American academic Walt Steve says that extremism, pressure groups, foreign interventions, and above that a deeper structural problem, all make it likely that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will remain unresolved.
Steve, a professor of foreign policy at Harvard University and a columnist in Foreign Policy magazine, wonders why the various efforts to end this conflict failed, while all the conflicts that took place in the twentieth century found solutions, and their parties dealt with after the wars within the framework of normal relations, such as America with Germany and Japan, America and Vietnam, and internal conflicts in Ireland and South Africa.
Steve responded – in an article in the magazine – saying that there are five reasons that he considers the most important for the continuation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
A deep structural problem
At the heart of this conflict are “indivisible goals.” Both Palestinians and Israelis want to live on and control the same piece of land, each side believes it is rightfully theirs, each side has a basis for its claim, and strongly believes its position should be superior to that of the other. This is a deep structural problem.
It is difficult to resolve this dispute if the issue – or issues – at hand cannot be divided in a way acceptable to both parties, in addition to the complex and contested status of Jerusalem, a holy site for 3 major religions.
Although there have been numerous land-sharing proposals over the past century, voices calling for compromise have been drowned out or marginalized by those who want all of the disputed territory.
Security problem
Given the first problem, coupled with the small size of the disputed territories, both sides face a severe security dilemma.
Zionist leaders realized from the beginning that it would be impossible to create a Jewish-controlled state with a large Arab minority, let alone an Arab majority.
This belief led to acts of “ethnic cleansing” during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and again in 1967 when Israel seized the West Bank. Naturally, both the expelled Palestinians and Israel’s Arab neighbors were angry about what had happened and keen to reverse the results.
Israel’s small population and weak geography gave its leaders a strong incentive to make it safer by expanding its borders. Unfortunately, retaining and settling the West Bank, while also controlling the Gaza Strip, means that millions of Palestinians will be permanently under Israeli authority, in effect creating the demographic problem that Israel’s founders sought to avoid.
“Greater Israel”
Pursuing the goal of “Greater Israel” would force its leaders to grant full political rights to the roughly equal number of Israelis and Palestinian nationals, find another excuse to expel the rest, or establish an apartheid regime inconsistent with Tel Aviv’s alleged commitment to democracy and human rights.
As former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami wrote in 2006, “Democracy, the Jewish state, and territorial expansion are irreconcilable.”
This leaves the least bad option: Israel could give up a large portion of the territory it now controls and allow the Palestinians to establish a state of their own. This goal was the declared policy of the administrations of former US presidents Bill Clinton, George Bush, Barack Obama, and now Joe Biden.
The difficulty of the two-state solution
However, the security dilemma complicates efforts to negotiate “two states for two peoples,” as Israeli negotiators insist that any future Palestinian entity (or state) must be effectively demilitarized, with Israel retaining significant control over its borders and airspace to ensure that such The state is seriously threatened. But such an arrangement will never be accepted by the Palestinians.
Although it is possible to imagine arrangements that could improve each side’s sense of security and help encourage eventual reconciliation, absolute security is an unattainable goal.
Unfortunately, what happened to the Israelis by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), and what happened to the Palestinians by Israel, will make it difficult to achieve a two-state solution in the foreseeable future.
Foreign interventions
The conflict between the two sides was fueled and sustained by a group of third parties (Britain, America, the Soviet Union, Iran, and Arab countries) whose interventions were self-interested and counterproductive. The interventions of all these parties have made the situation worse, according to the writer.