On the 17th of April 2012, Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicating the only way the Palestinian Authority would agree to move forward with peace talks is if Israel would agree to freeze the building of settlements in the West Bank1. Israeli settlements in the West Bank have become the largest obstacle in negotiating a two-state solution and it appears the continued expansion of Israeli settlements may render a two-state solution impossible. Inside the Israeli government following the 1967 war there was a debate about how to deal with the newly occupied territories of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula, and Golan Heights. The debate revolved around two competing desires: the need for secure and defendable borders and the wish to absorb as few Palestinians as possible into Israel proper2. This paper intends to discuss the major influences on Israel’s West Bank settlement policy. It further argues that by straying from the pragmatic Allon Plan and by exploiting ambiguities in the wording of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and U.N. Resolution 242, Israel is squandering any future chance at a two-state solution.
Yigal Allon made the first proposal on how Israel should deal with the West Bank3. Allon was a former Israeli Defense Forces General, and in 1967 he was a member of Israel’s cabinet. In an article for Foreign Affairs Magazine, which ran in 1976, Allon publically laid out his vision for the West Bank. From his perspective, Israel existed solely because of its defensive strength and would continue to exist only as long as it maintained its military advantage4. Allon also believed the armistice lines drawn in 1949 could not be c...
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..., Ian S., “For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel” Council on Foreign Relations (1988): http://www.ciaonet.org.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/book/lustick/biblio.html (accessed May 24, 2012).
“Geneva Convention,The,” BBC News on the Web, December 10, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1682640.stm (accessed May 22, 2012).
Settlement Watch Team, “West Bank & Jerusalem Map, The Settlements: The Biggest Threat To A Two-State Solution.” PeaceNow on the Web, November 2011. http://peacenow.org.il/eng/sites/default/files/Settlement%20Map%20Nov%202011%20Page%201.pdf (accessed May 22, 2012).
Shlaim, Avi. The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2000.
U.N. Security Council, Resolution 242, 1967, http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/240/94/IMG/NR024094.pdf?OpenElement (accessed on May 22, 2012).
“Palestinians do not control their own fate but instead live under the power of other states” (82, Yambert). The one state that directly controls the fate of Palestinians in the occupied territories is Israel and for the Palestinians who do not reside in Israel, other governments control them. The history of Palestine and how Israel came into existence is essential to understand in order to break down the present day conflict. The most dominant and important player in the Palestinian – Israeli conflict has been the United States of America, which has completely shaped the predicament in order to fulfill its interests. Before delving into the role of the United States, it is essential to go back in time and familiarize with the history of Palestine and Israel.
Ben-Gurion, David. “Status-Quo Agreement.” In Israel in the Middle East: Second Edition, edited by Itamar Rabinovich and Jehude Reinharz, 58-59. Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2008.
The Nation of Israel was founded out of the eastern area of a British occupied (former Ottoman Empire) section of western Asia known as the “Mandate of Palestine”. There was an attempt in November of 1947 by the United Nations (UN) to partition the region into Arab and Israeli states with the Holy City Jerusalem as an international city. (United Nations, 1949) The Jews accepted this proposal while the Arab League and other groups did not. (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2006). What followed was an Arab strike that became violent and sent the Jews on the defensive. They rebounded and brought the civil war to an end, expelling over 250,000 Arabs. The day before the British mandate was set to expire; the region was invaded by four Arab States starting the yearlong 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Ultimately a cease fire and truce was reached with the establishment of bo...
The Israeli-Palestine conflict is an event that has been well documented throughout the course of Middle-Eastern history. The conflict dates back as far as the nineteenth century where Palestine and Zionist, will later be known as Israel, are two communities each with different ideologies had the same overwhelming desire to acquire land. However, what makes this clash what it is, is the fact that both of these up and coming communities are after the same piece of land. The lengths that both sides went to in order obtain they believed was theirs has shaped the current relationship between the two nations today.
Israel has been dealing with Palestinian pressures to give back the land that they consider “theirs” and other leaders have had different views on how to handle aggression from the Palestinians. Ehud Olmert’s views included handling the conflict with peace and not using violence. He suggested to Mohamed Abbas a convergence plan which centered around the idea that the Israeli people would be forced out of the West Bank which is an are...
On November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted for a partition resolution that led to the establishment of the nation of Israel in May, 1948. This was great news for Jews in Palestine and the diaspora as it meant the fulfillment of the quest for the rebirth of their nation in their previous homeland after many years of wandering (Pappe, 2006, p. 12). However, their Palestinian Arab counterparts opposed to the establishment from the start felt cheated by the international community and remained categorical that the final answer to the Jewish problem would only be solved in blood and fire (Karsh, 2002, p. 8).
BIBLIOGRAPHYSachar, Howard M. A History of Israel From the Rise of Zionism to our Time.Yalowitz, Gerson, U.S. News and World Report, "How Bad Can it Get?" December 10, 1990, Vol. 109.____________, A Letter From Israel, Halva, Jerusalem (1992).__________________, Israel Today, Halva Press, Jerusalem (1992)._______________, U.S. News and World Report, "A Chilling Effect With Israel," (December 31, 1990), Vol. 109, p. 14.
Bourke, Dale Hanson. The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Tough Questions, Direct Answers. Downers Grove, IL: Inter Varsity, 2013. N. pag. Print.
First starting with the mutual recognition as political entities and through the interim period build trust and inter reliance needed for administrative and security arrangements. The hope was that through this process Israel and Palestine could build the momentum to tackle the more sensitive issues, referred to as “final status issues.” Among these difficult and complex issues were the borders and status of a Palestinian State, the claims and repatriation of Palestinian refugees, the fate of the Jewish settlements, and the disposition of East Jerusalem. While it may seem counter intuitive the Oslo Peace Accords did not actually address any of these issues. This was due to its purpose as a way to build the political framework that would allow for later negotiations and not as a permeant peace solution for the region.
Oren, Michael B. "An End to Israel's Invisibility." New York Times 14 Oct. 2010: 39. Vocational and Career Collection. Web. 4 Feb. 2014.
Kriesberg, L. (2001). Mediation and the Transformation of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. In Journal of Peace Research, 38, 3, 373-392.
In this paper, I will discuss why the Palestinians should be able to govern their own state alongside the state of Israel. I will also discuss why Palestine should not have their own state, as well as why the one-state solution would be the right way to solve the solution.
On the 28th of September, of the year 2000, the second Palestinian Intifada took place. The main reason that sparked this Intifada was the provocative visit of Ariel Sharon, the current Israeli Prime Minister, to the Haram Al Sharif. Even though the visit was what set the ground on fire, these feeling of hatred and desire to rebel had been stirring inside the Palestinians ever since the declaration of the Israeli State, on the Palestinian land, back in 1948. This Palestinian frustration is due to their lack of trust and hope in a peace process that did not yield meaningful results. After seven years of peace talks and six agreements, Palestinians realized that Israel is not serious about peace. Since 1993, Israel has doubled settlements on confiscated Palestinian land, continued to imprison Palestinian prisoners and has implemented only 8 percent of what it agreed to implement in all the signed agreements.
Since 1967, numerous illegal Israeli settlements have been built on Palestinian land and the occupied territory, “housing more then 400,000 Jewish settlers.” Even since 1967, there has been a lot of divergence, unrest, bereavement, war and obliteration on both sides. There was a war in 1973 and two intifadas Palestinian uprising one that began in 1987 and one that began in 2000 that brings us into the 21st century. There have been many attempts in resolving conflicts however; the conflict is a matter of whether the Palestinians should be permitted to form their own independent country and government in an area that was once theirs yet now occupied and currently the nation of Israel. The Arab- Israeli conflict is historically a fuse that ignites regional battle due to the occupation of Palestine.
For many centuries, Judaic and Arabian societies have engaged in one of the most complicated and lengthy conflicts known to mankind, the makings of a highly difficult peace process. Unfortunately for all the world’s peacemakers the Arab-Israeli conflict, particularly the war between Israel and the Palestinian Territories, is rooted in far more then ethnic tensions. Instead of drawing attention towards high-ranking officials of the Israeli government and Hamas, focus needs to be diverted towards the more suspect and subtle international relations theory of realism which, has imposed more problems than solutions.