Leading news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) published an article 24 hours before United States President Joe Biden touched down in Israel that highlighted how a peace deal will not be an outcome of the visit.
Headlined, Palestinians say US economic push no substitute for peace, the second paragraph of the piece pointed out that US ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides had all but confirmed there would be no “throwing American diplomatic muscle into reviving a peace process moribund since 2014.”
An earlier article by another global wire service, the Associated Press, quoted Sam Bahour, a Palestinian-American business consultant based in the West Bank, stating that while economic measures aimed at improving the Palestinian economy could “positively contribute to making peace,” any lasting peace deal “would require Israel and the U.S. having a plan to end this 55-year-old military occupation.”
Meanwhile, American news agency The Media Line reported that while Biden will reaffirm his commitment to a two-state solution, it was “unlikely” that peace talks would be restarted:
A politically weakened Abbas wants the US president to help kick-start the peace process with Israel and announce the reopening of the US Consulate in Jerusalem among other things, but that is highly unlikely.”
Notably absent from these articles is any acknowledgment that the reason peace between Israel and the Palestinians has been so elusive is the more than seven decades of intransigence and rejectionism that have characterized the Palestinian leadership.
So in the spirit of giving the whole picture, here is a brief reminder of the many peace deals that Palestinians have spurned over the years.
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The Original ‘No’
It is important to remember that Palestinian rejectionism actually dates back to the very inception of the Palestinian people as a distinct entity. The grand mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin Husseini, a Nazi collaborator who led the Arab population in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine, warned the British that “most residents of Jewish lands” would not be given citizenship in a future Arab state and said all Jews would be expelled.
He made the comments during testimony before the Peel Commission, which had been established in 1936 in response to an Arab revolt and frequent Arab violence against Jews. In 1937, the Peel Commission recommended a partition of the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state, separated by an international zone.
The Peel Plan was rejected by Arabs.
The UN Partition Plan
Adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1947, Resolution 181 would have seen the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem being under international control. The plan had widespread support from Jewish representatives and was given the seal of approval by world powers including the United States, the Soviet Union, France and Belgium.
However, the Arab side emphatically rejected the compromise and declared their intention to thwart the creation of a Jewish state by any means necessary. They perpetrated a wave of attacks against the Jewish population and when Israel declared its independence in 1948, five Arab armies launched an all-out war of annihilation.
Israel won its freedom in what became known as the War of Independence.
The Six-Day War
Israel was again attacked in 1967 when several Arab armies sought to completely wipe the Jewish state from the map. Israel was victorious after speedily rebuffing offensives by Egypt, Jordan and Syria, which resulted in the nation winning control of the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
Seeking peace, Jerusalem offered to return territory it had captured but was met with the infamous Arab response that became known as the Three Nos: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel.
Yasser Arafat and the Camp David Proposal
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was presented with a deal at the Camp David Summit in 2000 that would have seen 92 percent of the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip placed under Palestinian control, with a plan to award territorial compensation for the remaining eight percent, and eastern Jerusalem designated as the new state’s capital.
Once more, the offer was rejected and Palestinians instead unleashed the Second Intifada, a campaign of suicide bombings and attacks that killed more than 1,000 Israelis and left thousands more injured.
Mahmoud Abbas and Continued Rejectionism
In 2008, then-Israeli PM Ehud Olmert restarted efforts for a lasting peace process with Arafat’s successor, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas. Olmert offered Abbas a map that showed Israel would give Palestinians nearly 94% of the West Bank, with Israeli territory in the remainder that would have been compensated for via a land swap, and a corridor connecting Gaza and the West Bank.
Abbas rejected the proposal outright on the grounds the concessions were insufficient and they were not being given the right to manage Jerusalem’s holy sites instead of Jordan.
Olmert later revealed that he told Abbas, “Remember my words, it will be 50 years before there will be another Israeli prime minister that will offer you what I am offering you now. Don’t miss this opportunity.”
The ‘Deal of the Century’
Former US President Donald Trump set out a proposal in 2020 that would have seen a two-state solution achieved, and would have included a Palestinian capital based in eastern Jerusalem. The holy city would have remained Israel’s undivided capital, while religious sites would have stayed under Jordanian supervision.
The plan, which was conditional on the Palestinian leadership rejecting “terror in all its forms,” was rejected before it had even been published, with PA President Abbas describing it as the “slap of the century.”
Related Reading: Rage Against The Balfour Declaration: Palestinian Leadership’s Rejection of Israel’s Existence
It is, unfortunately, true that Biden’s visit to Israel will not see the restarting of peace negotiations, but for any such talks to result in a lasting agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, the latter must finally stop saying “no.”
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