palestinians, which Israeli forces would then attempt to break up with riot-control measures such as the use of tear gas and rubber bullets. No fatal injuries were sustained by either side in most such clashes (the October riots were exceptional in this respect), but televised news footage of the demonstrations proved to be invaluable to the Palestinian cause, as pictures of armed and armoured Israelis battling young Palestinians created sympathy abroad. This is an excellent example of how important the world media can be in strategic affairs. Both the First and Second Intifadas created considerable international criticism of and pressure on Israel, even if news footage itself often oversimplified, or even distorted, actual events.
A matter complicating discussion is the fact that any Palestinian-initiated violence was often described as being associated with the Intifada. However, there is a critical distinction between rock-throwing demonstrations and terrorist acts such as the suicide bombing of civilian targets. Importantly, the former would not fit into most definitions of terrorism, although it certainly would constitute violent public disorder, but the latter is a particularly horrific form of terrorism. In other respects, however, this mixing together of qualitatively very different forms of violence illustrates a key truth—many Palestinian leaders had (and continue to have) a complex view of their struggle: terrorist acts are only one aspect of a strategy that also includes less intense violence, as well as negotiations. This is notable, as it highlights how leaders may incorporate terrorism as part of a larger strategy, using terrorist violence in combination with other means to achieve their policy goals.
The Slow Collapse of Oslo
The failure to reach an agreement at Camp David in 2000, combined with the beginning of the Second Intifada, greatly influenced Israeli politics and, consequently, the direction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Labour suffered a major loss in the March 2001 elections, and Barak was replaced as prime minister by Ariel Sharon. Sharon, long known as an Israeli ‘hardliner’, was reviled by Palestinians but seen by his supporters as a tough general who would guard Israel’s security. However, during his time in office he would surprise both his detractors and supporters.
Sharon—who was also one of the key early supporters of the settlement movement—surprised observers, and angered many members of his Likud Party, with his decision to unilaterally evacuate the Israeli settlements in Gaza. The Gaza Strip, a tiny but very densely populated territory situated between Israel and Egypt, contained a small number of Israeli settlers and an overwhelming Palestinian majority. In early 2004, Sharon proposed that the settlements be abandoned completely and that Israel also withdraw its military presence in the PA. The plan created bitter controversy in Israel, and had a substantial impact on Israeli politics, as its repercussions ultimately resulted in Sharon leaving Likud to form a new party, Kadima. However, withdrawal was ultimately implemented in summer 2005.
Another Sharon initiative also was very significant to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian struggle: the building of a security fence separating Israeli and Palestinian West Bank territories. (A fence between Israel and Gaza was constructed earlier.) The barrier—most of which consists of fencing supplemented by surveillance equipment, although a small percentage uses sections of concrete wall—has been very controversial internationally. Israel contends that the barrier is necessary to keep terrorists out of Israeli territory, and it appears to have been at least partially successful in achieving this goal—the number of suicide attacks within Israel appears to be on a long-term downtrend, even though the fence remains incomplete.
When the Gaza disengagement and the building of the security barrier are considered together, it certainly appears that Sharon was endeavouring to implement a long-term strategy that would limit the terrorist threat to Israel by pulling Israelis inside defensible borders and then carefully controlling access to the country. However, Palestinians contend that the fence was also intended to create ‘facts on the ground’, since certain Israeli settlements in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem were to be included within it. Thus, they claim, Israelis hope that the fence will impact any final territorial settlement in ways that Israel would find beneficial. Reports surfaced in January 2012 that the Israelis apparently had proposed the fence as the border between Israel and Palestine.[4]
In 2002, efforts were made by the ‘Quartet’ of the European Union, United Nations, United States, and Russia to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. In 2003, the Quartet issued a ‘Road Map’ towards peace under which Israel and the PA would take various measures to build confidence and lay the foundation for a final settlement. However, the Quartet’s diplomatic efforts floundered.
Much more important to the unfolding conflict was the removal of two key figures from the struggle. Yasser Arafat died in October 2004. His death shook the foundations of Palestinian politics, with lasting effects. Ariel Sharon did not long outlast his old foe Arafat, as he was incapacitated by a stroke in January 2006. After it became clear that Sharon, who was comatose, was unlikely to recover, Ehud Olmert was named Prime Minister of Israel. Olmert went on to guide the Kadima Party to victory in April elections.
After Arafat’s death, Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, emerged as the most important individual Palestinian leader. Now head of the PLO and President of the PA, he essentially is Arafat’s successor. Abbas is generally thought to be a supporter of a ‘two-state solution’ in which Israel would coexist alongside a Palestinian state. However, in a January 2006 legislative election, his Fatah faction suffered a humiliating defeat by Hamas, and the latter obtained a majority of the seats in the PA Parliament. This permitted Hamas to form a government under a new prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh. Because Hamas is a terrorist group and does not accept the concept of peaceful coexistence with Israel, some governments (including those of the United States and European Union) immediately placed financial pressure on the new government by suspending aid to the PA, while Israel refused to deliver tax revenue that it had collected on behalf of the PA to the Hamas government.
The cooperation in governance between Hamas and Fatah quickly collapsed, and fighting broke out between the two organizations. As a result, the Palestinian Authority effectively split into two separate polities, with the West Bank governed by Fatah and Gaza controlled by Hamas. Subsequently, Fatah and Israel generally have maintained a functional relationship that has allowed the West Bank to remain relatively calm and improve economically.[5] The situation in Gaza, however, has been quite different.
Israeli and Hamas forces periodically have clashed since the Hamas takeover of Gaza. However, in December 2008 and January 2009, an unusually intense period of conflict, often referred to as the Gaza War, occurred. Earlier, in June 2008, Hamas and Israel had agreed to a pause in hostilities. However, each side contended that the other was in violation of the terms of their agreement. For example, Hamas’ launching of rockets into southern Israel from Gaza periodically had continued, while, on the other hand, Hamas complained that Israel was continuing to blockade Gaza economically, only allowing a very small number of trucks to pass through the Israel-Gaza border. In December, Hamas declared an end to the ceasefire and greatly increased its rocket attacks against Israel. In retaliation, Israel launched an air war against Hamas targets. This was followed by temporary ground incursions into Gaza. Casualties were substantial, particularly on the Palestinian side. Over a thousand Palestinians were killed. A significant number of the dead were civilian ‘collateral’ casualties; however, the precise number of civilian casualties is much disputed.
The question of which side ‘won’ the Gaza War is a matter of contention, and it is clear that neither side achieved all its strategic goals in the conflict. In any event, since the Gaza War, the relationship between Israel and Hamas has remained tense, and occasional violence—whether terrorist attacks or limited Israeli strikes in Gaza—continues to occur.
Israel conducted a brief, eight-day operation, ‘Pillar of Defense’, against Hamas in November 2012, ostensibly in reprisal for rocket attacks from Gaza and to disrupt Hamas’ organization. Another war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza broke out in June 2014 and lasted for seven weeks, as Israel and Hamas were both locked into spirals of logic whose only alleviation was war. Israel’s initial effort was limited to air strikes, but eventually its ground forces were sent into Gaza. This war cost over 2,000 Gazan lives, of whom at least one-third were estimated to have been civilians. The result of the war was an approximate return to the pre-war status quo as neither side achieved their goals, whose internal political logic had led to the war in the first place. Over the course of six weeks in spring 2018, large-scale Palestinian protests occurred at the border wall. Though many of the protestors acted peacefully, others attempted to breach the wall. Israeli troops responded to the protests with live ammunition, killing dozens of Palestinians, and drawing the condemnation of the UN and various human rights groups.
Another major spasm of violence occurred in the spring of 2021 after the Israeli court-ordered eviction of several Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem spurred major tensions among Palestinian protesters, Israeli settlers, and Israeli police. A significant confrontation between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters at the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem during Ramadan spurred more violence throughout Jerusalem, which then prompted Hamas and other Palestinian militants to launch rocket attacks from Gaza into Israeli territory on 10 May. The IDF responded with air strikes on Gaza, which hit both Hamas and civilian targets, resulting in the deaths of more than 250 Palestinians and 13 Israelis and wounding nearly 2,000 Palestinians, before a ceasefire agreement was reached on 21 May.[6]
In recent years, hope for a two-state solution has receded. In early 2009, Benjamin Netanyahu returned to the prime ministership of Israel for a second time. His return was followed, by the end of the year, by a 10-month construction freeze in all West Bank settlements. This had little diplomatic effect as the Palestinians did not reciprocate in any way, US-based negotiations failed to get off the ground, and the construction moratorium expired. In September 2011, Mahmoud Abbas gave a speech at the United Nations targeted against Israel and categorically refusing to recognize a Jewish state, and the same day requested that the UN recognize Palestine as its 194th member. The UN upgraded Palestine’s status to that of a ‘non-member observer state’ in 2012, although Abbas’ pursuit of full membership was ultimately rejected by the Security Council, in which the United States holds veto power, in December 2014[7]. (Despite its lack of UN recognition, as of late 2021, Palestine was recognized as a state by 138 UN members, as well as by the Vatican.) Efforts by US Secretary of State John Kerry to broker negotiations went nowhere as positions in both Israel and Palestine ossified.
Compromise between Israel and the PA became increasingly unlikely after US President Donald Trump took office. Trump strongly backed Netanyahu’s government in ways that further inflamed Israeli-Palestinian relations and made the United States an unacceptable broker to the Palestinians. In December 2017, Trump announced US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a highly contentious decision condemned by all other members of the UN Security Council. In January 2018, following a tweet by Trump, the United States withheld $65 million in aid that had been destined for the PA from a UN agency. The new US embassy in Jerusalem, relocated from Tel Aviv, opened in May 2018, but the opening ceremonies were overshadowed by the conflict at the Gaza border. Meanwhile Netanyahu continued his strong defence of Israel’s settlement policy, telling a group of West Bank settlers, ‘We are here to stay, forever.’[8]
In its first year in office, the Biden administration walked a careful line, pledging its continued support for Israel’s security, while sharply criticizing its plans to build approximately 1,300 settlement homes in the West Bank and to discuss proposals to build 3,000 more.[9] While the Biden administration planned to keep the US embassy in Jerusalem, they also pledged to reopen the Jerusalem consulate, which had historically handled US relations with the PA, despite Israeli opposition.[10] Nevertheless, it was evident that, faced with a host of domestic and global challenges, the Biden administration had little appetite for brokering a seemingly elusive Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Meanwhile, in Israel, Netanyahu’s 12-year-long second stint as prime minister finally came to an end, and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, the head of the New Right party, took office in June 2021 (under a rotation government agreement with Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, Lapid will serve as prime minister from 2023–25). Bennett is known for his strong opposition to a Palestinian state; in a 2021 interview, he ruled out peace talks with the PA and stated that his government’s ‘claim to fame will not be solving the 130-year-old conflict here in Israel’. However, he also indicated that he would no longer seek to annex territory in the West Bank.[11]
Palestinian and Israeli Perspectives on the Struggle
Some Palestinians lump any violence against Israeli targets, civilian or military, into the category of ‘armed struggle’, treating all attacks on Israelis as legitimate. This is particularly true of groups such as Hamas. Hamas regards every Israeli—including those living in ‘Israel proper’—as a valid target and does not accept the legitimacy of the state of Israel; the complete destruction of Israel is Hamas’ stated goal. Similar attitudes are also expressed by groups such as Islamic Jihad. The prevalent view within Fatah, however, is more debatable. Although many outside observers argue that there is a substantial wing of the organization willing to make a permanent peace with Israel based on the peaceful coexistence of Israel and a sovereign Palestine (this often is called the ‘two-state solution’), others dispute this, contending that there is no large moderate bloc in Fatah and that most of its leaders, although more circumspect than their Hamas counterparts, also ultimately seek to eliminate Israel. A June 2021 Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll conducted in both the West Bank and Gaza found that 39 per cent of respondents supported the ‘concept of the two-state solution’, while 58 per cent were opposed.[12]
Palestinians often complain that Israeli retaliation for terrorism is not sufficiently discriminate, as it often results in civilian deaths. ‘Collateral damage’ has occurred, for example, when Israel has used helicopters to conduct targeted killings of terrorist leaders. The latter generally have been pinpointed as being located in urban structures such as apartment buildings or moving in cars on busy roads, and thus the weapons used against them can also injure or kill innocent bystanders. However, Israel contends that such methods are often the only practical way to kill elusive terrorists who, if they are provided with even a slight warning, will slip into the civilian population and disappear. (Israel has sometimes conducted lightning raids to capture terrorists living in the PA, but such operations are very dangerous and require careful planning beforehand—thus, in many cases, such as when a target will only be in a location for a short time, these actions are not practical.) Moreover, Israelis note, terrorists place Palestinian civilians in harm’s way by living among them, and may even hope to use them as ‘human shields’ to protect themselves. Both the Palestinian complaints and Israeli responses are comprehensible, and highlight one of the defining aspects of their struggle: civilians on both sides frequently suffer injury or death. In the case of terrorists, this of course is intentional, as they explicitly seek to harm innocents—violence against civilians is inherent to terrorism. Israeli forces do not intentionally target civilians with lethal force, but, nonetheless, many Palestinian civilians have suffered injury or death as a result of the IDF’s military operations.
In addition to these criticisms, most Palestinians contend that Israel has not carried out agreements in good faith and has taken measures to leave the PA weak and divided. Beyond the aforementioned problems regarding travel within the PA, it is also important to note that Israel oversees Palestinian imports and exports, a measure that Israel insists is vital to the prevention of smuggling, particularly of weapons that might be funnelled to terrorists. Certainly, weapons smuggling into the PA has been an ongoing security problem for the Israelis—in one incident, the seizure of the ship Karine A in January 2002, tons of weapons, apparently purchased by Arafat in violation of agreements with Israel, were confiscated.[13]
Israeli views of struggle with the Palestinians are complex, and Israeli public opinion has lurched in different directions in the years since Oslo. In general, the prevailing view of the Oslo Accords in the early to mid-1990s was optimistic, although there were also a substantial number of Israeli pessimists, many of them within the Likud Party. Prime Minister Rabin headed the Labour Party, Likud’s great rival in Israeli politics and the more ‘dovish’ of what then were Israel’s two most significant parties. In 1993, many Israelis thought that a permanent settlement with the Palestinians was a feasible policy goal. As time passed, however, and terrorist violence against Israel continued—and, compared to the pre-Oslo period, even worsened—confidence in Arafat as a negotiating partner steadily decreased. Over time, an increasing number of Israelis concluded that the Palestinians were not seriously seeking peaceful coexistence with Israel. In particular, Arafat’s failure to apprehend significant numbers of terrorists operating in the PA—or even to stop Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade from conducting terror attacks—provided powerful evidence that his strategy was to use terrorism to create pressure on Israel that would lead to further concessions in negotiations.
Initially, most Israelis expressed a willingness to accept some kind of ‘two-state solution’ to their conflict with the Palestinians, although a not inconsiderable minority opposed any sovereign Palestinian state. However, a strong majority consistently opposed the ‘right of return’ for Palestinian refugees and their descendants. Such a policy would permit millions of Palestinians to move to Israel, decisively altering the religious demography of that country and (because Palestinian birth rates are higher than those of Israeli Jews) ultimately resulting in Jews becoming a minority within Israel. In this light, the right of return would result in ‘demographic victory’ for Palestinians, with Israel losing its character as a Jewish state—an unacceptable outcome for the overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis. The contrasting attitudes towards Palestinian statehood and the right of return likely reflected mainstream Israeli opinions of the time concerning the conflict with the Palestinians. More recently, however, Israeli public opinion seems to have split. According to a 2019 Peace Index poll, 48 per cent of Jewish Israelis opposed a ‘two-state solution’, while 41 per cent supported it (support among Israeli Arabs was much higher, at 70 per cent, although this represented a decline from 86 per cent in 2017). The same poll found that views on the annexation of the West Bank were evenly split, with 40 per cent of Jewish Israelis in favour and 40 per cent opposed (20 per cent chose ‘don’t know’).[14]
This is one of the reasons why the issue of settlements in the West Bank has remained rancorous: for reasons of security and economics, most Israelis consider it impractical to abandon all of the settlements in the West Bank. For example, many of the settlements are suburbs of Jerusalem and the status of Jews living in the eastern portion of Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel in the Six-Day War,[15] is disputed. However, most Israelis are willing to evacuate some of the West Bank settlements and compensate Palestinians for the remaining ones, whose territory would be incorporated into Israel, with land carved out from other parts of Israel. However, many Palestinians maintain that all of the West Bank must be handed over, and that the Israelis have allowed settlements to spread out so as to incorporate more land. (It also should be noted that a minority of Israelis consider it a strategic necessity and/or religious obligation not to surrender settlements. Thus, the 2005 evacuation of the Gaza Strip settlements was extremely controversial within Israel.)
Conclusion: An Intractable Conflict?
Clearly, the Oslo Accords failed to bring about a timely end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet, whether progress has been made towards resolution of that conflict is more debatable. An optimistic observer might see the events that followed Oslo, such as the creation of the PA, as laying the groundwork for the eventual resolution of the conflict, while a pessimist might suggest that little substantive progress has been made towards peace. Indeed, some would even argue that Israel’s decision to allow the creation of a Palestinian government effectively rewarded past terrorism by the PLO, Hamas, and other groups, and thus both provided an incentive for further terrorism and a safe ‘home base’ for terrorists. This reminds one of core questions that often receive too little attention in discussions of the conflict: What should the character of a final peace be and what incentives would be in place to preserve it? Will all sides accept a peace that, because of the compromises involved, neither would see as being completely just? How (if it even is possible) can groups like Hamas be compelled or convinced to abandon their desire to destroy Israel (a goal that of course makes peaceful coexistence impossible)? How much do the institutional perspectives of groups like Hamas on the existence of Israel matter if they remain too weak to achieve their goals?
The Israeli-Palestinian struggle is a complex and longstanding one that has significant security implications for the parties directly involved, the wider region, and even distant powers such as the United States. The conflict serves as a powerful corrective to the notion that diplomatic ‘hard work’ alone can be expected to solve security problems. Despite exhaustive efforts by superpowers, international organizations, and other actors, the conflict thus far has defied resolution and no end is at hand. In international politics, some problems simply defy speedy resolution, particularly when the stakes at hand for the parties involved are very high indeed.
Questions
- Why did the Oslo Accords fail to permanently end the violence between Israelis and Palestinians?
- How did the death of Yasser Arafat change the political context of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle?
- Did the creation of the Palestinian Authority effectively ‘reward’ Palestinian terrorism? If so, why? If not, why not?
- Is the Palestinian Authority permanently developing into two distinct political entities? If so, how will this impact the overall Israeli-Palestinian struggle?
- What has been the impact of the Israeli pullout from Gaza and the Israeli construction of a security fence on its borders on Israel’s strategic situation and negotiations with the Palestinians?
Websites
http://www.palestinefacts.org/
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/tag/middle-east
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/
[1] Background on the struggle is provided in Gregory Harms and Todd M. Ferry, The Palestine-Israel Conflict: A Basic Introduction (2nd edn, London: Pluto Press, 2008) and Walter Lacquer and Barry Rubin, The Israel-Palestine Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict (7th rev. edn, New York: Penguin, 2008).
[2] The report of a five-person international committee chaired by former US Senator George Mitchell took a middle ground on this question. The Mitchell Report contended that ‘the outbreak of the deadly clashes could not be attributed solely to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's well-guarded stroll past Jerusalem’s ancient mosques last September, as some Palestinians have said, nor to a preconceived effort by the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat to unleash a bloody popular uprising, as Israeli officials have asserted.’ William A. Orme, Jr,, ‘In Israel, Panel Urges Settlement Freeze and an End to Terror’, New York Times, 6 May 2001, https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/06/world/in-israel-panel-urges-settlement-freeze-and-an-end-to-terror.html, accessed 27 November 2021.
[3] See Deborah Sontag, ‘Whose Holy Land? The Victims’, New York Times, 14 October 2000, https://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/14/world/whose-holy-land-the-victims-israel-in-shock-as-it-buries-mob-s-victim.html, accessed 27 November 2021.
[4] Dan Perry and Mohammed Daraghmeh, ‘West Bank Barrier Proposed As Israel Border?’, NBC News, 27 January 2012, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/46166579/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/west-bank-barrier-proposed-israel-border/#.W6_wDuhKg2w, accessed 27 November 2021.
[5] On the latter, see Ethan Bronner, ‘Signs of Hope Emerge in the West Bank’, New York Times, 16 July 2009, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/world/middleeast/17westbank.html, accessed 27 November 2021.
[6] Council on Foreign Relations, ‘Global Conflict Tracker: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict’, 23 November 2021, https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/israeli-palestinian-conflict, accessed 27 November 2021.
[7] UN, ‘UN Security Council Action on Palestinian Statehood Blocked’, UN News, 31 November 2014, https://news.un.org/en/story/2014/12/487342-un-security-council-action-palestinian-statehood-blocked and Michelle Norris, ‘U.N. Allows Palestinians to Act More Like Full Member in 2019’, Reuters, 16 October 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-palestinians-un/u-n-allows-palestinians-to-act-more-like-full-member-in-2019-idUSKCN1MQ2R7, both accessed 27 November 2021.
[8] Yotam Berger, ‘Netanyahu Vows to Never Remove Israeli Settlements from West Bank: “We’re Here to Stay, Forever”’, Haaretz, 29 August 2017, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/netanyahu-vows-to-never-remove-west-bank-settlements-we-re-here-to-stay-1.5446461, accessed 27 November 2021.
[9] Simon Lewis and Humeyra Pamuk, ‘Biden Administration Issues Sharpest Rebuke Yet to Israel Over Settlements’, Reuters, 27 October 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-voices-opposition-israels-plans-new-west-bank-settlement-homes-2021-10-26/, accessed 27 November 2021.
[10] Dan Williams, ‘Israel Opposes Biden Plan to Reopen U.S. Palestinian Mission in Jerusalem’, Reuters, 1 September 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-plan-reopen-jerusalem-consulate-palestinians-bad-idea-israeli-fm-says-2021-09-01/, accessed 27 November 2021.
[11] Patrick Kingsley and Isabel Kershner, ‘New Israeli Leader Backs Hard Line on Iran but Softer Tone with U.S.’, New York Times, 26 August 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/world/middleeast/israel-bennett-biden-iran.html, accessed 27 November 2021.
[12] Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Survey Research Unit, ‘Press Release: Public Opinion Poll No (80)’, 15 June 2021, p. 6, https://www.pcpsr.org/sites/default/files/Poll%2080%20English%20press%20release%20June2021.pdf, accessed 27 November 2021.
[13] James Bennet, ‘Sharon, Showing Seized Arms, Calls Arafat “Bitter Enemy”’ New York Times, 7 January 2002, https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/07/world/sharon-showing-seized-arms-calls-arafat-bitter-enemy.html, accessed 27 November 2021.
[14] Tamar Hermann and Or Anabi, ‘Majority of Israelis Think that Israel is Prepared for War’, The Israel Democracy Institute, 6 January 2020, https://en.idi.org.il/articles/29546, accessed 27 November 2021.
[15] On the Six-Day War, see Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).