The palestine issue
Why has united nations failed to solve palestine issue:
Israel’s six no’s:
Introduction:
With the right-wing opposition and the governing coalition in agreement, the
message is clear: There will be no negotiations and no two-state solution any
time soon, setting Israelis and Palestinians most likely on a disaster-bound
trajectory.
Underlying and reinforcing the red lines on talks and two states are “Six No’s”
that seem to guide Israel’s current strategy toward the Palestinians.
Arab meeting:
The Six No’s are reminiscent of the 1967 meeting of Arab leaders in Khartoum,
where they issued a declaration that became known as the “Three No’s”: no
recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel and no peace with Israel. This
position—long-standing but never uniformly adhered to across the Arab World
—was dramatically shattered with the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty, followed
by the Israel-Jordan treaty of 1994, and then fully reversed by the 2002 Saudi-
led Arab Peace Initiative. The initiative implicitly recognized Israel, accepted
negotiations as the strategic route for resolving the conflict, and aimed to
achieve peace and normal diplomatic relations between all the Arab countries
and Israel.
Israel response:
There is perhaps an irony — or a tragedy — to be found in the positional
reversal. Whereas Israel evinced flexibility at a historical moment when the
Arab states were at their most rigid, today, at a moment when Arab state
positions toward Israel are more flexible, Israeli leadership has become more
unyielding and offers its own set of “no’s”: no negotiations, no two-state
solution, no one-state solution, no freezing of settlements, no Palestinian
sovereignty in East Jerusalem and no to the return of any Palestinian refugees
to Israel.
No Two-State Solution:
Politicians from both the current coalition and the opposition are united in
rejecting the creation of a Palestinian state. Prime Minister Bennett, an avid
proponent of Israeli settlements who has said “a Palestinian state would mean
a terror state,” even found fault with the Trump administration’s peace plan.
Despite its overwhelming partiality toward Israel and wide departure from the
two-state framework that had garnered international community buy-in,
Bennett framed it as a solution aimed at creating two states.
No One-State Outcome:
An even greater majority in Israel rejects a shared binational one-state
approach since it would undermine the Jewish character of the state of Israel,
and thereby the raison d’etre of its creation.
No Negotiations:
As noted, both Bennett and Alternate Prime Minister Lapid oppose launching
any form of political negotiations with the Palestinians.
No End to Settlements:
Although Bennett said that his government will neither annex nor form a
Palestinian state, he also said that his government will back settlement
construction — a practice that UNSC Resolution 2334 enshrines as “a flagrant
violation under international law … [that must] immediately and completely
cease.” Given the longstanding premise that a negotiated agreement would be
based on a land-for-peace formula, establishing a Palestinian state on
territories occupied in 1967, the Israeli government’s continued expropriation
of parts of that territory for settlements is chipping away at the possibilities for
a viable Palestinian state.
No Palestinian Sovereignty in Jerusalem:
Ehud Barak became the first Israeli Prime Minister to show a willingness to
divide Jerusalem into two capitals to resolve the conflict. Much ink has been
spilled on the reason and responsibilities for the failure of the 2000 Camp
David II summit, and on the impact that the brutal violence of the Second
Intifada had on both sides.
Causal analysis aside, since the beginning of the 21st century, Israeli leadership
has become more adamant in rejecting any division of the city, or even
Palestinian claims to a capital therein. Recently, this issue has come to the fore
in the Israeli government’s opposition to President Biden’s proposal to reopen
the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem, which served as the de facto mission to the
Palestinians before the Trump administration closed it in 2018. Bennett claims
that he stood up to Biden on the issue, stating that “Israel has only one capital,
Jerusalem, and it is the capital of only one country, Israel.” The Bennett
government has also committed itself to expanding settlement building in East
Jerusalem, and undermined the long-standing status quo arrangement at the
Al-Aqsa Mosque.
No Refugee Return:
Finally, over the past 20 years, Israel has taken a harder line in its approach to
refugee return. The years 2001-2002 represent the high-water mark on Israeli
and Palestinian mutual understandings around refugees. The Clinton
Parameters (2001) acknowledged the Palestinian people’s moral and material
suffering in the 1948 war; the need for an international mechanism to deal
with compensation, resettlement and other issues; and the U.S. role in leading
such an effort.
The Clinton Parameters also suggested that Palestinians should have a
right to return to the new Palestinian state, to remain where they are, to
resettle in a third country, or to be admitted to Israel with a certain limit. The
Arab Peace Initiative (2002) called for a just and agreed solution to the refugee
problem, in accordance with U.N. Resolution 194 — explicitly recognizing that
a solution will not be imposed, and that Israel has a role in negotiating and
agreeing to a solution, thus dropping the Arab world’s previous “all or nothing”
stance. The Taba peace talks (2001) advanced the Israeli idea of a 15-year,
three-track (settlement in Israel, a Palestinian state and a family reunification
scheme). Since 2003, Israeli positions have hardened to the point of rejecting
any refugee resettlement in Israeli territory. Israel has also heightened its
attacks on UNRWA, the U.N. agency serving Palestinian refugees — a clear
reflection of its policy and attitude in this regard.
