https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight/
First, “land for peace” was never viable. The Palestinian goal was presumed to be “land” and Israel’s was “peace.” But “peace” is not a negotiable property.
When a key member of the professional Middle East peace processoriat acknowledges that his community might have, in fact, been wrong, it is worthwhile to read what he has to say. But in his article “Arab-Israeli progress seemed impossible. That’s because of old assumptions,” Aaron David Miller misses the mark.
In his view, “For decades, a core assumption of many, if not most American foreign policy thinkers has been that the Israel-Palestinian conflict was a veritable powder keg that could blow at any time, creating war and instability in the Arab world.” Therefore, Palestinians first; Arab states after. He explains how the current administration simply bypassed the Palestinians and, therefore, “This doesn’t mean the Arab-Israeli conflict is over or that Israel has untethered itself from a dispute with Palestinians that could profoundly shape its character, demography and security—the Israeli and Palestinian futures are inextricably linked.”
Perhaps. The Palestinians certainly should have a role in their own future when they are ready, but it isn’t wrong of the other regional players to move without them. The problems, though, are more (and bigger) than the order of events.
First, “land for peace” was never viable. The Palestinian goal was presumed to be “land” and Israel’s was “peace.” But “peace” is not a negotiable property; a historian called it, “The condition imposed by the winner on the loser of the last war.” The “peace” of Versailles contained the seeds of World War II; the “peace” of 1945 contained the seeds of a democratic Germany and Japan but consigned millions to almost a half-century of Soviet-dominated communism. Peace emerges, if at all, only after the resolution of competing claims, whether through negotiation or war. World War II ended when the allies were in Berlin and Hitler was dead in the bunker. The Cold War ended when Soviet satellites were freed from Moscow’s grip and communism died.