Israeli views on the peace process

This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.This article examines Israeli views of the peace process that is ongoing concerning the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

A popular understanding of the origins of the conflict from the Israeli point of view is that it began following the 1967 Six-Day War with Israel's occupation of the territories and consequently the peace process negotiations should stem from this.

[1][2] This "traditional" or "common" narrative, as the terms suggest, is both popular and well established in the mindset of many Israelis, both civilians and politicians alike and others outside of the state, particularly in the West.

The narrative broadly holds that in the 1940s the Arabs were unwilling to negotiate and it was they who instructed their people to flee in 1948 creating the refugee problem that persists today.

This view is demonstrated by the assassination of Rabin in 1995 by a rightwing radical Yigal Amir who opposed his signing the Oslo Accords and served to highlight the differences in opinion held within Israeli society as to the direction the peace process and consequently Israel should take.

Israeli commentators lay blame for the failure of the Oslo Accords at Yasser Arafat's door believing his leadership to be corrupt and dictatorial rather than looking at events of Israel's making.

[10] The initial building of settlements and the continuation of such schemes, despite the Oslo Accords rhetoric demonstrates that those at the top of Israeli politics did not seriously envisage creating a viable Palestinian state as part of the peace process.

[2] For citizens outside the nationalist right the period around the Oslo Accords represented a time when negotiation over territory became acceptable on the understanding that the alternative was the probability that Israel would have to lose either its liberal democracy or Zionist identity.

The Camp David summit in the summer of 2000 involving United States President Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat, was an attempt to agree a deal to finalise issues that would create a peace settlement.

Barak did not acknowledge the role of Israel in the Palestinian refugee situation, highlighting his view of the peace process remains based in the traditional narrative understandings discussed at the top of this article.

[6] Sharon's rightwing government were not keen to see a true revival of the peace process after a couple of years of the violence of the Second Intifada and paid it little more than lipservice.

[6] Yitzhak Rabin, a hardliner who had two terms as prime minister, was instrumental in the continuation of settlements and did not wish for the peace process to go in the direction of Israeli and Palestinian states existing next door to each other.

[6] When Prime Minister for the second time, it was also his role in negotiations at Oslo that led to the so-called breakthrough in the peace process, acknowledging the PLO and the move towards Israeli withdrawal from the territories.

[11] His plans after the Oslo accords of continued settlement and road building in the occupied territories demonstrated his true views on the peace process; not a desire to return to 1967 borders but a separation in some form of Palestinians from Israelis.

[15] He, like his successors in office, Barak and Sharon, believed that if the creation of some form of Palestinian state was completely unavoidable it should only be in the Gaza Strip, part of the West Bank, and Israel should remain the military and sovereign ruler over the settlements, all of Jerusalem and important points such as the aquifers.

[10] There are those that hold left-wing viewpoints that believe Palestinians should have a sovereign state and Israel needs to go further in compromising to create peace; and there is a spread of people in between with varied views.

[8] Public opinions change, as Slater says, the notion of a withdrawal from the territories and Palestinians gaining their own state was unthinkable in most circles prior to the 1990s, however a decade later it was an accepted central theme of the peace process for many.

[19] By example, in 1989–1990, the terrorist group Sicarii made arson and graffiti attacks, as well as death threats, against Jewish leftist political figures who supported the peace process.

[19] Most violent opponents to the peace process were Kahanists, and have links to Meir Kahane's former Kach political party, which was outlawed as racist in 1988.