The 'Peace Process': A Short History

Chronicling Israel and Palestine's path to becoming a catchphrase.

BY URI FRIEDMAN | MARCH/APRIL 2012

1987
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin founds Hamas amid the eruption of the First Intifada, a Palestinian uprising against Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza. The group's 1988 charter calls for Israel's destruction and the creation of an Islamist Palestinian state through violent jihad.

1991
Emboldened by success in the Gulf War, U.S. President George H.W. Bush co-sponsors, with the Soviet Union, a conference in Madrid between Israel and Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinians, who meet with Israeli negotiators for the first time. The dialogue achieves little, but it creates a long-missing framework for talks.

1993-1994
Secret Israel-PLO talks in Norway yield the first deal between the two sides, the Oslo Accords. They recognize one another and chart a five-year plan for Israel to cede control of the territories to a new Palestinian Authority and Palestinian leaders to crack down on terrorism before a final peace agreement. Rabin and Jordan's King Hussein sign another peace treaty a year later.

1995
Jewish extremist Yigal Amir assassinates Rabin, who in his second term had become a strong advocate of a two-state solution. The Oslo peace process sputters.

2000
U.S. President Bill Clinton convenes Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David to address Oslo's thorniest issues: borders, security, settlements, refugees, and Jerusalem. But the talks collapse and the Second Intifada explodes in violence.

2001
A May report by former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell warns that the "greatest danger" in the Mideast is that "the culture of peace, nurtured over the previous decade, is being shattered." After the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush makes no mention of the peace process in his 2002 State of the Union address.

2002-2003
As the United States builds a coalition to go to war in Iraq, Bush becomes the first U.S. president to call explicitly for an independent Palestinian state. The Saudis present an Arab League-endorsed peace plan, and the so-called Quartet -- the United States, European Union, Russia, and United Nations -- unveils a "road map" for peace that puts security ahead of a political agreement.

2007
With pessimism reaching new depths ("The peace process has no clothes," writes Mideast analyst Nathan J. Brown), Bush hosts a conference in Annapolis between Israel and its Arab neighbors that enshrines the two-state solution. Hamas, which has seized power in Gaza and split with its rival Palestinian faction, Fatah, is not invited.

2008
An Israeli military offensive in Gaza wipes out dialogue between Israel's Ehud Olmert and the Palestinian Authority's Mahmoud Abbas.

2009-2010
U.S. President Barack Obama enters office promising to "actively and aggressively seek a lasting peace." After securing a hard-won, 10-month settlement freeze from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Obama hosts face-to-face talks but fails to obtain substantive concessions.
Survey source: Gallup

2011-2012

Obama enrages Netanyahu by proposing that new negotiations start from pre-1967 borders with land swaps, while the Palestinians pursue statehood at the United Nations in lieu of talks. As 2012 begins, Mideast negotiator Ross recalls what Israeli official Dan Meridor once told him, "'The peace process is like riding a bicycle: When you stop pedaling, you fall off.'" The Israelis and Palestinians, Ross says, "have stopped pedaling."
Survey source: Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research

All photos via Getty Images unless otherwise noted. Pierre Guillaud; Shlomo Arad; GPO; Patrick Baz; Mohammed Abed; J. David Ake; Files; Thomas Coex; Menahem Kahana; Mahmud Hams; Chip Somodevilla; Eitan Abramovich; AFP

 SUBJECTS:
 

Uri Friedman is an associate editor at Foreign Policy.

Thanks to Aaron David Miller of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, William Quandt of the University of Virginia, Harold Saunders of the International Institute for Sustained Dialogue, and Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland.

YESH PRABHU

10:50 PM ET

February 27, 2012

Israel-Palestine Peace Process

It is time to bury the peace process for good. The only beneficiaries of the unending peace process have been the Israeli settlers, who were given total access to choice parcels of Palestinian land, mostly on scenic hilltops, and it also gave a convenient cover to a series of Israeli Prime Ministers, to silence any criticism of Israel’s abominable acts against the unarmed Palestinians: Evicting women and children in the middle of the night or just before dawn from their homes, and bulldozing their houses to use the land for future illegal settlements.

Mr. Mahmoud Abbas must stop dragging his feet, and rush to the UN General Assembly to ask for an upgrade in Palestine’s status from an Observer Entity to Observer State and then, armed with more than 170 votes from 193 member states at the General Assembly, approach the Security Council to ask for membership to the UN. The longer he waits to take these steps, the lesser the land Palestinians will have for their state because, as the entire world by now knows, Israelis are very fond of gobbling up Palestinians’ ancestral lands, knowing very well that it is an illegal act.

Yesh Prabhu, Bushkill, Pennsylvania

 

FIVISH

5:35 AM ET

March 16, 2012

This is propaganda and lies!

Not only the International community but the King of Syria and Iraq recognised the historic connection of the Jews to Palestine (Judea) and the need to re-constitute the Jewish Homeland. This was in 1917-1922. This was confirmed in the San Remo Convention and the British Mandate. Later, the UN charter, article 80 would endorse the ongoing commitment to Jewish settlement in all of Palestine. It was the KGB in 1964 that gave the PLO (Arafat) the idea to rename the Arabs as 'Palestinians' as a tool of the Cold War. The Jews had been the Palestinians since 135AD when the Romans renamed Judea as Palestine. That the Arabs ever had a country called Palestine is a Big Lie. Palestine (from phishtim) is derived from the name given to the Aegeans who invaded the southern coast Israel (gaza) at the time of the Biblical David. The name means: foreign invader! How apt that the Arabs would use this name.

 

MARTINJOHN01

11:46 AM ET

March 31, 2012

Peace between all..........

Sometime in the mid-1970s the term peace process began widely used to describe the American-led efforts to bring about a negotiated peace between Israel and its neighbors. Much of US constitutional theory focuses on how issues should be resolved – the process – rather than on substance – what should be done.... In Most of drug rehab center in not in Israelis and Palestinians.

 

JBGODZILLA

1:55 PM ET

February 29, 2012

I agree, the so-called "Peace Process" was a liberal Jewish idea

that actually fooled itself into hoping that real peace with Islamofascist terrorists was actually possible! I too was fooled into believing that bringing a terrorist from Tunis to Oslo to Gaza and Ramallah might be the dawn of a new era of hope and peace with our Ishmaelite cousins. No such luck.
They recognize NO Jewish national rights on any part of the land, and seek to dictate surrender terms to the Jews as if we are still dhimmis! As if they won the 7 wars that they instigated! As if they are the victors and we Jews the vanquished!

There are 5.5 million ARabs living on Jewish soil, including the 1.5 million living as citizens of Israel inside the old Green Line (1949 Armistice line , a.k.a by the false alias as "the '67 borders." That's 5x times as many Arabs that lived in old Mandatory Palestine in 1947! Despite the tremendous growth of Arab settlements in Nazereth, Haifa, Beersheba, Jerusalem and elsewhere, such that Arabs today comprise roughly 25% of Israel's population, they would deny Jews the right to live in JUDAH and Samaria! And Gaza today is 100% Judenrein, just like Mecca and Medina! Arabs freely have the right to expand all over the State of Israel with no one saying "boo" about it, while a few Jews wanting to live on uninhabited rocky hilltops in their ancestral homeland are considered as criminals holding up this phony baloney "peace process."

The world has really gone topsy turvy,

 

JOHNBOY4546

12:35 AM ET

March 2, 2012

"There are 5.5 million ARabs living on Jewish soil,"

JEWISH soil?

How do you figure that?

 

MOHAMEDABED

12:57 AM ET

March 2, 2012

Arabs - from arabia

ask the kurds, berbers, Copts, and Assyrians. They all agree.

 

FRANCISSTEVENS12

10:13 PM ET

March 1, 2012

Cartoons Online

They recognize NO Jewish national rights on any part of the land, and seek to dictate surrender terms to the Jews as if we are still dhimmis! As if they won the 7 wars that they instigated! As if they are the victors and we Jews the vanquished! Cartoons Online

 

LOZER123

10:39 PM ET

March 1, 2012

There is no obvious plan for

There is no obvious plan for nuclear bomb nor Iranians would dare to cause a war in the region. The country is already isolated, their only insurance, the oil, would be all gone if they start a war. No other country would be on their side, not even their long term insurance, Russia & China. Having said that, we do not have money to fight another war either. Rather than trying to fix the economy, I cannot believe that the politicians are competing to see who can scare people into voting them to bomb Iran. This is the insurance we need for us? This is the insurance we need for our families? no.

 

STRIVER

5:52 AM ET

March 2, 2012

Let we forget...

1939 Ben-Gurions said:
"The First World War gave us the Balfour Declaration. This time (2nd WW) we must bring about a Jewish state."

1940 Zionists convinced Britian to raise a Jewish battalion as part of the British Army. they got it - Haganah.

1941: Haganah with British aid established Palmach, a commando unit of 2000 soldiers to fend off Arab attacks.

October 1941: Churchil said:
"I may say at once that if Britian and the United States emerge victorious from the war, the creation of a great Jewish state in Palestine inhabited by millions of Jews will be one of the leading features of the Peace Conference discussions"

1942: MI6 estimated Haganah to number around 30,000 by 1944 the size increased to 36,000

1944: Chrchil under pressure from Zionists established a Jewish Brigade with its own blue and white flag

1945: a further 32,000 Jewish soldiers were trained by the British Army

The Jewish Brigade saw action in Italy and were highly trained. Haganah stole arms from the British and also gained specialist training from the Briitish Army.

Thus were laid the foundations of Zionist terrorism which began in 1945.

 

MOHAMEDABED

11:21 AM ET

March 2, 2012

Lets we forget

the grand Palestinian Mufti - the leader of the Palestinians and their national movement raised an SS division of muslims for the Nazi army. This division went on to murder Jews, Serbs, Gypsies, and partisan fighters.

The Arabs took the side of the Axis, either overtly like Iraq or indirectly by withholding support for the Allies. Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini issued a fatwa- “summons to a holy war against Britain” in May 1941. The Mufti’s widely heralded proclamation against Britain was declared in Iraq, where he was instrumental in “the pro-Nazi” Iraqi revolt of 1941.

In the 1930s, the fascist regimes that arose in Italy and Germany sought greater stakes in the Middle East, and began courting Arab leaders to revolt against their British and French custodians. Among their many willing accomplices was Jerusalem Mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini, who fled Palestine after agitating against the British during the Arab Revolt of 1936-39. He found refuge in Iraq – another British mandate – where he again topped the British most wanted list after helping pull the strings behind the Iraqi coup of 1941. The revolt in Baghdad was orchestrated by Hitler as part of a strategy to squeeze the region between the pincers of Rommel’s troops in North Africa, German forces in the Caucuses and pro-Nazi forces in Iraq. However, in June 1941 British troops put down the rebellion and the Mufti escaped via Tehran to Italy and eventually to Berlin.

Husseini soon became an honored guest of the Nazi leadership and met on several occasions with Hitler. He personally lobbied the Führer against the plan to let Jews leave Hungary, fearing they would immigrate to Palestine. He also strongly intervened when Adolf Eichman tried to cut a deal with the British government to exchange German POWs for 5000 Jewish children who also could have fled to Palestine. The Mufti’s protests with the SS were successful, as the children were sent to death camps in Poland instead. One German officer noted in his journals that the Mufti would liked to have seen the Jews “preferably all killed.” On a visit to Auschwitz, he reportedly admonished the guards running the gas chambers to work more diligently. Throughout the war, he appeared regularly on German radio broadcasts to the Middle East, preaching his pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic message to the Arab masses back home.

During the Second World War in Yugoslavia, many Muslim clerics in Bosnia and Kosovo were willing accomplices in the genocide of the nation’s Serbian, Jewish and Roma population. From 1941 until 1945, the Nazi-installed regime of Ante Pavelic in Croatia carried out some of the most horrific crimes of the Holocaust, killing over 800,000 Yugoslav citizens – 750,000 Serbs, 60,000 Jews and 26,000 Roma. In these crimes, they were helped by Muslim fundamentalists in Bosnia and Kosovo who were openly supported by the Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. Husseini openly encouraged Muslims to join Nazi units that would be later implicated in genocide and crimes against humanity – the infamous Hanjar (or Handschar) 13th Waffen SS division.

Husseini represents the prevalent pro-Nazi posture among the Arab/Muslim world before, during and even after the Holocaust. The Nazi-Arab connection existed even when Adolf Hitler first seized power in Germany in 1933. News of the Nazi takeover was welcomed by the Arab masses with great enthusiasm, as the first congratulatory telegrams Hitler received upon being appointed Chancellor came from the German Consul in Jerusalem, followed by those from several Arab capitals. Soon afterwards, parties that imitated the National Socialists were founded in many Arab lands, like the “Hisb-el-qaumi-el-suri” (PPS) or Social Nationalist Party in Syria. Its leader, Anton Sa’ada, styled himself the Führer of the Syrian nation, and Hitler became known as “Abu Ali” (In Egypt his name was “Muhammed Haidar”). The banner of the PPS displayed the swastika on a black-white background. Later, a Lebanese branch of the PPS – which still receives its orders from Damascus – was involved in the assassination of Lebanese President Pierre Gemayel.

The most influential party that emulated the Nazis was “Young Egypt,” which was founded in October 1933. They had storm troopers, torch processions, and literal translations of Nazi slogans – like “One folk, One party, One leader.” Nazi anti-Semitism was replicated, with calls to boycott Jewish businesses and physical attacks on Jews. Britain had a bitter experience with this pro-German mood in Egypt, when the official Egyptian government failed to declare war on the Wehrmacht as German troops were about to conquer Alexandria.

After the war, a member of Young Egypt named Gamal Abdul Nasser was among the officers who led the July 1952 revolution in Egypt. Their first act – following in Hitler’s footsteps – was to outlaw all other parties. Nasser’s Egypt became a safe haven for Nazi war criminals, among them the SS General in charge of the murder of Ukrainian Jewry; he became Nasser’s bodyguard and close comrade. Alois Brunner, another senior Nazi war criminal, found shelter in Damascus, where he served for many years as senior adviser to the Syrian general staff and still resides today.

 

MARTY24

12:53 PM ET

March 2, 2012

Getting the issue right

The issue between Israel and its neighbors has never been territory or settlements, or even refugees. The issue has been whether Israeli Jews, as non-Muslims, had the right to govern themselves and control any territory Muslims see as theirs. Anyone who understands this will realize that getting Israel to make territorial concessions in exchange for vague promises simply fuels the conflict because it confirms Muslim beliefs.

Walt and Mearsheimer insist that their policy, compelling Israel to make substantive concessions to the Muslims in return for verbal assurances from the West, is the way to go, but has never been tried. They are wrong on both components of their policy: It has been tried, repeatedly, admittedly with differing levels of compulsion against Israel, and has consistently failed to advance the cause of peace. Indeed, it is the only strategy that has ever been persued.

It is time to try a new strategy: The West must unite to set a precondition for Western assistance in any negotiations between the Muslims and Israel: Muslims must acknowledge that Jews are entitled to a state of their own and that any negotiations will result in resolution of all issues between them and Israel. The campaign to delegitimize Israel is designed to divert attention from this logically necessary requirement.

To date, the Muslims have refused to agree to either of these points, and it should be obvious why peace cannot be achieved without their agreeing to both of them. Until they do, how can anyone expect any Israeli concessions to Muslims?

 

LECHEB

11:43 AM ET

March 18, 2012

Religious Principals - Not Logic Based

There will never be a solution in the Middle East regarding Israel and Palestine. There are numerous reasons that lead to the conflict, but the main ones are religious based. No logical compromise can come out of a situation based on religious beliefs. The only solution, as I read this on my iphone 5g, is come up with some sort of plan to at least end major violence. This core issues will never be resolved.