REFLECTIONS

The White House Path to Mideast Peace Travels Through a Single State

Jun 25, 2019 | 17:08 GMT

Demonstrators opposed to the U.S.-led plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace march through Ramallah in the West Bank on June 24.

Palestinian demonstrators in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Ramallah carry banners during a protest against the U.S.-led Peace to Prosperity conference in Bahrain, June 24. The peace conference on the Palestinian economy could present Washington with a new opportunity to push Gulf allies and Israel closer together as tensions with common foe Iran rise.

(ABBAS MOMANI/AFP/Getty Images)

Highlights

  • The United States is pursuing a radically different peace plan process that increases the likelihood that there will be no Palestinian state formed in the West Bank
  • The failure to form a viable Palestinian state will have demographic, economic, social, and strategic consequences not just for the Israelis and Palestinians but neighbors like Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
  • Beyond the immediate regional consequences, the trend will also further undermine the post-war consensus that penalized attaining territory through military means, potentially inspiring aggressive imitators.

For more than a century, the quest to settle the dispute between Jews and Arabs in the Levant has led to one dead end after another. Mutual hostility between Israelis and Palestinians has defied the various approached undertaken by peace process upon peace process to foster a firm settlement. Those proposals, including plans put forth by a succession of White House administrations, have ended up the ash heap of history, a destination that the plan currently governing Israeli-Palestinian relations, the 1993 Oslo Accords, appears to be headed. For decades, most peace settlements have envisioned a land-for-peace deal framework: Israel would trade away captured territory to its Arab neighbors in exchange for peace treaties.  But while that worked most famously with Egypt in 1979, the formula has foundered when it comes to the immediate issue of the Palestinians. Divided Palestinian politics and increasingly disinterested Israeli governments have steadily undermined the popularity of...

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