Hamas’ attack on Israel, and Israel’s subsequent bombing campaign and ground invasion of Gaza, seem an unlikely prelude to an agreement to end the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. But supporters of the two-state solution believe that, paradoxically, the violence unleashed since October has given their cause more ammunition.
Two weeks before the horror of October 7, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared before the United Nations General Assembly announcing “the dawn of a new era of peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors.”
The quarter century in which “the so-called experts” dominated with “their approach” (the negotiation of a two-state solution with Israel and the future Palestinian state sharing territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean) has not led “to a single peace treaty,” Netanyahu said.
“In 2020, under the approach I advocated (…) without delay, we made amazing progress. Four peace treaties in four months, with four Arab countries,” the Israeli leader congratulated himself.
Netanyahu was referring to the so-called Abraham Accords, sponsored by US President Donald Trump after his Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative met the same fate as those of many of his predecessors.
The Abraham Accords of 2020
- September 15 – Agreements to normalize relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and between Israel and Bahrain.
- December 22- Agreement to normalize relations between Israel and Morocco
- December 24 – Agreement to normalize relations between Israel and Sudan
Previous Arab-Israeli agreements
- March 26, 1979 – Peace treaty between Egypt and Israel
- September 13, 1993 – First Oslo Agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
- October 26, 1994 – Peace treaty between Israel and Jordan
- September 24, 1995 – Second agreement between Israel and the PLO
The situation created by the signing of the agreements would persuade the Palestinians to give up their “fantasy of destroying Israel and finally embrace a path to authentic peace,” Netanyahu said.
He then showed a map of the “New Middle East” with an implicit message: Palestinian surrender and the end of the two-state solution.
President Joe Biden, meanwhile, had spent less energy on the Israeli-Palestinian dossier that the last seven tenants of the White House.
In February, the US State Department said that a two-state solution was perceived as “distant”, but Washington remained “committed to maintaining a horizon of hope”.
That political formula was totally absent in the calls that Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, held with Palestinian and Israeli leaders in September.
Things have changed a lot.
“The United States continues to believe that the best viable path, indeed the only viable path, is through the two-state solution,” Blinken declared in Israel on November 3.
But the obstacles and contradictions that prevented peace 25 years ago They have become even more complex.
How hopes for peace faded
The draft agreement for a two-state solution was drawn up after Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), led by Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction, agreed to recognize each other in 1993 in negotiations facilitated by mediators. from Norway.
But the so-called Oslo Process never reached the expected outcome and left a range of problems even more difficult to resolve.
The “peace for land” agreements established the administration of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in areas that Israel conquered and occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War.
But the Israeli occupation and Jewish settler settlements continued, and so-called “permanent status” issues were left aside to be resolved in future talks.
This included the status of Palestinian refugees from lands incorporated into Israel in the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948 and after the UN voted in favor of partition in 1947.
Israel had also annexed East Jerusalem in 1967 and this posed another problem, since there are sacred places there to which both sides give so much importance that they are not willing to give them up.
After decades of diplomatic preening, a solution to these issues was in sight at a closed-door summit hosted by then-US President Bill Clinton at Camp David in 2002, but then-Israeli Prime Minister Isaac Rabin and Palestinian Authority leader, Yasser Arafat, They were unable to iron out their differences.
Some blamed the others for the failure. American and Israeli officials said Arafat rejected the most generous offer he was ever going to get. The Palestinians presented it as a scam, very far from demands such as being able to establish their capital in East Jerusalem.
Critics pointed out that Israel had long ago achieved the goal of neutralizing its main adversary. So why give up a territory in which he had invested so much, especially with security control delegated to the Palestinian Authority in Palestinian-populated areas?
Arafat negotiated in a position of weakness, while the American mediator maintained an apparently closer relationship with Israel than any two states had ever had in history.
There were other relevant factors that proved insurmountable in reaching the two-state solution.
The Hamas Islamic Resistance Movement founded in Gaza in 1987 did not agree with the concessions Arafat was making to achieve peace. and sought the opportunity to derail the talks with suicide attacks beginning in 1994.
There were also other significant factors that proved to be insurmountable on the path to the two-state solution.
The ultra-Orthodox settlers took advantage of the situation to extend and reaffirm the Jewish presence in the lands that, according to their vision, God had promised them.
What happened after Oslo
When the Palestinian uprising known as the Second Intifada broke out in 2000, Israeli politics shifted noticeably to the right.
The Israeli Labor Party, which had driven the Oslo process, was reduced to irrelevance, while different versions of the pro-settlement right predominated.
Voters looked to Ariel Sharon, of the right-wing Likud party and Arafat’s implacable rival, to navigate the turbulence.
The rebellious Palestinian residents encountered Israeli military power, while Sharon’s Executive raised the barrier that separates the Palestinians from the Israelis and from some settlements in the West Bank.
Something harder to predict, Sharon It also displaced several thousand settlers living among Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians. and relocated troops outside the perimeter. He also evacuated four isolated settlements in the West Bank.
The ramifications of the “withdrawal” plan were enormous, since the intention was to safeguard a Jewish majority in Israeli territory by separating itself from a densely populated Palestinian area.
Sharon’s top adviser told a reporter that it served to end political negotiations.
However, the measure divided the Likud and left him without the support of the colonists who had joined the agreements.
Undeterred, Sharon formed a new party to fight the 2006 elections.
The brain hemorrhage he suffered weeks before the elections meant that we never knew if a similar plan existed for the West Bank. If so, only Sharon had the influence to carry it out.
Denounced by Arafat’s successor Mahmoud Abbas as a betrayal of Oslo principles, Hamas figures in Gaza They celebrated the withdrawal as a victory for the resistance.
But with the cooperation of Egypt, Israel reinforced the blockade of Gaza and there were constant escalations of violence, with incursions by radical militants and rocket fire against Israel, which responded with bombings and invasions to keep the resistance under control.
Meanwhile, Hamas was making progress in the West Bank.
Voters disillusioned by Fatah’s failure to achieve Palestinian independence or govern transparently and without corruption led to a Hamas majority in the 2006 Palestinian Authority legislative elections.
International pressure tried to get Hamas to assume the Palestinian Authority’s previous commitments, how to end violence and recognize Israell, something he was not willing to do.
Hamas forcibly expelled the Palestinian Authority from Gaza, leading to the separation of Gaza, as a center of armed resistance, from the Fatah-ruled West Bank, which remained committed to the peace agreements, of which there were increasingly fewer prospects.
Although there were nuances in Hamas’s attitudes that hinted at the possibility of future political compromise, with offers of a long-term cessation of violence and the suggestion that a state could be established on the territory Israel occupied in 1967.
But Hamas did not change its statutes, which call for the elimination of Israelwhich for its part continued to expand the settlements in the West Bank in size and population.
Over time, Hamas also took advantage of the lack of surveillance in Gaza to develop its military capacity with the support of allies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, in what became known as the Axis of Resistance.
New paradigms
While October 7 and its aftermath once again brings the perennial Israeli-Palestinian issue to the forefront of global attention, several new factors have also been highlighted.
On the Israeli side, there is broad agreement that Hamas must be destroyed, despite the impact this may have on civilians in the Gaza Strip.
The discourse among Netanyahu’s right-wing supporters contemplates the permanent expulsion of the population of Gaza, which, seen from the Palestinian side, would represent another Nakba, the Arabic word for “catastrophe”, which refers to what happened in recent years. months of 1947 and early 1949, when around 700,000 Palestinians became refugees in the land that became Israel.
On the Israeli left, which feared that Netanyahu’s policies would lead inexorably toward a single apartheid state, the elimination of Hamas reestablishes a binary equation, instead of the three entities of Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and Israel. This puts two-state calculations back on the table.
Author Avraham Burg, a former Labor Party member, told the BBC that Israelis and Palestinians need so long to recover from “a real shock,” but he believes that when the time comes they will choose a two-state option that offers the only sustainable cessation of bloodshed.
“Any political formula that eventually promises long-term tranquility will be adopted by the majority of Israelis,” he predicted.
Palestinians experiencing the attack on Gaza, escalating settler violence and military pressure in the West Bank, or watching all of this on television and social media, may have different considerations.
A survey – conducted by the Arab World for Research and Development – from October 31 to November 7 among Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank, found that 68% of respondents said that his support for a two-state solution had waned.
Palestinians will also be aware of growing international support for their cause. A Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that younger Americans were less likely to endorse support for Israel than previous generations, and 40% of respondents under 40 said the United States should be a neutral mediator.
It is too early to know how – or if – the events of 2023 will translate into more pressure on Israel. than he felt for three decades under the protective influence of Washington as the main sponsor of the peace negotiations.
However, those Palestinians who still believe in peace will not agree to return to open-ended negotiations that serve to buy time for more Israeli settlements in the territory called to host the future Palestinian state.
“If they want to be serious,” says Dalal Iriqat, an academic specializing in conflict resolution, “There must be concrete actions, mainly defining Israel’s borders and ending the occupation“.
“Continue repeating the same nice US rhetoric about the peace process, without action, that cannot be.”
Remember that you can receive notifications from BBC News Mundo. Download the latest version of our app and activate them so you don’t miss our best content.
- Do you already know our YouTube channel? Subscribe!