In the aftermath of UNSC Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlement construction, Secretary of State John Kerry publicly blamed Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank for being the major barrier to a two-state solution to resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
For almost 100 years, the Declaration has represented, for the Palestinians, the political beginning of Palestine falling out of their influence and into the control of the budding Zionist movement.
Many in the Arab world and amongst Palestinian leaders believe that, for the sake of evenhandedness and justice, the U.S. government, a longtime supporter of Israel’s security and existence, should have openly endorsed and urged others to vote for the proposition of Palestinian state recognition at the United Nations. Criticism of the U.S. failing to do so has been harsh, but it is also without perspective or historical context. What is forgotten is the persistent, even aggressive, perhaps unprecedented role that Washington has played in pushing for Palestinian rights, self-determination and, most recently, for Palestinian statehood.
“A Zionist State in 1939,” Dr. Kenneth W. Stein, CHAI (Atlanta), Winter 2002 “Had not the Nazi crimes been committed against Jews during World War II, the Jewish State would have never come true.” So…
Kenneth W. Stein, “One Hundred Years of Social Change: The Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem,” in Laurence Silberstein (ed.), New Perspectives on Israeli History: The Early Years of the State, New York University Press,…
Egyptian President Sadat colluded with Syrian President Assad to attack Israel on October 6, 1973. Sadat’s objective was not to seek Israel’s destruction but to gain a limited success by crossing the canal. He also sought to engage American diplomacy to generate talks with Israel that would see Israeli withdrawal from Egyptian land Israel secured in the June 1967 War. Sadat took a large gamble by attacking Israel yet he unfolded a negotiating process with Israel that lasted through 1979. He achieved his overarching long-term priority of having Egyptian Sinai returned to Egyptian sovereignty.
Otherwise known as Israel’s War of Independence, or, “the nakbah” or disaster to the Arab world because a Jewish state was established, the war was fought between the newly established Jewish state of Israel opposed by Palestinian irregulars, and armies from five Arab states. Official beginning of the war is usually given as May 14, 1948, the date Israel declared itself an independent Jewish state, but the war’s first of four phases began in November 1947. Lasting for two years, the war ended with armistice agreements signed in 1949 between Israel and four Arab states.
The 1937 plan to partition Palestine was never implemented. It did, however, remain a workable political option for resolving the conflict between Arabs and Zionists. Britain needed to placate Arab state opposition to Zionism, so it refrained from actively revisiting the partition plan.
Speculation again abounds whether a two state solution might be a seriously considered outcome to Palestinian-Israeli differences. A long history of its mention but not its implementation persists. Advocacy by external voices persists, but no one seems ready to make the critical political trade-offs required.
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