The prime minister said he won’t allow the Palestinian Authority to take over Gaza, his sharpest comments yet against the White House plan for after the war.
“Never” is a big word, and almost always unjustified. Various Israeli governments have looked for peace with Palestinians at times, just as many Palestinians have wanted peace with Israel.
Neither Palestinian nor Israeli populations are a monolith, and their attitudes and opinions change over time and in response to each other’s actions. But people are endlessly adaptable. That’s why diplomacy and a two-state solution are still possible.
Anyone who says “Israel will never seek peace,” or “Palestinians will always be terrorists” condemns both sides to ongoing conflict.
The majority of the Israeli population agrees that Netanyahu and his conservative coalition needs to go. Hamas also needs to go. Both of these governments are full of extremists, and the current conflagration is the result of two diametricaly-opposed extremist governments going head-to-head. Netanyahu wanted it and so did Hamas.
I’ve been following this conflict for 30 years, but from afar, so I don’t claim to know the hearts and minds of the participants. I don’t know, and neither do you, if the previous attempts at a two-state solution were genuine or if they could have been implemented on the ground.
What I do know is that there is no perfect solution that will make both sides entirely happy. When you call attempts at coming to agreement “fake” it is neither correct nor helpful. Generally speaking, Labor governments in Israel have been willing to make concessions for a two-state solution, and conservative governments haven’t. That doesn’t mean that the positive efforts have been “fake”.
Since the mid-2000s, it looks to me like the play by both Hamas and Israeli conservative governments has been to ratchet up tension, force new “facts on the ground”, and provoke a violent confrontation. Sadly, the extremist strategy has achieved its goal of provoking massive violence and suffering. It remains to be seen if this strategy will break the status quo or just be another bloody chapter in an unresolved conflict.
I am sorry to tell you this, but you definitely ought look deeper into the peace accords as they were discussed at the time. Especially the ones at Camp David which were supposed to be the most fruitious and the ones Palestinians “threw out the door”. The Oslo accords were more of a guideline than a clear set of instructions. They were a very loose set of vague directions both sides were supposed to go down on. Before that there were no other concrete accords. One would argue that the Camp David Summit was the closest both sides ever got to making peace. So let’s take a look at that one and use it as a good compass in this discussion.
Palestinians were supposed to:
be completely demilitarized
give Israel the right to send troops to Palestine in case of any emergency (what constitutes as an emergency was never defined)
ask Israel for approval for every diplomatic alliance Palestine would ever make with other countries
have Israeli military bases installed in Palestinian territory
give the Israeli military complete control of their airspace
have israeli military outposts be installed on the border between Palestine and Jordan for a temporary amount of time
give Israel temporary control over Palestinian border crossings (without having a specified timeframe)
give up 10% of the West Bank, the most fertile land in the West Bank, for 1% territorial gains of desert land near the Gaza strip (the land that would be conceded included symbolic and cultural territories such as the Al-Aqsa Mosque, whereas the Israeli land conceded was unspecified)
Israel would keep parts of the West Bank under temporary occupation, without a timespan being given
What constitutes the West Bank was to be defined by Israel and not by international law. Israel defined West Bank as being the internationally recognized West Bank minus all the settlements they had at the time.
As you can see, all of these concessions would never amount to a completely sovereign Palestinian state, and as a result of that these talks failed in the end. To me, it looks like they were designed to fail from the get-go. Nonetheless, they did spawn new discussions and as a result of said discussion the Taba negotiations were born. With that being said, these concessions were in no way, shape, or form popular in Israel (only 25% of the Israeli public thought his positions on Camp David were just right as opposed to 58% of the public that thought Ehud Barak compromised too much). The Israeli prime minister at the time, Barak, facing elections, suspended the talks since it greatly affected his popularity in Israel. As a result of trying to broker a peace deal with Palestine, even a very bad one that was meant to fail as it was, he failed to get re-elected. The highly unbalanced concessions were already considered to be too much by Israelis.
Ehud Barak was from the Labour governments you were talking about, and this is the best Israel could ever come up with.
Trying to paint this situation as it being a level field where both sides did the same amount of wrongdoing is not a fair representation of the history of the peace process.
Since the most promising talks ever, the Camp David Summit, Israel has allowed over 750k settlers to move into the West Bank. A military regime has been installed and forced upon the occupied population contrary to international law. If getting the 30k settlers out of Gaza in 2005 was hard enough and almost caused an uproar inside the IDF, getting 750k settlers out of the West Bank will be straight up impossible without a major conflict.
There will never be two states and I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that this was in majority the doing of the Palestinians. We should talk a good look at all these facts when we start discussing this conflict and use them as a compass.
You can read more on that on Wikipedia if you’re interested in all the details. If wikipedia isn’t a good enough source, there is a great book on this subject by a german professor specializing on the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
I appreciate the detailed response. I didn’t say that Israel was willing to make concessions and Palestinians were not. I said that the two populations have factions, some of whom will make concessions.
Yes, it is true that the Palestinians were not being accorded full sovereignty in previous negotiations. The Camp David accords were understood as a “path to statehood”, not the final status. Palestinians were not in a position at the time to take on all the responsibilities of full statehood, and Israel was worried about outside forces like Iran and its proxies taking advantage of the relatively weak state of the PA to create a threat right on Israel’s front porch. Hence why they wanted to control the military and the borders of the nascent Palestinian proto-state. Don’t forget that the surrounding Muslim countries tried to kill Israel in its cradle several times, so Israel had every reason to worry about their security situation.
“in its cradle” is about the most dishonest representation of Israel declaring its statehood upon the land of Palestine as a Jewish ethnostate and forcibly displacing 750,000 Palestinians from their family homes as I have seen
I’m wondering what kind of peace they think they’re asking for. Israel has a buffet of oppressive laws that deny Palestinians access to water, land, and infrastructure, and allow the IDF to raze villages at their discretion and detain people indefinitely without evidence, all under the pretext of fighting terrorism and protecting national security. Meanwhile Israel has been the occupying force in this region for decades. Remember they are, by definition, not on the defensive. These laws actually do discriminate against Palestinians, and make life very hard for them.
I wonder if this is the kind of peace where Israel thinks “why won’t they simply accept our oppressive laws and let us displace them and take their land? Why are people fighting back all the time? We just want peace!”
I cannot stress enough that settlers and housing developments come at the same time as the military, and they work together. Like it’s not even a terrorism thing. They are just chasing Palestinians around with housing developments to justify forcing them out. As far as I can see the only way Israel’s operation could be peaceful is if the Palestinians literally just accepted their widespread displacement, dispossession and sometimes even mass murder, but we know that’s not how peace works :)
My understanding of past negotiations regarding the the two-state solution is that they proposed a “path to statehood” for Palestinians, not a one-and-done solution. It was a “give-a-little, get-a-little” incremental approach where the Palestinian proto-state would gradually gain more independence as it developed effective an effective governmental infrastructure, and as it could satisfy Israel that it could control terrorist elements within Palestine and resist being controlled by Iran and its proxies. Initially, Israel would control the borders of the Palestinian proto-state and have a military presence, but would gradually give those functions over to the Palestinian government if peace could be sustained.
Unfortunately, there are extremists on both sides who found it rather easy to smash that fragile and tentative method of peace-making. Also, of course, Iran provides non-stop support for the Palestinian factions that want to continue the conflict. And the Israeli far right does the same, probably with the support of American evangelicals who think the Rapture is just around the corner. It is a sad state of affairs for those who actually want peace.
Edit: I probably responded too quickly because your edit came to me after I already submitted my response.
To address your edit, yes, I agree with you that Israeli actions since about the mid-2000s with the aggressive expansion of settlements has only made the situation worse. It is my belief that both Hamas and Israeli right-wing governments have had the same goal since the failure of the two-state solution negotiations, and that is to provoke violence, make the other side look bad, and gain the support of sponsors and the international community.
Look up the past negotiations on the two-state solution. The method proposed was to first recognize a Palestinian proto-state with Israel still controlling military and borders. Over time, as the Palestinian proto-state strengthened, showed it could control terrorism, and avoid becoming an Iranian proxy and base for another attack on Israel, the Palestinian state would become a fully sovereign nation.
What you are suggesting is impractical, certainly in Gaza. Gaza is ruled by a different government from the West Bank, and Hamas is like Hezbollah. They are a militant Iranian proxy that wants to destroy Israel, and they’ve proved it yet again.
Now, Israel has certainly NOT sought peace since Likud came to power. The events of October 7 have been brewing for over 15 years, during which time neither Hamas nor Israel has sought real peace. They’ve both been ratcheting up the pressure.
So, I’m not sure what your point is. There was a point during the Camp David talks that a path to a two-state solution seemed close. Unfortunately, the talks failed, but clearly the Israeli and Palestinian governments were literally seeking peace and willing to make concessions. Now, relations are so bad and Palestinian governance in Gaza is in such a shambles that your proposed solution would be a disaster, for both Israel and the Palestinians.
The actual practical path is to return to negotiations aimed at incrementally building a two-state solution. That means the Israeli far-right coalition government has to go, the Jewish settlements in the West Bank have to go, and it also means that Hamas and others just bent on terrorism have to go. Until that happens, they can’t return to practical negotiations. I mean, that’s obvious, right? Extremist Israelis want to eliminate the Palestinians, and extremist Palestinians want to eliminate Israel. Both have to go. Peace negotiations with someone who doesn’t want peace is pointless.
Maybe October 7 and Israel’s response will prove so horrific that it will cause both populations to vote moderates back into power who will genuinely get back to the negotiating table and not give up.
That’s a very hard line stance you have there. That sort of uncompromising attitude is exactly what both Hamas and the Israeli right-wing have been advocating for years. Sticking uncompromisingly to your principles makes for great drama, but is really the opposite of effective diplomacy.
I wouldn’t want to apply the process proposed for Palestine and Israel to Ukraine and Russia. I’m not sure why you would want me to defend that. I don’t agree with that solution for Ukraine. It’s a completely different situation. Again, this where I think you are going wrong and perhaps misunderstanding me. People who just want to talk about principles and which side is more morally correct are the ones moving the two sides farther apart. Think realpolitik.
Like I said, uncompromising principles make for great drama, but you need an actual realistic plan. How exactly would this uncompromising stance you propose work? Do you think the Arab countries will come to Palestine’s rescue militarily? Not happening. Do you think it will be like South Africa and the whole world will sanction Israel into submission? That’s not happening either. It’s not the 1980s anymore. Bono and the gang aren’t going to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What is the actual realistic alternative to the two-state incremental path I outlined above?
Why not? I can only think of one difference, and that’s race.
LOL, what? That sounds like a you-problem, not a me-problem. You do realize that Jews and Palestinians are both Semites, right? You also realize that European have killed more Jews than all of the rest of the world combined, right? Also, in the case pf Ukraine, you may recall that Aryan types despise Slavs just as much as Jews. What you are suggesting makes no sense. It’s a meme, not an analysis.
Also, I wouldn’t necessarily suggest the Israeli-Palestinian incremental two-state process for Taiwan-China, North Korea-South Korea, Sudan, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Yemen-Saudi, or any of the other dozens of global conflicts involving any combination of races and ethnicities. Oh wait, wait, wait, I’ve got a good one. Tell me about how I prefer the UK in the UK-Argentina Falklands dispute because the British are ever so slightly more Nordic looking, on average, than Argentinians, and not because Argentina is an economic and political basket case and was ruled by a military junta during the Falklands War.
You’ve got some serious blinders on, my friend, if you see the world through so narrow and reductive a lense. Reducing the whole world to shades of brown vs. shades of pink or tan is not a good way to understand the world. It also makes it difficult to have anything like a good-faith debate.
“Never” is a big word, and almost always unjustified. Various Israeli governments have looked for peace with Palestinians at times, just as many Palestinians have wanted peace with Israel.
Neither Palestinian nor Israeli populations are a monolith, and their attitudes and opinions change over time and in response to each other’s actions. But people are endlessly adaptable. That’s why diplomacy and a two-state solution are still possible.
Anyone who says “Israel will never seek peace,” or “Palestinians will always be terrorists” condemns both sides to ongoing conflict.
The majority of the Israeli population agrees that Netanyahu and his conservative coalition needs to go. Hamas also needs to go. Both of these governments are full of extremists, and the current conflagration is the result of two diametricaly-opposed extremist governments going head-to-head. Netanyahu wanted it and so did Hamas.
When exactly? The handful of fake attempts at peace treaties where Palestine loses its attempt at gaining sovereignty in a two state configuration?
I’ve been following this conflict for 30 years, but from afar, so I don’t claim to know the hearts and minds of the participants. I don’t know, and neither do you, if the previous attempts at a two-state solution were genuine or if they could have been implemented on the ground.
What I do know is that there is no perfect solution that will make both sides entirely happy. When you call attempts at coming to agreement “fake” it is neither correct nor helpful. Generally speaking, Labor governments in Israel have been willing to make concessions for a two-state solution, and conservative governments haven’t. That doesn’t mean that the positive efforts have been “fake”.
Since the mid-2000s, it looks to me like the play by both Hamas and Israeli conservative governments has been to ratchet up tension, force new “facts on the ground”, and provoke a violent confrontation. Sadly, the extremist strategy has achieved its goal of provoking massive violence and suffering. It remains to be seen if this strategy will break the status quo or just be another bloody chapter in an unresolved conflict.
I am sorry to tell you this, but you definitely ought look deeper into the peace accords as they were discussed at the time. Especially the ones at Camp David which were supposed to be the most fruitious and the ones Palestinians “threw out the door”. The Oslo accords were more of a guideline than a clear set of instructions. They were a very loose set of vague directions both sides were supposed to go down on. Before that there were no other concrete accords. One would argue that the Camp David Summit was the closest both sides ever got to making peace. So let’s take a look at that one and use it as a good compass in this discussion.
Palestinians were supposed to:
As you can see, all of these concessions would never amount to a completely sovereign Palestinian state, and as a result of that these talks failed in the end. To me, it looks like they were designed to fail from the get-go. Nonetheless, they did spawn new discussions and as a result of said discussion the Taba negotiations were born. With that being said, these concessions were in no way, shape, or form popular in Israel (only 25% of the Israeli public thought his positions on Camp David were just right as opposed to 58% of the public that thought Ehud Barak compromised too much). The Israeli prime minister at the time, Barak, facing elections, suspended the talks since it greatly affected his popularity in Israel. As a result of trying to broker a peace deal with Palestine, even a very bad one that was meant to fail as it was, he failed to get re-elected. The highly unbalanced concessions were already considered to be too much by Israelis.
Ehud Barak was from the Labour governments you were talking about, and this is the best Israel could ever come up with.
Trying to paint this situation as it being a level field where both sides did the same amount of wrongdoing is not a fair representation of the history of the peace process.
Since the most promising talks ever, the Camp David Summit, Israel has allowed over 750k settlers to move into the West Bank. A military regime has been installed and forced upon the occupied population contrary to international law. If getting the 30k settlers out of Gaza in 2005 was hard enough and almost caused an uproar inside the IDF, getting 750k settlers out of the West Bank will be straight up impossible without a major conflict.
There will never be two states and I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that this was in majority the doing of the Palestinians. We should talk a good look at all these facts when we start discussing this conflict and use them as a compass.
You can read more on that on Wikipedia if you’re interested in all the details. If wikipedia isn’t a good enough source, there is a great book on this subject by a german professor specializing on the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
deleted by creator
I appreciate the detailed response. I didn’t say that Israel was willing to make concessions and Palestinians were not. I said that the two populations have factions, some of whom will make concessions.
Yes, it is true that the Palestinians were not being accorded full sovereignty in previous negotiations. The Camp David accords were understood as a “path to statehood”, not the final status. Palestinians were not in a position at the time to take on all the responsibilities of full statehood, and Israel was worried about outside forces like Iran and its proxies taking advantage of the relatively weak state of the PA to create a threat right on Israel’s front porch. Hence why they wanted to control the military and the borders of the nascent Palestinian proto-state. Don’t forget that the surrounding Muslim countries tried to kill Israel in its cradle several times, so Israel had every reason to worry about their security situation.
“in its cradle” is about the most dishonest representation of Israel declaring its statehood upon the land of Palestine as a Jewish ethnostate and forcibly displacing 750,000 Palestinians from their family homes as I have seen
Calm down. Your hair-trigger outrage is showing.
I’m wondering what kind of peace they think they’re asking for. Israel has a buffet of oppressive laws that deny Palestinians access to water, land, and infrastructure, and allow the IDF to raze villages at their discretion and detain people indefinitely without evidence, all under the pretext of fighting terrorism and protecting national security. Meanwhile Israel has been the occupying force in this region for decades. Remember they are, by definition, not on the defensive. These laws actually do discriminate against Palestinians, and make life very hard for them.
I wonder if this is the kind of peace where Israel thinks “why won’t they simply accept our oppressive laws and let us displace them and take their land? Why are people fighting back all the time? We just want peace!”
I cannot stress enough that settlers and housing developments come at the same time as the military, and they work together. Like it’s not even a terrorism thing. They are just chasing Palestinians around with housing developments to justify forcing them out. As far as I can see the only way Israel’s operation could be peaceful is if the Palestinians literally just accepted their widespread displacement, dispossession and sometimes even mass murder, but we know that’s not how peace works :)
My understanding of past negotiations regarding the the two-state solution is that they proposed a “path to statehood” for Palestinians, not a one-and-done solution. It was a “give-a-little, get-a-little” incremental approach where the Palestinian proto-state would gradually gain more independence as it developed effective an effective governmental infrastructure, and as it could satisfy Israel that it could control terrorist elements within Palestine and resist being controlled by Iran and its proxies. Initially, Israel would control the borders of the Palestinian proto-state and have a military presence, but would gradually give those functions over to the Palestinian government if peace could be sustained.
Unfortunately, there are extremists on both sides who found it rather easy to smash that fragile and tentative method of peace-making. Also, of course, Iran provides non-stop support for the Palestinian factions that want to continue the conflict. And the Israeli far right does the same, probably with the support of American evangelicals who think the Rapture is just around the corner. It is a sad state of affairs for those who actually want peace.
Edit: I probably responded too quickly because your edit came to me after I already submitted my response.
To address your edit, yes, I agree with you that Israeli actions since about the mid-2000s with the aggressive expansion of settlements has only made the situation worse. It is my belief that both Hamas and Israeli right-wing governments have had the same goal since the failure of the two-state solution negotiations, and that is to provoke violence, make the other side look bad, and gain the support of sponsors and the international community.
Removed by mod
Look up the past negotiations on the two-state solution. The method proposed was to first recognize a Palestinian proto-state with Israel still controlling military and borders. Over time, as the Palestinian proto-state strengthened, showed it could control terrorism, and avoid becoming an Iranian proxy and base for another attack on Israel, the Palestinian state would become a fully sovereign nation.
What you are suggesting is impractical, certainly in Gaza. Gaza is ruled by a different government from the West Bank, and Hamas is like Hezbollah. They are a militant Iranian proxy that wants to destroy Israel, and they’ve proved it yet again.
Now, Israel has certainly NOT sought peace since Likud came to power. The events of October 7 have been brewing for over 15 years, during which time neither Hamas nor Israel has sought real peace. They’ve both been ratcheting up the pressure.
So, I’m not sure what your point is. There was a point during the Camp David talks that a path to a two-state solution seemed close. Unfortunately, the talks failed, but clearly the Israeli and Palestinian governments were literally seeking peace and willing to make concessions. Now, relations are so bad and Palestinian governance in Gaza is in such a shambles that your proposed solution would be a disaster, for both Israel and the Palestinians.
The actual practical path is to return to negotiations aimed at incrementally building a two-state solution. That means the Israeli far-right coalition government has to go, the Jewish settlements in the West Bank have to go, and it also means that Hamas and others just bent on terrorism have to go. Until that happens, they can’t return to practical negotiations. I mean, that’s obvious, right? Extremist Israelis want to eliminate the Palestinians, and extremist Palestinians want to eliminate Israel. Both have to go. Peace negotiations with someone who doesn’t want peace is pointless.
Maybe October 7 and Israel’s response will prove so horrific that it will cause both populations to vote moderates back into power who will genuinely get back to the negotiating table and not give up.
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That’s a very hard line stance you have there. That sort of uncompromising attitude is exactly what both Hamas and the Israeli right-wing have been advocating for years. Sticking uncompromisingly to your principles makes for great drama, but is really the opposite of effective diplomacy.
Removed by mod
I wouldn’t want to apply the process proposed for Palestine and Israel to Ukraine and Russia. I’m not sure why you would want me to defend that. I don’t agree with that solution for Ukraine. It’s a completely different situation. Again, this where I think you are going wrong and perhaps misunderstanding me. People who just want to talk about principles and which side is more morally correct are the ones moving the two sides farther apart. Think realpolitik.
Like I said, uncompromising principles make for great drama, but you need an actual realistic plan. How exactly would this uncompromising stance you propose work? Do you think the Arab countries will come to Palestine’s rescue militarily? Not happening. Do you think it will be like South Africa and the whole world will sanction Israel into submission? That’s not happening either. It’s not the 1980s anymore. Bono and the gang aren’t going to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What is the actual realistic alternative to the two-state incremental path I outlined above?
Removed by mod
LOL, what? That sounds like a you-problem, not a me-problem. You do realize that Jews and Palestinians are both Semites, right? You also realize that European have killed more Jews than all of the rest of the world combined, right? Also, in the case pf Ukraine, you may recall that Aryan types despise Slavs just as much as Jews. What you are suggesting makes no sense. It’s a meme, not an analysis.
Also, I wouldn’t necessarily suggest the Israeli-Palestinian incremental two-state process for Taiwan-China, North Korea-South Korea, Sudan, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Yemen-Saudi, or any of the other dozens of global conflicts involving any combination of races and ethnicities. Oh wait, wait, wait, I’ve got a good one. Tell me about how I prefer the UK in the UK-Argentina Falklands dispute because the British are ever so slightly more Nordic looking, on average, than Argentinians, and not because Argentina is an economic and political basket case and was ruled by a military junta during the Falklands War.
You’ve got some serious blinders on, my friend, if you see the world through so narrow and reductive a lense. Reducing the whole world to shades of brown vs. shades of pink or tan is not a good way to understand the world. It also makes it difficult to have anything like a good-faith debate.