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The roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

By Khaled Diab

 

This year’s debate will consider the question of whether Israeli intransigence is at the root of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

 

November 2007

 

Let me begin by saying that this is a complex and controversial issue, fraught with ideological pitfalls and political posturing. When we attempt to tackle this question, we must be careful that we approach it constructively. We should not seize it as an opportunity to exchange recrimination and counter-recrimination.

 

During my own recent visit to Israel and Palestine, I noticed that too many Israelis tended to believe that they had “no partner for peace” and that the Palestinians never “missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity”. For their part, many Palestinians believed that the Israelis talk about peace but only want the land.

 

The Israeli sentiments struck me as particularly ironic considering they were being made at a time when the Israeli government was blatantly letting a precious opening to make peace slip through its fingers – namely the Arab offer of a comprehensive settlement earlier this year. Instead of seizing this golden opportunity to engage in a more constructive dialogue with its neighbours, Israel has cold-shouldered the Arab League, with the risk of damaging or even torpedoing the fragile consensus to talk to Israel in the Arab camp, particularly so soon after Israel’s disastrous military adventure in Lebanon last year.

 

In fact, recent years have highlighted a clear Arab drive to reach a diplomatic accommodation with Israel – although it should be acknowledged that what the Arabs are currently willing to offer amounts to a grudging top-level recognition of Israel’s reality, rather than a whole-hearted attempt to bring Israel into the Middle Eastern fold.

 

Meanwhile, the Israeli position has hardened and grown more intransigent. This is partly due to the relative balance of power. Whether Israelis consciously articulate the sentiment or not, they are still riding high on the military prowess they exhibited 40 years ago in the 1967 war, while the Arabs still smart at the crushing humiliation visited upon them by Israeli firepower.

 

This Israeli swagger was partially dented by the early successes scored by the Egyptian-led attack in 1973, which Israel only managed to turn to its favour following US intervention. In the aftermath of this, Egypt and Israel struck a separate peace.

 

Similarly, the first Intifada focused Israeli minds on the need to reach some kind of arrangement with the Palestinians. However, the fact that there was more at stake than some arid desert and the huge disparity in relative power encouraged complacency in the Israeli camp which demanded everything of the Palestinians and was willing to give very little in return.

 

In fact, the Oslo Accords sought to exact a victor’s peace, rather than a just peace. However, in the long term, it is only a fair and equitable settlement which can deliver the security for which Israelis long and the dignity of which Palestinians dream.

 

 

 

 

Tekstvak: During the catastrophic Oslo years, there was as much of a conflict within both societies as between them. And the hardliners won. In Israel, the anti-peace movement cynically constructed “realities on the ground” with their de facto annexation of most of the West Bank through accelerated settlement building. On the other side, Palestinian extremists sent out human bombs to sabotage the quest for peace.

 

But intransigence is not just an Israeli game. In fact, for decades, Arabs and Israelis have been locked in their own peculiar dance macabre in which they have cast off their humanity and pulled each other down from one horror to the next. Along the way, golden opportunities to avoid entrenched and costly conflict have been missed aplenty.

 

What if the early Zionist movement had sat down with Palestinian leaders, explained their situation in Europe and agreed sustainable quotas for Jewish immigration, rather than depend solely on British largesse? Might we not now have a prosperous and successful multicultural ‘Palestine’ with a significant Jewish population, as well as intact and successful Jewish minorities across the Arab world?

 

What if the Arabs had not declared war in 1948 and had, instead, focused their efforts in supporting the partitioned state of Palestine? Might the Palestinians not today be living in a state of dignity and prosperity, and perhaps even in peace with their Jewish neighbours? What would have happened had Egypt and Jordan not annexed Gaza and the West Bank and let the Palestinians build a nascent state there?

 

What if Israel had not attacked its neighbours in 1967, might the earlier secret contacts between Arab and Israeli diplomats have borne fruit? What if the Arabs had not issued their famous three ‘no’s on Israel after that crushing defeat, might they have managed to negotiate the return of most of their land before settlements had been built on them? What if the Arab world had joined Egypt in presenting a united peace front in the 1970s?

 

On and on, the sad saga drags on. And future generations will be asking their own ‘what ifs’, if we don’t all get our acts together and act now to avert further disaster. The politicians have failed to deliver peace. It is now the people’s turn.

 

  

This article was written as the introduction to a debate at Trinity College Dublin’s the Hist debating society debate entitled ‘That Israeli Intransigence is the Root of the Crisis in the Middle East’. Watch the debate here.

 

 

ã2007 K. Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website is the copyright of Khaled Diab.