No Peace Without Compromise
(Updated September 2009)
The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians
is complex and yet its solution can be boiled
down to one word – compromise. Throughout the history of negotiations,
first Zionists and later Israelis have accepted
this reality and repeatedly made and offered
compromises, but the conflict has persisted
because the Palestinians have never been
willing to do the same. In fact, if you look
at their negotiating position today, it is
as recalcitrant as it was nearly a century
ago.
sraeli Position
Since the early 20th
century, it has been clear that the only
way to satisfy the competing demands of
Jews and Arabs in Israel/Palestine was
to divide the land. For more than 70 years,
since Britain’s Lord Peel first
proposed partitioning Palestine into a Jewish
and an Arab state, the Jews have accepted
a two-state solution to the conflict.
Palestinian Position
To this day, the Palestinians do not accept
the legitimacy of a Jewish state in what
they consider Palestine.
Israeli Position
When the United Nations voted to partition
Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, the Zionists accepted a compromise that left
them with a national home in less than 20
percent of the area originally promised to
them by the British.
Palestinian Position
The Palestinians rejected
the offer of an Arab state and joined with Israel’s neighbors in a war to exterminate the Jews.
They lost. One consequence of their decision
was that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians
became refugees.
Israeli Position
After 1948, Israel offered
to allow as many as 100,000 Palestinians
to return in exchange for a peace agreement
with the Arab states.
Palestinian Position
The Palestinians and
Arab leaders rejected any offer that implied
the recognition of Israel. Palestinian
refugees were confined by their Arab brothers
to refugee camps and prevented from becoming
citizens (except in Jordan, which recently
decided to strip them of their citizenship). Jordan and Egypt occupied territory now
claimed by the Palestinians, but the Palestinians
never demanded an end to the occupation
or independence. Palestinians formed terror
groups that have engaged in a violent campaign
against Israelis and Jews around the world
to the present day.
Israeli Position
After a series of provocations
and an act of war (Egypt’s blockade
of Israeli shipping in the Gulf of Aqaba), Israel attacked Egypt, Syria and Jordan (after King Hussein ignored warnings to stay out
of the fighting and shelled Jerusalem) and
captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It
immediately offered to return most of the
territory in exchange for peace.
Palestinian Position
The Arabs responded to Israel’s peace
overture with three noes: “no peace
with Israel, no negotiations with Israel,
no recognition of Israel.”
Israeli Position
In 1979, Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt, dismantled settlements and other Israeli
installations in the Sinai and returned the
territory to the Egyptians. The Palestinians
were offered autonomy, a formula for limited
self-determination in the short-run that
inevitably would have led to statehood.
Palestinian Position
The Palestinians rejected the autonomy proposal
and refused to participate in negotiations.
Israeli Position
In 1993 and 1995, Israel and the PLO signed
the Oslo accords with the aim of creating
a Palestinian state within five years. Israel agreed to gradually withdraw from most of
the West Bank and Gaza Strip in exchange
for peace. Israel withdrew from approximately
80 percent of Gaza and 40 percent of the West Bank and turned over most civil authority
to the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian Position
Terrorism continued unabated and escalated
by the mid-90s.
Israeli Position
Israel agreed in 1998 to withdraw from another
13 percent of the West Bank in return for
a Palestinian promise to outlaw and combat terrorist organizations, prohibit illegal
weapons, stop weapon smuggling, and
prevent incitement of violence and terrorism.
Palestinian Position
The Palestinians once again failed to fulfill
their promise to end terror and sabotaged
the plan for additional Israeli redeployments.
Israeli Position
In 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to withdraw from 97 percent of the West Bank and 100 percent of the Gaza Strip.
In addition, he agreed to dismantle 63 isolated settlements. In exchange for the 3 percent
annexation of the West Bank, Israel would
increase the size of the Gaza territory by
roughly a third. Barak also made previously
unthinkable concessions on Jerusalem, agreeing
that Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem would become the capital of the new state.
The Palestinians would maintain control over
their holy places and have “religious
sovereignty” over the Temple Mount.
The proposal also guaranteed Palestinian
refugees the right of return to the Palestinian
state and reparations from a $30 billion
international fund that would be collected
to compensate them.
Palestinian Position
Yasser Arafat rejected the proposal without
even making a counter offer. Arafat, according
to chief U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross, was
not willing to end the conflict with Israel.
The Palestinians subsequently instigated
a five-year war of terror that claimed more
than 1,000 Israeli lives.
Israeli Position
In 2005, Israel decided to evacuate every
soldier and citizen from the Gaza Strip.
This painful disengagement uprooted 9,000
Israelis from their homes. At the request
of the Palestinians, Israel razed all the settlements to make room for what the Palestinians
said would be high-rise apartments for refugees
living in camps. American Jews bought greenhouses
from the Israelis and gave them to the Palestinians
so they would have a ready-made multimillion
dollar export economy and businesses that could
employ hundreds of Palestinian workers. By
ending the “occupation” and removing
the settlements, Israel was testing the oft-expressed
view that these were the obstacles to peace.
The expectation in Israel was that the Palestinians
would take the opportunity to build the infrastructure
of a state and, since they no longer had
any justification for “resistance,” they
would have the chance to show they could
coexist beside Israel and set the stage for
future compromises on the West Bank.
Palestinian Position
The Palestinians objected
to the disengagement and refused to cooperate
with the Israeli plan to withdraw. Since
the evacuation, the Palestinians have not laid
a single brick in the former settlements to build housing for refugees. The greenhouses
were vandalized and the chance for taking
over Israeli exports was lost. The few
greenhouses that remained intact were converted
to Hamas terrorist training camps. Instead
of building the infrastructure for a state,
the Palestinians had a civil war that led
to the takeover of Gaza by Hamas. Instead
of getting peace in exchange for territory, Israel was bombarded over the next three
years with 10,000 rockets and mortars.
Israeli Position
Despite what virtually all Israelis viewed
as the failure of the disengagement experiment,
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert restarted negotiations
with the Palestinians and offered to withdraw
from approximately 94 percent of the West
Bank, with 4.5 percent of the remainder to
be received in a swap for land now in Israel.
Another 1.5 percent of the territory would
be used for passages to a Mediterranean port
and Gaza. Olmert reportedly proposed a form
of international (Arab states plus Israel and Palestine) control of the Holy Basin
(the Old City) and a joint committee to administer East Jerusalem until permanent arrangements
were settled.
Palestinian Position
Abbas rejected the deal. Palestinian
chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said later, “First
[the Israelis] said we would [only have the
right to] run our own schools and hospitals.
Then they consented to give us 66% [of
the occupied territories]. At
Camp David they offered 90% [actually 97%]
and [recently] they offered 100%. So why
should we hurry, after all the injustice
we have suffered?” Echoing the three
noes of 1967, Palestinians declared at the Fatah conference in Bethlehem in August 2009:
no negotiations with Israel, no recognition
of Israel as a Jewish state and no end to
the armed struggle against Israel.
Israeli Position
Israel has offered compromises on all the
final status issues:
Borders – UN Security Council Resolution
242 called for Israel to withdraw from territory – not
all territory – it captured in 1967 in exchange for secure and defensible borders
and peace. Israel has already withdrawn from
94 percent of the territory it captured in 1967. It has given up 100 percent of the Gaza Strip and nearly half the West Bank.
As noted above, as recently as 2008, Israel offered to withdraw from 94 percent of the
remaining territory in the West Bank.
Palestinian Position
The Palestinians insist that Israel withdraw
to the 1967 border.
Israeli Position
Refugees – Israel has allowed roughly
200,000 Palestinians into Israel since Oslo
and has agreed to take in an additional number
on a humanitarian basis. Israel also supports
the return of refugees to an eventual Palestinian
state and the payment of compensation to
the refugees from an international fund. Israel also expects that the Jews forced
to flee from Arab countries be compensated.
Palestinian Position
The Palestinians demand the right of all
refugees to live in Palestine, including
what is now the State of Israel. They do
not acknowledge the claims of Jewish refugees.
Israeli Position
Settlements – Israel has already dismantled all the settlements it built in the Sinai and in Gaza. It has
also dismantled four settlements in Samaria. Israel has in the past offered to dismantle
most settlements in the West Bank and has,
at various times, frozen settlement construction
in the course of peace negotiations in the
hope of reaching a final agreement. Prime
Minister Netanyahu has also offered a temporary
settlement freeze.
Palestinian Position
The Palestinians demand that all settlements be dismantled from the West Bank and Jerusalem.
While they maintain that Arabs have the right
to live in Israel, they deny the right of
Jews to live in Judea and Samaria.
Israeli Position
Jerusalem – Israel maintains that Jerusalem is its eternal capital
and has resisted Palestinian demands that
the city be divided. Still, Barak offered
to allow the Palestinians to establish their
capital in Eastern Jerusalem and offered
a compromise over control of the Temple Mount.
Olmert also offered to compromise on Jerusalem.
Palestinian Position
The Palestinians have rejected all Israeli
compromises on Jerusalem and insist that
although there has never been an Arab capital
in Jerusalem, they should be allowed to establish
one there.
Conclusion
Israel has a long history of compromising
and continues to offer concessions in the
interest of peace. The Palestinian’s
have an equally long history of refusing
to compromise. As President Obama seeks to
restart peace talks between Israel and the
Palestinians it is clear where the emphasis
must be placed if he hopes to succeed in
ending the conflict.
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