The fading dream of the Palestinian state

Why is the peace process broken?

Decades of death, disappointment, and shortsighted leadership have destroyed any chance that the two sides could trust each other. Dwindling hopes for a two-state solution grew even dimmer this summer, after the bloody war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Over a period of 50 days, Islamic militants fired 4,500 rockets into Israel and launched raids from hidden tunnels; in response, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israel Defense Forces to lay waste to large sections of Gaza, killing more than 2,100 Palestinians. Though most of the Hamas missiles were intercepted or went awry, the attacks terrified Israelis and deepened the belief that making concessions to the Palestinians would only make Israel more vulnerable. "People realize now that the whole notion of a Palestinian state, of handing over land to another Arab entity, won't work," Naftali Bennett, leader of the right-wing Jewish Home party, recently told David Remnick of The New Yorker. Palestinian rage in Gaza and the West Bank, meanwhile, is growing, with some warning that a third intifada, or violent uprising, may soon erupt. "The Palestinians and Israelis have lost faith that a peaceful solution is possible at all," says Avi Issacharoff, an Israeli Middle East analyst.

Was peace ever possible?

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

A cynic would say no, but over decades of talks brokered by the U.S. and the international community, the two sides did make significant progress in fits and starts. In 1974, a United Nations resolution "on the peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine" specifically called for "two states for two peoples." That concept has served as the basis for negotiations ever since, including Secretary of State John Kerry's failed efforts over the past year. The closest the two sides have come to an agreement was at Camp David in 2000.

What was offered?

President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak forged a proposal in which Israel would turn over all of Gaza, about 95 percent of the West Bank, and most of East Jerusalem to the Palestinians in return for the Palestinians' declaring "the end of the conflict" and surrendering the "right of return" to Israeli land. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat flatly rejected the offer, insisting that any Israeli presence in or control of the West Bank was unacceptable. Clinton was livid, yelling at Arafat, "I am a failure, and you have made me one." Since then, repeated attempts by Presidents Bush and Obama to rekindle peace talks have foundered over the long-standing territorial disputes and deep mutual distrust.

(This article originally appeared in The Week magazine. Try 4 risk-free issues, and stay up to date with the week's most important news and commentary.)

What is the mood in Israel?

Bitter and fearful. Bennett says there's been a "sea change in Israel" in the years since 2005, when Israel pulled all troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip in hopes of reducing conflict with Palestinians. Two years later, the radical Islamist group Hamas seized power there and began mounting attacks on Israel. "Gaza became Hamastan, a fortress of terror," Bennett said. After that, he asks, why would Israelis hand the West Bank to the Palestinians? From the West Bank, Palestinian radicals could easily hit West Jerusalem and Tel Aviv with rockets and mortars, and permanently close Ben Gurion airport. After the recent Gaza war, Netanyahu said, "There cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan" — that is, the West Bank. Since Palestinians would never agree to a peace deal that kept Israeli security forces in the West Bank, Netanyahu was essentially declaring the two-state solution dead.

What do the Palestinians say?

The Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, has given up on negotiations and is appealing to the international community to recognize a Palestinian state. Under Netanyahu, settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have continued to expand, with close to 400,000 Jews now living in areas claimed by the Palestinians. "Palestinians have got to a point of frustration where they cannot see any way out," says Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. He has asked the U.N. and individual nations to recognize Palestinian statehood. While that recognition might be a symbolic victory for the Palestinians, it does nothing to change the reality on the ground.

So what does that leave?

Some Israelis are openly calling for a "one-state solution," in which Israel would formally annex the West Bank and make Palestinians citizens of Israel. But there is little support for that idea either in Israel or the West Bank. For the foreseeable future, the West Bank will remain occupied territory, and the status quo of hatred, distrust, and periodic bloody confrontation will prevail. Daniel Drezner, a Tufts University professor of international studies, describes the situation as "a stable equilibrium of perpetual violence in which the leaders of both sides politically profit from conflict." In this equilibrium, the two-state solution will remain a slogan — a mythical ideal — that neither side has any intention of pursuing.

The U.S.'s Mideast policy after Obama

Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson is one of the Republican Party's biggest financial supporters as well as an outspoken defender of Israel. The billionaire gave more than $100 million to Republican candidates and super PACs in the 2012 election and has already held auditions of the GOP's possible presidential contenders in 2016. Whoever gets his support, he says, must share his views on Israel. At a recent conference of the Israeli American Council in Washington, D.C., Adelson called the Palestinians "an invented people" who should be kept behind "a big wall," with no say in their own governance. "I don't think the Bible says anything about democracy," Adelson said. "If Israel isn't going to be a democratic state — so what?" At the same conference, major Democratic donor Haim Saban, who has close ties to Hillary Clinton, said if the U.S. cuts a nuclear deal with Iran that doesn't guarantee Israel's security, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should "bomb the living daylights out of these sons of bitches."