Palestinian views of the peace process
Encyclopedia
Palestinian views of the peace process refer to the views of Palestinians in the ongoing peace talks with Israel
. While some Palestinian leaders say that the peace process
is intended to achieve a permanent peace with the State of Israel, others maintain that their goal is to destroy Israel.
The stated goal of Hamas
and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad is to conquer Israel and replace it with an Islamist state. Hamas undertook a ceasefire
with Israel in August 2004. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad was unhappy with the ceasefire. In September 2005, Hamas was criticized by Islamic Jihad for calling off rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza. Because the very identity of Hamas depends on its militancy and rejection of any form of Jewish life in the Middle East, Hamas has shown no interest in cooperating with the United States on any sort of peace negotiation.
In 2008, Hamas publicly offered a long-term hudna
(truce) with Israel if Israel agreed to return to its 1967 borders and to grant the "right of return
" to all Palestinian refugee
s. The New York Times Steven Erlanger
contends that Hamas excludes the possibility of permanent reconciliation with Israel. "Since the Prophet Muhammad made a temporary hudna
, or truce, with the Jews about 1,400 years ago, Hamas allows the idea. But no one in Hamas says he would make a peace treaty with Israel or permanently give up any part of Palestine.".
The PLO has complex, often contradictory attitudes toward the peace process. Officially, the PLO acceptance of Israel
's right to exist in peace was the first of the PLO's obligations in the Oslo Accords
. In Yasser Arafat's September 9, 1993 letter to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
, as part of the first Oslo accord, Arafat stated that "The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security." Electronic Intifada
stated that Arafat has made several calls for an end to violence and lasting peace. These remarks from Arafat indicated a shift away from one of the PLO's primary aims—the destruction of Israel.
However, evidence throughout history and even during the 1990s and 2000s have shown that the PLO leadership considered any peace made with Israel to be temporary until the dream of Israel's destruction could be realized. Arafat often spoke of the peace process in terms of "justice" for the Palestinians; terms historian Efraim Karsh
described as "euphemisms rooted in Islamic and Arabic history for the liberation of the whole of Palestine from 'foreign occupiers.'" When describing his views of the peace process among Arab leaders and in the media of the Arab world, Arafat's rhetoric became noticeably more bellicose than it was when among Western leaders and media outside of the Arab world. The period saw a disconnect between what the PLO's second in command Abu Iyad referred to as "the language of peace" and support of Palestinian terrorism.
Since the 1990s, there has been a debate within the PLO as to whether to halt terrorist activities completely or to continue attacking Israel as well as negotiate diplomatically with Israel. In practice, terrorism was never fully banned. Furthermore, assassination attempts by radical Palestinian factions within the PLO since the early years of the peace process kept Arafat from expressing full, public support of the peace process or condemnation of terrorism without risking further danger to his own life.
In 2000, after Yasser Arafat rejected the offer
made to him by Ehud Barak
based on the two-state solution and declined to negotiate for a more favorable offer, it became clear that Arafat would not make a deal with Israel unless it included the full Palestinian right of return
, which, analysts on all sides agree, would demographically destroy the Jewish, democratic character of the State of Israel. For this reason, critics of Arafat claim that he put his desire to destroy the Jewish state above his dream of building an autonomous Palestinian state.
was the representative of the Palestinian Authority in Jerusalem (circa 2000), he called for historic compromises by both Palestinians and Israelis, to secure a permanent and lasting peace. For example, he stated that Palestinians must give up their claim of a right of return
. With this concession, he argued, a true and lasting peace could emerge.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat
said on August 5, 2000, "Palestinians are no strangers to compromise. In the 1993 Oslo Accords, we agreed to recognize Israeli sovereignty over 78 percent of historic Palestine and to establish a Palestinian state on only 22 percent." Rashid Abu Shbak, a senior PA security official declared, "The light which has shone over Gaza
and Jericho
[when the PA assumed control over those areas] will also reach the Negev
and the Galilee
[which constitute a large portion of pre-1967 Israel]."
The PA's Voice of Palestine radio station broadcast a Friday prayer sermon by Yusuf Abu Sneineh, official preacher at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque
, over the radio. In it, he asserted, "The struggle we are waging is an ideological struggle and the question is: where has the Islamic land of Palestine gone? Where [are] Haifa and Jaffa, Lod and Ramle, Acre, Safed and Tiberias? Where is Hebron and Jerusalem?"
PA cabinet minister Abdul Aziz Shaheen told the official PA newspaper, Al-Havat Al-Jadida, on January 4, 1998, "The Oslo accord was a preface for the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Authority will be a preface for the Palestinian state which, in its turn, will be a preface for the liberation of the entire Palestinian land."
Faisal Husseini
, former Palestinian Authority Minister for Jerusalem, compared the al-Aqsa intifada
following the Oslo peace process to the tactic of coming out of the Trojan Horse
used by the Greeks in the myth of the Trojan War
.
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. While some Palestinian leaders say that the peace process
Peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
The peace process in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has taken shape over the years, despite the ongoing violence in the Middle East and an "all or nothing" attitude about a lasting peace, "which prevailed for most of the twentieth century"...
is intended to achieve a permanent peace with the State of Israel, others maintain that their goal is to destroy Israel.
Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad
Hamas
Hamas is the Palestinian Sunni Islamic or Islamist political party that governs the Gaza Strip. Hamas also has a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades...
and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad is to conquer Israel and replace it with an Islamist state. Hamas undertook a ceasefire
Ceasefire
A ceasefire is a temporary stoppage of a war in which each side agrees with the other to suspend aggressive actions. Ceasefires may be declared as part of a formal treaty, but they have also been called as part of an informal understanding between opposing forces...
with Israel in August 2004. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad was unhappy with the ceasefire. In September 2005, Hamas was criticized by Islamic Jihad for calling off rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza. Because the very identity of Hamas depends on its militancy and rejection of any form of Jewish life in the Middle East, Hamas has shown no interest in cooperating with the United States on any sort of peace negotiation.
In 2008, Hamas publicly offered a long-term hudna
Hudna
Hudna is an Arabic term meaning a temporary "truce" or "armistice" as well as "calm" or "quiet", coming from a verbal root meaning "calm". It is sometimes translated as "cease-fire"...
(truce) with Israel if Israel agreed to return to its 1967 borders and to grant the "right of return
Right of return
The term right of return refers to a principle of international law, codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, giving any person the right to return to, and re-enter, his or her country of origin...
" to all Palestinian refugee
Palestinian refugee
Palestinian refugees or Palestine refugees are the people and their descendants, predominantly Palestinian Arabic-speakers, who fled or were expelled from their homes during and after the 1948 Palestine War, within that part of the British Mandate of Palestine, that after that war became the...
s. The New York Times Steven Erlanger
Steven Erlanger
Steven J. Erlanger is an American journalist who has been the Paris bureau chief for The New York Times since 2008. Erlanger joined the Times in September 1987....
contends that Hamas excludes the possibility of permanent reconciliation with Israel. "Since the Prophet Muhammad made a temporary hudna
Hudna
Hudna is an Arabic term meaning a temporary "truce" or "armistice" as well as "calm" or "quiet", coming from a verbal root meaning "calm". It is sometimes translated as "cease-fire"...
, or truce, with the Jews about 1,400 years ago, Hamas allows the idea. But no one in Hamas says he would make a peace treaty with Israel or permanently give up any part of Palestine.".
Yasser Arafat and the PLO
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
's right to exist in peace was the first of the PLO's obligations in the Oslo Accords
Oslo Accords
The Oslo Accords, officially called the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements or Declaration of Principles , was an attempt to resolve the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict...
. In Yasser Arafat's September 9, 1993 letter to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
Yitzhak Rabin
' was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995....
, as part of the first Oslo accord, Arafat stated that "The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security." Electronic Intifada
Electronic Intifada
The Electronic Intifada is a not-for-profit, independent online publication which covers the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a Palestinian perspective, "aimed at combating the pro-Israeli, pro-American spin" its editors believe exists in mainstream media accounts.-History:EI was founded by Ali...
stated that Arafat has made several calls for an end to violence and lasting peace. These remarks from Arafat indicated a shift away from one of the PLO's primary aims—the destruction of Israel.
However, evidence throughout history and even during the 1990s and 2000s have shown that the PLO leadership considered any peace made with Israel to be temporary until the dream of Israel's destruction could be realized. Arafat often spoke of the peace process in terms of "justice" for the Palestinians; terms historian Efraim Karsh
Efraim Karsh
Efraim Karsh is professor and head of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King's College London, and director of the Philadelphia-based think tank, the Middle East Forum...
described as "euphemisms rooted in Islamic and Arabic history for the liberation of the whole of Palestine from 'foreign occupiers.'" When describing his views of the peace process among Arab leaders and in the media of the Arab world, Arafat's rhetoric became noticeably more bellicose than it was when among Western leaders and media outside of the Arab world. The period saw a disconnect between what the PLO's second in command Abu Iyad referred to as "the language of peace" and support of Palestinian terrorism.
Since the 1990s, there has been a debate within the PLO as to whether to halt terrorist activities completely or to continue attacking Israel as well as negotiate diplomatically with Israel. In practice, terrorism was never fully banned. Furthermore, assassination attempts by radical Palestinian factions within the PLO since the early years of the peace process kept Arafat from expressing full, public support of the peace process or condemnation of terrorism without risking further danger to his own life.
In 2000, after Yasser Arafat rejected the offer
Camp David 2000 Summit
The Middle East Peace Summit at Camp David of July 2000 took place between United States President Bill Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat...
made to him by Ehud Barak
Ehud Barak
Ehud Barak is an Israeli politician who served as Prime Minister from 1999 until 2001. He was leader of the Labor Party until January 2011 and holds the posts of Minister of Defense and Deputy Prime Minister in Binyamin Netanyahu's government....
based on the two-state solution and declined to negotiate for a more favorable offer, it became clear that Arafat would not make a deal with Israel unless it included the full Palestinian right of return
Palestinian right of return
The Palestinian right of return is a political position or principle asserting that Palestinian refugees, both first-generation refugees and their descendants, have a right to return, and a right to the property they or their forebears left or which they were forced to leave in what is now Israel...
, which, analysts on all sides agree, would demographically destroy the Jewish, democratic character of the State of Israel. For this reason, critics of Arafat claim that he put his desire to destroy the Jewish state above his dream of building an autonomous Palestinian state.
Prominent Palestinians
When Sari NusseibehSari Nusseibeh
Sari Nusseibeh , and raised in Jerusalem, is a Palestinian professor of philosophy and president of the Al-Quds University in Jerusalem...
was the representative of the Palestinian Authority in Jerusalem (circa 2000), he called for historic compromises by both Palestinians and Israelis, to secure a permanent and lasting peace. For example, he stated that Palestinians must give up their claim of a right of return
Right of return
The term right of return refers to a principle of international law, codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, giving any person the right to return to, and re-enter, his or her country of origin...
. With this concession, he argued, a true and lasting peace could emerge.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat
Saeb Erekat
Saeb Muhammad Salih Erekat Saeb Muhammad Salih Erekat Saeb Muhammad Salih Erekat (also Erakat; Ṣāʼib ʻUrayqāt or ʻRēqāt, born April 28, 1955 in Jordanian controlled East Jerusalem was the Palestinian chief of the PLO Steering and Monitoring Committee until 12 February 2011...
said on August 5, 2000, "Palestinians are no strangers to compromise. In the 1993 Oslo Accords, we agreed to recognize Israeli sovereignty over 78 percent of historic Palestine and to establish a Palestinian state on only 22 percent." Rashid Abu Shbak, a senior PA security official declared, "The light which has shone over Gaza
Gaza
Gaza , also referred to as Gaza City, is a Palestinian city in the Gaza Strip, with a population of about 450,000, making it the largest city in the Palestinian territories.Inhabited since at least the 15th century BC,...
and Jericho
Jericho
Jericho ; is a city located near the Jordan River in the West Bank of the Palestinian territories. It is the capital of the Jericho Governorate and has a population of more than 20,000. Situated well below sea level on an east-west route north of the Dead Sea, Jericho is the lowest permanently...
[when the PA assumed control over those areas] will also reach the Negev
Negev
The Negev is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The Arabs, including the native Bedouin population of the region, refer to the desert as al-Naqab. The origin of the word Neghebh is from the Hebrew root denoting 'dry'...
and the Galilee
Galilee
Galilee , is a large region in northern Israel which overlaps with much of the administrative North District of the country. Traditionally divided into Upper Galilee , Lower Galilee , and Western Galilee , extending from Dan to the north, at the base of Mount Hermon, along Mount Lebanon to the...
[which constitute a large portion of pre-1967 Israel]."
The PA's Voice of Palestine radio station broadcast a Friday prayer sermon by Yusuf Abu Sneineh, official preacher at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque
Al-Aqsa Mosque
Al-Aqsa Mosque also known as al-Aqsa, is the third holiest site in Sunni Islam and is located in the Old City of Jerusalem...
, over the radio. In it, he asserted, "The struggle we are waging is an ideological struggle and the question is: where has the Islamic land of Palestine gone? Where [are] Haifa and Jaffa, Lod and Ramle, Acre, Safed and Tiberias? Where is Hebron and Jerusalem?"
PA cabinet minister Abdul Aziz Shaheen told the official PA newspaper, Al-Havat Al-Jadida, on January 4, 1998, "The Oslo accord was a preface for the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Authority will be a preface for the Palestinian state which, in its turn, will be a preface for the liberation of the entire Palestinian land."
Faisal Husseini
Faisal Husseini
Faisal Abdel Qader Al-Husseini was a Palestinian politician who was considered a possible future leader of the Palestinian people....
, former Palestinian Authority Minister for Jerusalem, compared the al-Aqsa intifada
Al-Aqsa Intifada
The Second Intifada, also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada and the Oslo War, was the second Palestinian uprising, a period of intensified Palestinian-Israeli violence, which began in late September 2000...
following the Oslo peace process to the tactic of coming out of the Trojan Horse
Trojan Horse
The Trojan Horse is a tale from the Trojan War about the stratagem that allowed the Greeks finally to enter the city of Troy and end the conflict. In the canonical version, after a fruitless 10-year siege, the Greeks constructed a huge wooden horse, and hid a select force of men inside...
used by the Greeks in the myth of the Trojan War
Trojan War
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...
.
External links
- "Mideast Peace Process: Palestinian View" online interview with Fawaz GergesFawaz GergesFawaz A. Gerges is a professor and author with expertise on the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy, international relations, Al Qaeda, and relations between the world of Islam and the West....
. washingtonpost.com. 8 February 2005. - "Palestinian Positions toward Israeli Peace Movements and Normalization with Israel" by Aluma Solnik and Yotam Feldner. Middle East Media Research InstituteMiddle East Media Research InstituteThe Middle East Media Research Institute is a Middle Eastern not for profit press monitoring organization with headquarters located in Washington, DC. MEMRI was co-founded in 1998 by Yigal Carmon, a former colonel in the Israeli military intelligence and Meyrav Wurmser, an Israeli-born, American...
. 21 August 1998. - "A Pessimist's View of the Peace Process" by Yigal CarmonYigal CarmonYigal Carmon is the president and founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute , an organization which monitors and translates Arabic and Persian publications, radio and TV broadcasts and religious sermons into many languages and circulates them over the Internet.-Career:*Colonel, IDF...
. Middle East ForumMiddle East ForumThe Middle East Forum is an American conservative think tank founded in 1990 by Daniel Pipes, who also serves as its director. MEF became a 5013 non-profit organization in 1994...
. 13 February 1997.