ISRAELI - PALESTINIAN CONFLICT; FOCUS ON ISSUES OF THE CONFLICT

INTRODUCTION

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an ongoing one contributing to the larger Arab-Israeli conflict. It’s basically a conflict of “two people over one land”. The origins to the conflict can be traced back to the late 19th century with the rise of Zionism and Arab Nationalism. The struggle between the Israelis and the Palestinians is one of the longest, enduring and most explosive of all the world's conflicts. The Israeli-Palestinian, or more precisely, the Israeli-Arab conflict, is over 100 hundred years old, though it has become more intense and widely known since the late 1940's, when on November 29 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted Resolution 181 which called for the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab State. At the time of that resolution Palestine was under the rule of a British Mandate since 1922. However, the United Nations called for the termination of the British Mandate on August 1, 1948. Palestinians were opposed to the establishment of a Jewish national home while the Jews believe it to be Eretz Yisrael; God’s chosen land for the chosen people.

This paper is being divided on the basis of issues that surround the main conflict. We then conclude dwelling on what is the best possible way to address the conflict, if they can be resolved at all.

BRIEF HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

In 1920, following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, Palestine fell under western occupation, political boundaries were forced upon the region for the first time in nearly 2,000 years under the British occupation, under the League’s "Mandate". Today this geographical area is divided into Israel (established in May 1948 over land carved out of historic Palestine), the West Bank (including eastern Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip (on the south western corner of the country bordering Egypt) both of which Israel occupied in the 1967 War. After decades of living under occupation, a popular Palestinian uprising (Intifada 1987 - 1992) against Israeli rule, brought about various peace negotiations the first of which was the Oslo (Madrid) peace process. Palestinian cities, villages, and most of the 19 official refugee camps were transferred to a self-governing Palestinian Authority under the Oslo 'peace process.' the Palestinian Israeli conflict is the single issue that has generated the largest number of United Nations resolutions, the Palestinian problem has loomed large on the international scene.

THE ‘ISSUE’ OF JERUSALEM

The issue of the Jerusalem is the most complicated one in the entire Israeli Palestinian scenario. Both sides have claims on the eastern part of Jerusalem. Jerusalem plays a central role in Jewish history as their ancestral home, having symbolic significance. Both claim the city as its capital. It is a focal point of Jewish pilgrimage and the one city towards which Jews are enjoined to set their feet as a matter of religious piety, as in the Passover and Yom Kippur invocation, "Next year in Jerusalem”. Since the Six Day War in 1967, Israel has allowed people of all three faiths unrestricted access to their holy places throughout the city, but restrictions and conflict are a frequent occurrence depending upon present political situation.
Even though the Jewish claims their right over Jerusalem, it is Jerusalem's status as a national capital that is the centre of the conflict. For the Jewish people Jerusalem was the capital of the Jewish nation before the diaspora. For the next 2000 years it was mentioned in Jewish prayers, as a place where the Jews wanted to return. The old city which lies in East Jerusalem and which is claimed by the Palestinians for their Capital contains the Wailing Wall and temple mount, the holiest sites in Judaism.

BORDERS AND SETTLEMENTS

As rapidly evoked in the introduction, the Palestine Mandate is born out of the ambitions of the British and their promises to the French, the Arabs and the Zionists, as set forth in the 1916 Sykes Picot Agreement and the 1917 Balfour Declaration. With the consent of the League of Nations in 1922, Britain divided the Mandate territory into two administrative areas, Palestine, under direct British rule, and autonomous Transjordan, under the rule of the Hashemite family from Hijaz, Saudi Arabia, in accordance with the McMahon Pledge of 1915. The land west of river Jordan was to be part of Palestine and the east of the latter, part of an Arab state or confederation of Arab states from which Jews would be excluded. However, due to the pressure of the Zionist movement during the demarcation negotiations, the whole Sea of Galilee and both sides of the Jordan River were included in the Palestinian territory. As for the Golan Heights, they were placed in the French sphere of Syria. This is with the 1947 General Assembly Resolution 181 of the United Nation that the Israeli territory was officially defined for the first time. The resolution recommended the divide of Palestine between an un-named “Jewish State” and an un-named “Arab State”. Three parts of the territories were allotted to the Jewish State and three to the Arab State. A seventh part, Jaffa was to form an Arab enclave in the Jewish territory and an eight part was Jerusalem, a corpus separatum under a special international regime. 55% of the territory of Palestine was bestowed to the Jewish population.

Offended by this United Nations partition plan, the Arab people entered into a conflict with the Jews by unleashing strikes against them. Palestinian-Jewish clashes proliferated and it turned into a succession of wars involving simultaneously or independently Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon. It started with the war of independence in 1948 followed by the Six-Day War in 1967 at the end of which Israel seized the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria. A coalition of Arab States entered consequently into an October War against Israel in 1973 to regain the territories lost during the June War but the coalition faced a new defeat.

As the resolution of the Israeli-Arab conflict via wars looked fruitless and risky within the two superpowers near-confrontation context, the United States got convinced that mediation and peacemaking were necessary. Therefore, they attempted to start a peace process directly involving the leaders of the Palestinian territories and Israel. The framework of this peace process was given during the 1978 Camp David Accords with the presence of President Jimmy Carter. These accords between Egypt and Israel stipulated that the Sinai would return to Egypt and the Gaza Strip to Israel. The 1994 peace agreement between Jordan and Israel set up their mutual border on the Jordan River, leaving the West Bank and East Jerusalem to Israel. There was then the Madrid peace conferences in 1991 during which the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was eventually recognized by the United States and Israel as the representative of the Palestinian people, the Oslo accords in 1993 under the leadership of Bill Clinton, the Camp David Summit in 2000 and its Clinton plan, the Taba talks in 2001, the Arab Peace Initiative in 2002 or even more recently the September 2010 direct talks under Barack Obama presidency.

The basis of the negotiations of the past decades to reach a Middle East settlement is the United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 passed at the end of the June war in 1967. This Resolution aims to bring Israeli demands for a peace agreement together with Egypt, Syria and Jordan and to obtain Israel's withdrawal from the Occupied Palestinian Territories (composed of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem) and the Golan Heights. Despite the positive international alignment on the Resolution 242 and many peace negotiations attempts, no agreement could be reached so far between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. One of the major reasons of this recurrent failure is that 78% of the former Palestine is still occupied by Israeli whereas they have been solely allocated 55% under the UN partition plan. But other issues such as the Palestinian refugees and their “right of return”, the status of Jerusalem and the temple Mount, the Palestinian concerns of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the water disputes and the security concerns of Israel are pivotal as well.

As stated above, one of the main obstacles to the signature of a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian territories is the constant development of Israeli settlements. The apparent failure of the September 2010 direct talks in reason of new Israeli settlements expansion is an additional evidence of it. These settlements are joined to each other and to Israel through 'by-pass' roads, which are for the exclusive use of Israelis and which are also built on privately owned Palestinian land confiscated by the Israeli government.

Since 1967, there is a growing policy of legal and physical separation between the Jewish and Palestinian populations in the occupied territories. Seven months after the June war, the first Israeli settlement was established in the West Bank. Only one year later, several families settled in Hebron. In late 1967, the head of the Ministerial Committee for Settlements, Yigal Alon, began to plan the state’s official settlement map. Between the years 1967-1977, around thirty settlements housing approximately 5000 settlers were established. The majority of these settlements were located on the eastern margins of the West Bank. This construction intended to satisfy the security ideology surrounding the necessity of an Israeli civilian presence in the peripheral areas. In 1977, with the succession of a Likud government to power, with Menachem Begin as its leader, the settlement effort started to focus on the western areas in the West Bank. Dozens of such settlements were established at the end of the 1970’s and the beginning of 1980’s. Such measures constituted a direct effort to prevent a split of the country into two, under the political compromise of two states for two peoples. As of July 2009, approximately 304,569 Israelis live in the 121 officially-recognized settlements in the West Bank, a further 192,000 Israelis live in settlements in East Jerusalem and there are a further 102 unauthorized outposts in the West Bank not officially recognized by Israel. They ensure that Palestinians live in a continuous state of insecurity and fragmentation and therefore prevent economic, social and political development.

THE ‘WATER’ ISSUE

Another serious hindrance to the concluding of an Arab-Israeli peaceful settlement is the clash of interests over the issue of water. Over the years of its occupation, Israel has been an insatiable dark hole for water: it uses up to 73% of the overall available water resources in the territory, while Palestinians are left with a mere 17%. The politics of water acquisition followed by Israel have become more aggressive in recent years, especially after the Arab states with whom it shares the Jordan River Basin (Jordan, Syria and Lebanon) attempted to divert the flow away from Israel. The consequences of this failed attempt had a big impact on the Palestinian population, especially for those living in Jordan, when Israel built a wall around the West Bank that gave Israel control over the water supply from the Jordan River that corresponded to the Palestinian refugees.

The Oslo Peace Accords of 1993, the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace of 1994 and the Agreement on Cooperation in Environmental Protection and Nature Conservation between Israel and Jordan (Environmental Agreement) of 1995 called for a cooperative approach for sharing and developing the Jordan River. The 1994 Israel-Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) Agreement on the Gaza Strip and Jericho Area, and its successor, the Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip (Interim Agreement) addressed cooperative water and sewage development. Finally, the 1996 Declaration of Principles for Cooperation Among the Core Parties on Water-Related Matters and New and Additional Waters (Declaration of Principles for Cooperation) signed by Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian National Authority dealt again with the regional management and protection of water resources. But here again, despite attempts of reconciliation, the quarrel based on water between Israel and the Occupied Territories is not about to end. The problem is that both parties have different understandings of what should be achieved through a policy of water sharing: the Israeli government defends it has already done what international law required it to do, while the Palestinians focus more on water rights and a thorough compensation for the aggressive water policies followed by Israel in the past.

THE PALESTINIAN REFUGEES
During the 1948 war, known to Israel as the War of Independence, and Al Naqba (the disaster) for the Arabs, around 750,000 out of 900,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from the territories of the declared State of Israel. Historians show disagreement as to whether the exodus was the result of a plan designed before or during the war by Zionist leaders or was an unintended consequence of the war. When the UN voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in 1947, Palestinian Arabs opposed the plan, and immediately initiated riots. When the mandate expired, the Jews declared a state in accordance with the partition resolution, and the armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq invaded Palestine.
The war that ensued was won by Israel, creating a large number of Arab refugees. Estimates vary about the number of refugees, those Palestinian Arabs who fled or were forced out of their homes during the fighting. This number has grown to include over 4.6 million displaced persons, about 3.7 million of whom are currently registered as refugees with the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees). Generally, refugees living in the camps live in conditions of abject poverty and overcrowding. The refugees of the 1948 Israeli war of independence and the lesser number of refugees of the 1967 war constitute a real monumental humanitarian and political problem, and no resolution of the conflict can ignore them. The issue has been often deliberately exploited by Arab and Palestinian politicians in their war with Israel. The refugee problem has been at the heart of peace negotiations ever since 1949.
THE 1948 AND 1967 WAR
As soon as the State of Israel was declared, the large population of native Palestinians that have resided in these territories became homeless and stateless over night. Some believe the Palestinians residing in area now under Israel were forcefully evicted using brutal force. However, another argument, forwarded by the State of Israel uphold that, the Arab Leaders had suggested the native population to move out of those areas in anticipation that they will return to these territories victorious after the 1948 war. UNGAR 194, passed on December 11, 1948, stated in its Article 11, ‘Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.’ Interpretation apart, General Assembly resolutions are legally non-binding and have no force as international law. The Lausanne Conference of 1949 saw the parties signed a joint protocol on the framework for a comprehensive peace, which included territories, refugees, and Jerusalem. Israel agreed "in principle" to allow the return of all of the Palestinian refugees but Israel’s insistence to discussing solutions to refugee problems only in the context of an overall settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict was in contradiction to the Arab States insistence upon a prior solution of the refugee question, at least in principle, before agreeing to discuss other outstanding issues.
The 1967 War Palestinian refugees were the outcome of the territories occupied by Israel during and in the aftermath of the June War of 1967. It is also known as the Naksa Day (setback), the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during and after the 1967 June War between Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. In June 1967 the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 237 calling on Israel to ensure the safety, welfare and security of the inhabitants of areas where military operations took place and facilitate the return of those inhabitants who had fled the areas since the outbreak of hostilities.

Palestinian refugees claim a right of return based on Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which declares that "Everyone has the right to leave any country including his own, and to return to his country. The Arab League members at the time- Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen- voted against the resolution, they also cite article 11 of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194, however Resolution 194 is a nonbinding assembly resolution, and it is currently a matter of dispute whether the resolution referred only to refugees in 1948, or additionally to their descendants. The Palestinian refugees are the largest number of refugees in the world today.


PEACE PROCESS IN THE ISRAELI - PALESTINIAN CONFLICT

Many attempts were made by the Global Powers to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Larger Arab-Israeli conflict. Few examples could be the Madrid (1991), Oslo process (1993), Camp David (2000), and the Road Map (2003). The common outcome of all was failure, or rather limited success. The problem regarding these peace processes are that none of the two parties were on the same page, at occasion, not even looking at the same book. A breakthrough of sorts for peace came in 1993 when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat agreed to a framework for Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza in the Oslo accords. After Rabin's assassination in 1995, the peace process faltered. Relations between Israelis and Palestinians turned sour as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's slowed down diplomatic momentum after Oslo largely stating security concerns.

The primary cause for the Arab-Israeli conflict lies in the claim of nations on the same land. Fundamentalist religious concepts regarding the right of either side to the entire land have played an increasing role, on the Jewish side particularly in the religious settler movement, on the Palestinian side in the Hamas and similar groups. The Israelis view of the Arab states as undemocratic, backward in cultural and social standards and an aggressive religion inciting to hatred and terrorism clash with the Arabs, who consider the Israelis as colonial invaders and conquerors, who are aiming to control the entire Middle East. Since the Oslo peace process however, a broad consensus has been formed that an independent Palestinian State should be established within the areas occupied in 1967.

In October 1991, a conference was convened in Madrid to inaugurate direct peace talks. Subsequently, bilateral negotiations were conducted between Israel and Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians, as well as multilateral talks on key regional issues. These talks culminated in the signing of a Treaty of Peace between Israel and Jordan on 26 October, 1994, and a series of interim agreements with the Palestinians. The Oslo Accords were a set of agreements signed in 1993 between Israel and the PLO, creating the Palestinian Authority, which had responsibility for administering territories that would be placed under its control. For the first time the PLO formally recognized Israel, and publicly expressed acceptance of peaceful coexistence with Israel. Israel also formally recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people. The Oslo Accords were intended to be an interim agreement that would lead to a permanent settlement with Israel giving up land in return for peace and security. However, they have never been fully implemented. The Intifada saw to its end, already jarred with problems.

In 2000 American President Bill Clinton brought Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to Camp David. It was the first major attempt to negotiate a comprehensive final status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Although the negotiations were carried out in secret, participants President Clinton and Dennis Ross attributed the failure of the talks to Arafat’s refusal to compromise. They reported that Barak made major concessions including withdrawing from the vast majority of the West Bank to create an independent Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem. However, Arafat did not feel the offer was enough and refused it. He made no counter-proposals. The goal of the summit, two states living side by side in peace, was not achieved and further conflict ensued.

King Abdullah (then Crown Prince) of Saudi Arabia proposed a 2002 Arab Peace solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict which was endorsed by all members of the Arab League. The proposal offered Israel peace in return for Israeli withdrawal from all territories captured in the 1967 war, Israeli recognition of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and a “just solution” for Palestinian refugees. The Arab League endorsed the proposal again at the Riyadh Summit in 2007. The proposal is viewed by some as a major breakthrough because this showed a significant move away from the Khartoum Resolution of 1967. Israel welcomed the proposal, but had reservations. Negotiations did not ensue as the Saudis demanded withdrawal to the 1967 borders as a pre-condition.

The Roadmap for Peace was proposed in 2003 by the “Quartet” . The Roadmap involved reciprocal steps by the Israelis and Palestinians with the ultimate goal of an independent Palestinian state and a secure Israel. Divided into three phases, it has never progressed past the first. The basic principles of the Roadmap, however, were reaffirmed at the Annapolis Conference in 2007.

After years of failed negotiations, present US President Obama has stated ‘securing a peaceful Middle East’ as an important foreign policy goal. Just two days after his inauguration, Obama appointed former Senator George Mitchell as Special Envoy for Middle East Peace to facilitate negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and promote recognition of Israel by the Arab Peace states. In September 2010, the Obama administration pushed the two parties for peace process by getting the parties involved to agree to direct talks .The direct talks are aimed to put the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to an official end by forming a two-state solution for the Jewish people and the Palestinian people, promoting the idea of everlasting peace, but Netanyahu’s settlement policy seems to be the dead ender once again to a Peace Process. The failure of the parties to resolve the conflict is not because it is insoluble but a consequence of the disregard of the grievances of one party. While Israel and the international community use the 1967 War as the point of departure to end conflict, Palestinian grievances stem from 1948. The unwillingness to address the core issues arising from the dispossession and expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948 reflects a deeply flawed and imbalanced approach. It is one which portrays a preference for conflict management over conflict resolution.


CONCLUSIVE ANALYSIS; A CONFLICT TRANSFORMED?

As observed earlier, there has always been a preference for Conflict Management rather than any serious attempt on Conflict Resolution that has been the usual style where the Israeli Palestinian conflict is concerned. An explanation of that could be that, with such protracted conflict in place, the external powers, mainly the US and the western world, looked for short term management to conflict as they were more concerned with their own national interest more than the redressal of the grievances of the Palestinians. A quite cynical explanation at best, but plausible.

We agree that the conflict that we are dealing with is not just something we impose ‘ready made’ solutions to, but something that requires study at both level – why did all the previous effort fall short of the success they aimed at and what was the response of the parties in conflict. Addressing the latter is perhaps relatively simpler. The parties to the conflict are two, the State of Israel, and the Palestinians, who are striving for generations for the attainment of statehood while living in abject misery. The problem area here is that inspite of them being the parties to this conflict; the Palestinians got their direct say only after the Madrid Peace Conference, when the world finally visualized them as being different from Jordanians, or other Arab states where they had found refuge. Till then, it was an unequal relationship at negotiating peace, something that is bound with failure.

The answer to why all previous efforts failed is a bit more complicated. Many impose too much importance on the assassination of Rabin to show the apt reason for the failure of the entire peace process. Some go as far as blaming the Intifada as the real causation. We see this as a contributing factor, not the decisive one for the impending failure. There is no guarantee Rabin-Sadat handshake would have guaranteed final peace. Now with the right wing – conservative society in rising in political Israel, peace process is not top of national agenda, settlements are. The ‘Bibi’ factor is well known in Israeli politics. Palestinians have experts like Saeb Erekat; they also have a long relationship with bad luck and bad timing.

What we suggest is that ‘Conflict Transformation’ might be a serious way out to address the Israeli- Palestinian problem. Conflict transformation is the process by which conflicts, such as ethnic conflict, are transformed into peaceful outcomes. This approach differs from those of conflict management or conflict resolution. Whereas conflict transformation involves transforming the relationships that support violence, conflict management approaches seek to merely manage and contain conflict, and conflict resolution approaches seek to move conflict parties away from zero-sum positions towards positive outcomes, often with the help of external actors. The Berghof Foundation for Conflict Studies define conflict transformation as,

“A generic, comprehensive term referring to actions and processes seeking to alter the various characteristics and manifestations of violent conflict by addressing the root causes of a particular conflict over the long term. It aims to transform negative destructive conflict into positive constructive conflict and deals with structural, behavioral and attitudinal aspects of conflict. The term refers to both the process and the completion of the process. As such, it incorporates the activities of processes such as conflict prevention and conflict resolution and goes farther than conflict settlement or conflict management.”

John Paul Lederach explains the conflict transformation approach through a diagrammatic explanation where he seeks to show how a conflict can be viewed as a positive aspect, and the lenses through which we can understand and better address the conflict. He is more hopeful of the usefulness of the role of INGOs, CSOs and other societal civic organizations as better able to address the transformation of the conflict than the traditional medium of going through the governmental channels. In the case for the Israeli society, more than the doves, the talks for peace come from the organizations like Peace Now. The short term peace can be successfully implemented through management, but long term solution needs transformation of the conflict as it is viewed.

Throughout the issues discussed in this paper that contribute to the discourse of Israeli- Palestinian conflict, the main factor of dispute lies in the fact that the people have a degree of mistrust against each other, a common phenomenon in most of the conflicts which are of such intractable nature. These issues can be negotiated, as it is done usually, through the process of Conflict Management. The up-side of that would be timely, professional negotiation which, if successful, gives quick results. Issues like water sharing, security and autonomy equations fit well into this framework. But when one needs to deal with issues like that of ‘Jerusalem’ or the plight of the ‘Palestinian Refugees’, they are not conceivable under the framework of Management. Short term measure would prove of no use.

It is imperative, therefore, to consider these issues under the framework of Conflict Transformation. In that case, Jerusalem would not stand as an issue of one land for two people, but rather of a land which is disputed among two people for several reasons, and this dispute will be studied to find the basic causation of the conflict. Short Term goals may be placed to mitigate the conflict, but the transformative framework would allow one party to acknowledge the discourse of the other, and as a result, a common ground to address the issue might be sough at, as the common understanding would prevail that, both parties see their claim to the land as genuine. Simple explanation of a historical claim on both parties would then be seen as faux pas. The framework to address the conflict would change. But it has its own difficulties. The parties to the conflict, and not some third party mediator (however benevolent), would have to take the initiative. The whole process would depend on their initiative, which is hard to come by. On the other hand, if the parties themselves strive, they will achieve their aims better than when it was ‘imposed’ as solutions. This is the main hurdle to the success of this transformative process.