Israel and the Palestinians: Ending the Stalemate

To that the Soviets, Western Europe and the UN countered that Arab rejection of Israel was a consequence of Israel’s assertion of control over the disputed territories, ignoring the historical contradiction in this claim (given that Israel only secured those territories in response to the 1967 Arab war of aggression whose stated aim was the destruction of the Jewish state).² Consequently, they argued that the Arab world generally, and the Palestinian Arabs specifically, could not be expected to accept Israel’s right to exist until the military outcome of the Six-Day War was entirely reversed. In this latter view, it was Israel, not the Arabs, which bore responsibility for the intractable nature of the conflict. And it was Israel, not the Arabs, which would have to amend its policies if peace were to be achieved.

By accepting the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian Arabs in 1993, both Israel and the U.S. essentially adopted this latter view of the nature of the conflict. A terrorist organization founded in 1964 with the goal of eliminating Israel altogether, the PLO represented the most extreme assertion of Israeli responsibility for the Arab world’s refusal to accept its existence. Indeed, eternalizing that refusal was its raison d’être.

Although the agreements that Israel and the PLO signed in 1993 and throughout the latter half of the 1990s stipulated the Palestinian requirement to accept Israel’s right to exist by, among other things, abrogating the articles in the PLO’s charter calling for the annihilation of the State of Israel,³ no Israeli government was able to force compliance with that key commitment.⁴ And despite the fact that the PLO never officially accepted Israel’s right to exist by carrying out the required changes to its charter, neither Israel nor the U.S. argued that the Palestinians’ failure to do so cancelled Israel’s responsibility to work to establish a PLO-led Palestinian state. Moreover, while the peace process was predicated on the PLO’s commitment to combat terrorism, neither Israel nor the U.S. argued that the Palestinian Authority’s consistent refusal to take action against terror groups in Palestinian society cancelled Israel’s responsibility to work to establish a PLO-led Palestinian state.

Over the years, both the Israeli and the American commitment to the Palestinians have become increasingly explicit and increasingly urgent. Whereas until his last month in office—two months after the Palestinians began their terror war against Israel—President Bill Clinton never explicitly advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state as the aim of the peace process between Israel and the PLO5, President George W. Bush first stated his support for its creation (via then Secretary of State Colin Powell) during his first year in office.⁶

In Israel, the commitment to Palestinian statehood was only made explicit in 2000, when at the Camp David peace summit that July, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered PLO leader Yasser Arafat a sovereign Palestinian state in the entire  Gaza  Strip,  in  ninety  percent  of  Judea  and Samaria and in the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem  as  well  as  in  the  Old  City  of  Jerusalem (including the Temple Mount but excluding the Jewish and Armenian Quarters of the Old City), in exchange for a Palestinian declaration that the Palestinian conflict with Israel was over.⁷

Subsequently, former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon argued that due to Palestinian population growth, Israel’s ability to sustain itself over time as a Jewish-majority, democratically governed state will be destroyed unless the Palestinians establish a state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Sharon’s assertion continues to be maintained by Prime Minister Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni today.⁸ The demographic data on which they base this view was exposed as fraudulent in 2005.⁹ Yet Israel’s elected leaders continue to insist that unless Israel facilitates the swift establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and sections of Jerusalem, the Palestinian Arab and Israeli Arab population will outstrip Israel’s Jewish population in a matter of years.