To give up on diplomacy is to accept the unacceptable - eternal war

Is there any possibility of peace between Israel and the Palestinians, or must we simply get used to periodic wars that deny both sides the tranquility and stability they seek?

It is easy to be pessimistic. The history of the region is littered with failed peace plans, collapsed diplomatic conferences, and thoroughly disillusioned mediators. Everything seems to have been tried, and nothing seems to have worked. Everyone is left assigning blame to anyone but themselves.

Yet to give up on diplomacy is to accept the unacceptable: eternal war. That is why, even amid the horrors of the latest Gaza war, talk of an eventual two-state solution remains alive and has actually grown louder.

At his November 3 press conference in Tel Aviv, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken went further in describing a lasting solution than any US official has in a long time – if ever. A two-state solution, he averred, is “the only guarantor of a secure, Jewish, and democratic Israel; the only guarantor of Palestinians realising their legitimate right to live in a state of their own, enjoying equal measures of security, freedom, opportunity, and dignity; the only way to end a cycle of violence once and for all.”

Blinken is right. Ensuring an “equal measure of security, freedom, opportunity, and dignity” for everyone between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean is the only ultimate solution. European leaders acknowledged this reality back in 1980 with the Venice Declaration. The nine members of the European Community (at the time) proclaimed that, “the Palestinian people, which is conscious of existing as such, must be placed in a position, by an appropriate process defined within the framework of the comprehensive peace settlement, to exercise fully its right to self-determination”.

By that time, Arab governments had given up on trying to erase the state of Israel. Following their failure in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, they finally agreed to make peace. But as the Venice Declaration recognised, true regional peace would not be possible until the Palestinian issue was settled.

In the optimistic early 1990s, the Oslo Accords showed what was possible. Palestine Liberation Organisation chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (an ex-general) shook hands on the White House lawn. The path to a two-state solution had been established, even if crucial details remained to be settled.

But the Oslo process eventually failed, owing to opposition boiling up among Israelis and Palestinians alike. The earlier optimism gave way to Palestinian terrorism and illegal Israeli settlements, and it has been downhill ever since. While successive US administrations have made repeated attempts to revive the peace process, none has made it a top priority. Until October 7, the Biden administration had left the issue on a back burner, hoping that the region would remain calm while it concentrated on other matters.

For its part, the European Union long maintained a forward-looking commitment to the Middle East peace process, and issued a detailed pronouncement, in December 2009, calling for “a two-state solution with the State of Israel and an independent, democratic, contiguous, and viable State of Palestine, living side by side in peace and security”. But Europe’s interest in the issue also waned over time. Though there were various reasons for this, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s consistent efforts to make serious peace talks impossible surely played a significant role.

Moreover, politicians in America, Europe, and Israel began to convince themselves that the Palestinian issue could simply be forgotten, since more Arab countries had begun to establish formal diplomatic relations with Israel. “If the Arab world no longer cares about the Palestinians,” they thought, “Why should we?”

Project Syndicate