I think you're framing the history of the peace accords in a way that is very unfair to Israel.
Many people have opined over the years on the negotiations between Israel and Palestine, and while it's certainly not one-sided, I think it's unfair to say that it is Israel's fault that a peace was never achieved. The Palestinian leadership multiple times turned down offers that most outside observers considered very good for the Palestinians, and didn't come up with any acceptable substitute; they walked away from the negotiations instead.
> The whole implicit promise of Oslo was that the Palestinians would get a sovereign state, but that wasn't explicitly spelled out anywhere in the text, and the Israelis never committed to it.
Here are some snippets from the beginning of the Oslo accords. I'm not sure what you mean by "not spelled out", they're fairly explicit about the Palestinian people ruling themselves:
> The aim of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations within the current Middle
East peace process is, among other things, to establish a Palestinian Interim
Self-Government Authority [...] It is understood that
the interim arrangements are an integral part of the whole peace process and
that the negotiations on the permanent status will lead to the implementation of
Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973).
> In order that the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip may
govern themselves according to democratic principles, direct, free and general
political elections will be held for the Council under agreed supervision and
international observation, while the Palestinian police will ensure public
order. [...] These elections will constitute a significant interim preparatory step toward the realization of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and their just requirements.
>> E.g. pro-Palestinian protests help create a message that the Hamas sees as support to it. That means most Palestinians will fall back into the loop of bad leadership that keeps landing them to a worse positions than they were before.
> The major problem is just the opposite. The Israelis have felt for the last 20 years that they can do anything to the Palestinians and ignore the Palestinians' demands for basic rights and a state of their own. The Israelis believe there will be no consequences, because the Palestinians are weak. October 7th was a complete aberration, the first time in 20 years that Israelis have suffered at all because of the occupation. Left to their own devices, the Israelis would just continue to expand settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, would never concede to the creation of a Palestinian state, and might even try to expel the Palestinians at some future date. Without outside pressure, there will never be an end to the conflict, except perhaps for a final expulsion of the Palestinians.
So I somewhat agree with this sentiment, actually. I think some minority of Israelis would absolutely be fine with expelling the Palestinians, and obviously they've continued expanding settlements all this time. The majority of Israelis would never agree with actually expelling Palestinians, but were "fine" living in what on their side were relatively peaceful times, not doing anything to promote peace (and letting the more anti-peace side of Israel effectively call the shots).
I do take issue with your saying that "the major problem is just the opposite" though. I think they're both problems. The Israeli left and pro-peace movement has become far less powerful, exactly because of the perception of the Israeli public that there is no "partner for peace". I think that perception is actually fairly true - Hamas wants the destruction of Israel, the PA is weak and ineffectual and hated by the people, and the perception is that the majority of Palestinians don't want a peaceful two-state solution, but rather believe that they will eventually "drive out Israelis" or some such nonsense.
The failure of the peace process, which Israelis perceive as happening because of the Palestinian leadership (which is fairly true IMO), and the ramp up of terror attacks because of the peace process, really weakened the Israeli peace movement. The situation with the Gaza disengagement is only going to weaken the peace camp further.
Of course Israel isn't blameless here either - whether or not Israeli "should have" pursued peace for the last 20 years - and I think it absolutely should have, morally speaking - what Israel also did was in some ways to actively work against peace. Part of the reason for the lack of "Palestinian leadership" is because of actions taken by Israel.
> most outside observers considered very good for the Palestinians
That's not the case. That's the "common wisdom" in the US, but it's not the dominant view among experts, and it's just objectively false.
> I'm not sure what you mean by "not spelled out", they're fairly explicit about the Palestinian people ruling themselves
If you read through the passages you've quoted carefully, you'll realize that the text does not say that the Palestinians will have their own sovereign state. The Israeli government's position under Rabin was that the Palestinians would be given a semi-autonomous status in an "entity" - not a state - that would be under Israeli control. Effectively, some sort of limited ability to run their own affairs, but under ultimate Israeli control, and without the ability to vote in Israeli elections.
> The failure of the peace process, which Israelis perceive as happening because of the Palestinian leadership (which is fairly true IMO)
This is a view that just flies in the face of reality. Netanyahu did everything possible to torpedo the peace process in the 1990s, and no Israeli government was prepared to accept the minimal acceptable settlement, which is a sovereign Palestinian state on 1967 borders. The Palestinians have repeatedly made this offer to the Israelis, but have been rebuffed every time, because Israel wants important parts of the occupied Palestinian territories, and because Israel demands things like full Israeli military control over any future Palestinian entity.
> That's not the case. That's the "common wisdom" in the US, but it's not the dominant view among experts, and it's just objectively false.
Can you provide backup for this?
> If you read through the passages you've quoted carefully, you'll realize that the text does not say that the Palestinians will have their own sovereign state.
The passages don't say the word state, but they pretty explicitly say that Palestinians will govern themselves, and that this is an interim step towards full Palestinian rights. Is your only issue with it that it's missing the word "state"? Honestly trying to understand your view here.
> The Israeli government's position under Rabin was that the Palestinians would be given a semi-autonomous status in an "entity" - not a state - that would be under Israeli control.
I saw you referencing this earlier. I think you're making too much of this. He was probably playing politics to a country that wasn't yet ready to hear talk of a Palestinian state in full, but it seems fairly clear that that was his end goal, and the obvious end of the process he himself was most actively pursuing (and tragically gave his life for). See e.g. this article in Haaretz, which gives a lot more context on this [1], I'll quote a relevant part:
"Kurzman’s claim is supported by my interviews with close associates of Rabin who told me that he had come to terms with the eventuality of a Palestinian state. He and his foreign minister, Shimon Peres, had an agreement not to discuss a Palestinian state at that stage but clearly understood that this was the end game, then-Labor Party Secretary General Nissim Zvili told me."
I'll also note that we are not beholden to what Rabin believed at the time, and many people have since become far more on board with a two-state solution, as the article notes:
"It is difficult to imagine that he would disagree with the vast majority of other retired Israeli generals – as well as the former heads of the Mossad and Shin Bet intelligence service – who today argue that a Palestinian state, alongside the Jewish state, is a top national security interest for Israel."
> Effectively, some sort of limited ability to run their own affairs, but under ultimate Israeli control, and without the ability to vote in Israeli elections.
Now I'm confused. Why would they have the ability to vote in Israeli elections? The idea is to have a separate state, with its own government. How does voting in Israeli elections figure into this?
> This is a view that just flies in the face of reality. Netanyahu did everything possible to torpedo the peace process in the 1990s, and no Israeli government was prepared to accept the minimal acceptable settlement, which is a sovereign Palestinian state on 1967 borders.
While you're right about Netanyahu, you're still wrong about Camp David, Taba and the 2008 offer. More importantly, while I have multiple times put the fault on Israel for not working actively for peace in the last 20 years, there is also a lot of fault on the Palestinians for exactly the same reason, and for continually choosing violence and terror instead of pushing more for peace from their side. You seem to view everything as 100% Israel's fault, giving no agency at all to the Palestinians - "Israel didn't make a good offer so that's that". It's also on them to advance peace, denounce terror, and work towards a two-state solution.
It's based on my reading from various people who were there and who have commented on the process afterwards. There is a massive gap between how this is discussed in the American popular media and how it's discussed among experts.
> Is your only issue with it that it's missing the word "state"?
In a process that is supposedly going to lead to a Palestinian state, don't you think it's a bit curious that it is never actually spelled out that there will be a Palestinian state?
The reason for the absence of any explicit statement that the "final status" will be a Palestinian state is that the Israeli government at the time opposed the creation of a Palestinian state. The Israeli government believed that it could resolve the Palestinian question through some sort of semi-autonomous status under ultimate Israeli control.
It may be that Rabin would eventually have accepted a Palestinian state, had he not been assassinated, but this was his public position at the time of his death [0]:
"We view the permanent solution in the framework of the State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
"We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority. The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six-Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines."
He goes on to state a number of conditions that would be utterly unacceptable to the Palestinians, including:
All of Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty: "First and foremost, united Jerusalem, which will include both Ma’ale Adumim and Givat Ze’ev -- as the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty, while preserving the rights of the members of the other faiths"
Israeli military control over the Jordan River Valley, which would be the eastern half of the putative Palestinian "entity": "The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term." (emphasis added)
What Rabin is spelling out here is much less than a Palestinian state. It is essentially a plan for the Palestinians to be able to run local civic affairs, while under ultimate Israeli control. What that would mean in practice would be that the Palestinian "entity" would be at the mercy of the Israeli government, with little ability to take independent actions that the Israeli government disliked. The Israelis would control the borders, and their troops would be able to move in at any moment in the event of a disagreement. This Palestinian entity would not even include the largest, most important Palestinian city: East Jerusalem.
That's why the Oslo Accords do not mention a "Palestinian state." The Israelis were not prepared to accept one.
> Why would they have the ability to vote in Israeli elections? The idea is to have a separate state, with its own government.
Because the Israelis did not envision a separate state. They envisioned an entity under ultimate Israeli control. In practice, that translates to a kind of second-class citizenship, where you do not have the right to vote for the government that exercises ultimate authority over the territory you live on. Israeli citizens would get to vote for the government that has all the guns. Palestinian "citizens" would get to vote for a local civic government that doesn't have any guns, with Israeli troops standing by, ready to move in whenever they want.
> you're still wrong about Camp David, Taba and the 2008 offer.
Camp David was utterly unacceptable for the same reasons I've discussed earlier. The Israelis offered something far less than a sovereign state, and they demanded extremely significant concessions on territory and other issues. The Palestinians managed to move the Israelis a bit at Taba, but then the negotiations broke down because the Israeli government was facing electoral defeat, with Israeli hardliners under Ariel Sharon set to take over. The 2008 offer was again utterly unserious - it was issued as a non-negotiable ultimatum, and included poison pills like Israeli annexation of Ariel, that the Israelis knew the Palestinians could never accept.
> You seem to view everything as 100% Israel's fault, giving no agency at all to the Palestinians
The Palestinians have very little agency. They have no army and no money. They live under military occupation. They have no significant international backers, and their opponent, Israel, is backed by the world superpower. They tried nonviolent resistance in the First Intifada, and were met with a brutal military response. They tried recognizing Israel and negotiating, asking for a sovereign state on 22% of the land, but they got nowhere. They tried violent resistance in the Second Intifada, and got crushed. They tried slowly working towards international recognition to build pressure on Israel, but again have had very little success. Even their attempts to organize an international boycott Israel have been essentially made illegal in much of the West.
> It's also on them to advance peace, denounce terror, and work towards a two-state solution.
That's what the Palestinians did in the 1990s, and it got them nowhere. Israel is in a position where it does not feel that it has to make any concessions. Until Israel feels pressure from the outside world, it will not do so.
> It's based on my reading from various people who were there and who have commented on the process afterwards. There is a massive gap between how this is discussed in the American popular media and how it's discussed among experts.
Ok. Can you tell me who some of these experts are? I'd genuinely like to read more about this, having recently read quite a bit about the negotiations.
> Camp David was utterly unacceptable for the same reasons I've discussed earlier.
You keep talking about Israel "offering" something unacceptable. We're talking about a negotiation, both sides having something they want and trying to achieve it, and having to compromise on things they disagree with. Yet you keep saying "this is unacceptable to the Palestinians, that is unacceptable to the Palestinians". You frame this as "they conceded to only asking for 22% of the land", meaning their original position of getting rid of Israel entirely made sense and was a hard concession for them to make, a concession they should be praised for making?
And as far as I know, there was no counter-offer made to these deals. It wasn't "well this isn't ok, here's what would work for us", because by the same token as you saying that Israel didn't want a full Palestinian state then, Arafat didn't want to agree to giving up anything from his side either. It was just "this is unacceptable" and back to terrorism to get better terms.
Again, this isn't my view, what do I know? This is a view of people taking part in the negotiations, e.g. talked about by Aaron David Miller on the Ezra Klein podcast [1]. It's pretty clear that he lays the blame on both sides and that the Israeli side isn't as rosy as Americans/Israelis sometimes think, but it's also pretty clear that at the end of the day, there were real, good legit offers on the table that Arafat walked away from without offering an alternative to.
> The Palestinians have very little agency. They have no army and no money. They live under military occupation. They have no significant international backers, and their opponent, Israel, is backed by the world superpower.
Clearly this isn't true of Gaza. They didn't live under Israeli occupation, though they did live under a blockade. And they have an army, which carried out a successful invasion of Israel. It's much smaller and weaker than Israel's army, of course, but saying they have no arms is patently false.
As is saying they have no and no backers. Iran is a huge international backer, as is Qatar, providing both money and arms. Palestinian refugees also receive a lot of international aid. Money that, in the case of Gaza, could've been put to good use in building up Gaza into some place amazing, and was instead put into fighting with Israel non-stop for the last 20 years.
Even setting aside who is "more right" or "more wrong", do you really think Hamas had little agency for the last 20 years? That there was no way to work on improving the lives of Gazan's and turning Gaza into a great place? And that they instead went the other way, spending most of their effort into war? I totally get criticizing Israel, you raise valid points, but is it really a stretch to also criticize Hamas and realize that they do have agency and could have made far better choices?
You can start off with Khalidi, who was involved in previous negotiations. He wasn't at the Camp David summit, but he knows the people who were.
> their original position of getting rid of Israel entirely made sense and was a hard concession for them to make, a concession they should be praised for making?
The Palestinians were driven from their land by European colonists. Nearly every major city in Israel, with a few exceptions (like Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem) used to be an Arab city, and saw the vast majority of its Arab population expelled in 1948. Haifa was an Arab city. Lod was an Arab city. Beersheba was an Arab city. Jaffa was an Arab city. Etc. Etc. Yes, it is an extremely painful concession to recognize Israel's sovereignty over those cities.
In terms of international law, Israel has no right to claim anything beyond the Green Line. Israel's internationally recognized borders are the 1967 borders, and the UN Charter forbids acquisition of territory by force. That's why UNSC 242 calls for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories (the US and Israel argue that the resolution doesn't say that, based on a grammatical ambiguity in English, but the French text is unambiguous, and the resolution would have no meaning otherwise).
More than 30 years ago, the Palestinians offered the Israelis a formula for peace that essentially recognizes that in historical terms, "Israel won" and the Palestinians admitted defeat, and which is consistent with international law. Israel took that as a starting point and demanded much more: East Jerusalem, settlements in the West Bank, control over the Jordan River Valley. Israel was not even willing to accept a sovereign Palestinian state.
> Clearly this isn't true of Gaza. They didn't live under Israeli occupation
Under international law, they did. This is a bit like arguing whether the Warsaw Ghetto was under German occupation. The Israelis withdrew their permanent ground force presence, but maintained a blockade by land, sea and air, periodically send in ground forces, bomb when they want to, prevent the Palestinians from establishing their own ports, electricity supply, or other things necessary to operate independently of Israel.
> And they have an army
Calling Hamas an "army" is extremely generous. They have small arms and home-made rockets. They have no tanks, no air force, no air defense. They're essentially insurgents, fighting a conflict that is about as asymmetric as it gets. The Israelis are very confident of their ability to push Hamas aside. Their main concern is international condemnation, not Hamas' military strength.
> That there was no way to work on improving the lives of Gazan's and turning Gaza into a great place?
This statement is just so detached from reality that I'm not even sure if I should give it a serious response. You're aware, for example, that Israel's declared policy before October 7th was to only allow enough calories into Gaza to keep it from falling into famine, but to "put Gaza on a diet," right? Or that Israel bombed Gaza's only power plant in one of its several wars against Gaza over the last two decades? Or that Israel does not allow Gaza to build a seaport or airport?
Many people have opined over the years on the negotiations between Israel and Palestine, and while it's certainly not one-sided, I think it's unfair to say that it is Israel's fault that a peace was never achieved. The Palestinian leadership multiple times turned down offers that most outside observers considered very good for the Palestinians, and didn't come up with any acceptable substitute; they walked away from the negotiations instead.
> The whole implicit promise of Oslo was that the Palestinians would get a sovereign state, but that wasn't explicitly spelled out anywhere in the text, and the Israelis never committed to it.
Here are some snippets from the beginning of the Oslo accords. I'm not sure what you mean by "not spelled out", they're fairly explicit about the Palestinian people ruling themselves:
> The aim of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations within the current Middle East peace process is, among other things, to establish a Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority [...] It is understood that the interim arrangements are an integral part of the whole peace process and that the negotiations on the permanent status will lead to the implementation of Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973).
> In order that the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip may govern themselves according to democratic principles, direct, free and general political elections will be held for the Council under agreed supervision and international observation, while the Palestinian police will ensure public order. [...] These elections will constitute a significant interim preparatory step toward the realization of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and their just requirements.
>> E.g. pro-Palestinian protests help create a message that the Hamas sees as support to it. That means most Palestinians will fall back into the loop of bad leadership that keeps landing them to a worse positions than they were before.
> The major problem is just the opposite. The Israelis have felt for the last 20 years that they can do anything to the Palestinians and ignore the Palestinians' demands for basic rights and a state of their own. The Israelis believe there will be no consequences, because the Palestinians are weak. October 7th was a complete aberration, the first time in 20 years that Israelis have suffered at all because of the occupation. Left to their own devices, the Israelis would just continue to expand settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, would never concede to the creation of a Palestinian state, and might even try to expel the Palestinians at some future date. Without outside pressure, there will never be an end to the conflict, except perhaps for a final expulsion of the Palestinians.
So I somewhat agree with this sentiment, actually. I think some minority of Israelis would absolutely be fine with expelling the Palestinians, and obviously they've continued expanding settlements all this time. The majority of Israelis would never agree with actually expelling Palestinians, but were "fine" living in what on their side were relatively peaceful times, not doing anything to promote peace (and letting the more anti-peace side of Israel effectively call the shots).
I do take issue with your saying that "the major problem is just the opposite" though. I think they're both problems. The Israeli left and pro-peace movement has become far less powerful, exactly because of the perception of the Israeli public that there is no "partner for peace". I think that perception is actually fairly true - Hamas wants the destruction of Israel, the PA is weak and ineffectual and hated by the people, and the perception is that the majority of Palestinians don't want a peaceful two-state solution, but rather believe that they will eventually "drive out Israelis" or some such nonsense.
The failure of the peace process, which Israelis perceive as happening because of the Palestinian leadership (which is fairly true IMO), and the ramp up of terror attacks because of the peace process, really weakened the Israeli peace movement. The situation with the Gaza disengagement is only going to weaken the peace camp further.
Of course Israel isn't blameless here either - whether or not Israeli "should have" pursued peace for the last 20 years - and I think it absolutely should have, morally speaking - what Israel also did was in some ways to actively work against peace. Part of the reason for the lack of "Palestinian leadership" is because of actions taken by Israel.