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8.8 Unilateral Disengagement and Further Negotiations

Course video 53 of 67

The escalation and de-escalation of the Arab-Israeli conflict from 1973 to the present

This course will discuss the developments in the Middle East from the early 20th century to the present. It will discuss the rise and retreat of Arab nationalism, the problems of internal cohesion of the Arab states, issues of religion and state, and the evolution of Islamist politics. It will also focus on the evolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict and its impact on the region and will conclude with an in depth analysis of the “Arab Spring” by placing these contemporary revolutionary events in their historical context. Please note that this course builds upon a previous course - The Emergence of the Modern Middle East - Part I (https://www.coursera.org/learn/modern-middle-east-1/home/welcome) Learn about the history of the Middle East for a deeper understanding of current regional developments!

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教學方

Professor Asher Susser
Senior Research Fellow

腳本

[BLANK_AUDIO].

But in Israel there was still the recognition that the continuation of

occupation of millions of Palestinians against their will was for the long term

most undesirable from the Israeli historical perspective.

After the failure of Oslo, the prime minister of Israel in the early 2000s

was the leader of the Likud at that time, Ariel Sharon, a person with a very strong

right wing bent in his original political makeup.

But strangely enough, it was Sharon of all people

who, as Prime Minister, had a major change of thought.

And

it was Sharon who came to the conclusion that the long

term occupation was so damaging to Israel in the long run

that even without an agreement with the

Palestinians, it was preferable for Israel to withdraw.

And it was Sharon who decided on the unilateral withdrawal of Israel from the

entire Gaza Strip including the dismantling of

every single Israeli settlement in that area.

And the unilateral disengagement of Israel from Gaza

was carried out in the summer of 2005.

The question is what was this

disengagement from Gaza intended to achieve?

If we recall the discussion earlier on, on ,Israel's security doctrine

here you have the conflict between current security versus basic security.

There are many who argue that the disengagement from Gaza was a terrible

mistake, because in terms of current

security, it didn't improve Israel's position.

On the contrary, it worsened it.

Israel withdrew from Gaza. Gaza was eventually taken over in 2007 by Hamas.

And for years, Israel was exposed to the continued rocketry

of Hamas against Israeli towns near Gaza and even further afield.

So there were many in Israel, perhaps even a majority today

who would argue that the disengagement from Gaza was a terrible mistake.

But then there is the argument in the name of Israel's basic security.

That is the long term preservation of Israel

as the nation state of the Jewish people.

And if it is that long term preservation of Israel that Israel's strategists have

in mind, then withdrawing from Gaza and ruling over less Palestinians and having

1.7 million less Palestinians under Israeli control

is a long term contribution to Israeli

security even if in the short term,

it does cause certain current security problems.

The failure of the peace process between Israel and the PLO led to

the ever increasing influence and power of

Hamas, the Islamist opposition in Palestinian society.

This increasing power of Hamas gave rise to

the question of who really spoke for the Palestinians.

Who represented the Palestinian people?

If Israel was expected to talk to the PLO, could the PLO indeed deliver

an agreement that it signed, considering ?the rising influence of Hamas

The PLO's greatest asset that it had ever obtained was the recognition

by the Arabs, and thereafter by

the international community and even of Israel

that the PLO was the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.

With Hamas' rising influence, and even Hamas' victory

in the Palestinian elections of 2006, the question

now arose with ever greater urgency, who was

it really who spoke for the Palestinian people?

What was left of the PLO's great representative asset?

So to sum up, why did the Oslo Accords ?fail

First and foremost, the gap between the 1967 and the 1948

files: As difficult as the 1967 questions ,were between Israel and the Palestinians

the 1948 questions were eventually insoluble.

As we have already seen in our discussion on Resolution

242, Resolution 242 remained the basis for the negotiating process between

Israel and the Palestinians, even though Resolution 242 was never

a resolution that satisfied the Palestinians on the questions of 1948.

After all, Resolution 242 was a resolution designed only to

relate to the 1967 questions, and not to the 1948 questions.

At Camp David, the Israelis came with the idea of a trade-off.

Israel would concede generously, as they thought, on the 1967 questions

in the hope that the Palestinians would agree in exchange to close the file of 1948.

But that the Palestinians were not willing to do.

And as a result, this tension between the 1967

issues and the 1948 questions remain the major reason

for the failure in the end of the Israelis

and the Palestinians to agree on an end of conflict.

And after the negotiations had failed in the year 2000,

instead of narrowing down the question to the '67 problems

as the Oslo Dynamic suggested initially, the Palestinians began to

broaden out back to the centrality of the 1948 questions

and above all, the right of return.

And instead of being placed on the back burner, the right of

return became ever more an issue at the top of the Palestinian agenda

and much harder therefore, for the Israelis and the Palestinians to agree.

If Israel wanted to end the conflict, the

Palestinians would demand only naturally that in order to end the conflict, all its

problems since the beginning must be satisfactorily resolved, and that meant

a resolution of the refugee problem that Israel was uncapable of accepting.

The last round of serious negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians

was held between Prime Minister Ehud

Olmert and President Mahmoud Abbas in 2008.

During these negotiations, there was an important narrowing of

the gaps on the '67 questions, on certain territorial issues.

Even on Jerusalem, the distance between ,the parties seemed to be somewhat less far

but not on the questions of 1948.

On the questions of 1948, the differences not

only remained the same but perhaps were even greater.

Olmert was willing to offer the

Palestinians to return of 5,000 refugees to

Israel in five years, that is, a thousand refugees a year for five years.

That was a far cry even from the positions that the Palestinians

offered in private which in public they were never willing to admit.

Privately, the Palestinians had spoken about

the possibility of 100,000 to 250,000 ,refugees

which was 20 to 30 times more than what Olmert had offered.

But these were numbers that in public they were not willing to admit.

And when they were publicized by Wiki Leaks, the

Palestinian negotiators denied that these offers were ever made.

Both sides had intrusive perceptions of the two-state solution.

That is, for both sides the two-state solution included

elements which intruded in the territory of the other party.

The Palestinian idea of the refugee solution intruded into Israel's

territory, that is, the refugees had to return to Israel proper.

From the Israeli point of view, there should be a Palestinian return of

refugees, but to the State of Palestine not to the State of Israel.

Having refugees return to the State of Israel

made no sense from the Israeli point of view.

This, the Israelis would argue, was an unacceptable intrusion

from the Palestinian state into the State of Israel itself.

And the Palestinians made a similar

argument in reference to Israel's security demands.

Israel's security demands required that Israel had a military presence and various

forms of control of the territory of the Palestinian state or its airspace.

And therefore the Palestinians argued that the way the Israelis

understood security was an intrusion into their own territory and sovereignty.

And therefore, though both sides agreed in principle

,to the idea of a two-state solution

both sides had perceptions of the two states that intruded into the territory

of the other, and made the other person's concept of two states unacceptable.

And lastly, in conclusion, a general historical

observation about Israel's place in the Middle East.

The environment in which Israel operates, and has

been operating since 1948 has changed very dramatically.

And this is very much born out by the events of the last few years,

the so called "Arab Spring," with which we ,will deal in greater detail later

but which has exposed the great weakness of the Arab states.

Israeli in its early years was mainly concerned with

how it would deal with ever increasing Arab power.

Israel's concerns today are very different

from those which its founding fathers predicted.

It's not Arab strength that Israel has to deal with, but Arab weakness.

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