Document Type

Article

Disciplines

International Law

Abstract

With the Oslo process in collapse and its troops re-occupying major Palestinian cities, Israel stands at a historic crossroads. It must decide between two major policy options as it strives for a formula to counter Palestinian terrorism. As an adjunct to military measures, Israel can revive political negotiations despite the violence. One goal of this strategy would be to resolve the dispute with the Palestinians through the creation of an Arab state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.' This policy is the preference of Israel's ruling Likud and opposition Labor parties, subject to differences regarding timing, the nature of the new state, and the suitable Palestinian negotiating partner.

There is a dissenting view within Israel, however, which is most prominently expressed by Binyamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's main political rival within his own Likud party. Netanyahu's policy opinion rejects Palestinian statehood. According to this view, Israel should re-occupy the autonomous areas, dismantle the Palestinian Authority, and exile Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat.

While Netanyahu contemplates future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations toward an accommodation that will allow Palestinians to run their own affairs, he rules out the creation of a Palestinian state as a feature of a political solution.

Outside of Israel, the momentum favoring creation of a Palestinian state seems to be irresistible. The Bush administration supports Palestinian statehood,4 something the Europeans have long advocated. With unanimous Arab support for such an outcome,' a PLO-controlled state appears to be the universally-accepted key to a comprehensive Middle East peace.

On the other hand, nine years of post-Oslo terrorism legitimately raises the question of whether such a policy can bring peace. Palestinian autonomy has coincided with a dramatic increase in terrorism. 6 That the further step of conferring statehood will reverse the course of recent events requires a leap of faith that is difficult to reconcile with the violence of the past nine years. In evaluating the alternatives, it is important to place Oslo's failure in the proper historical context. The object would be to determine whether, based on experience, the political process should have been expected to fail, or whether there is still room for optimism that a process like Oslo can work. In other words, analysts need to ask if there is a historical basis for the supposition that the partition of post-1967 Israel into Jewish and Arab states is likely to yield peace.

It is often said in political matters that "past is prologue.",7 Critics of the peace process argue that withdrawal from the 1967 territories will not lead to peace. They point to the Arabs' rejection of partition in 1947, the three wars fought between Israel and its Arab neighbors before the Jewish state ever occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and to pre-1967 Palestinian terror attacks. 9 Yet this review of history, while clearly relevant and indeed persuasive, is not broad enough. It is necessary to place pre1967 (and indeed post-Oslo) conduct into broader perspective by considering the success of other two-state solutions to ethnic conflict, particularly where the demands of a Muslim aspirant to statehood were involved. The purpose would be to determine if a solution of this type has worked before. If it has, perhaps the conduct outlined by Oslo's critics could be considered anomalous. If not, Arab rejectionism should be seen as consistent with a more fundamental problem with a two-state solution to address Muslim grievances.

Accessibility Requirements

1

Download

Share

COinS