59
for varied reasons, within the national frameworks of each of
the parties. In fact, even prior to the establishment of the State
of Israel, an ideological rift divided the Jewish settlement in
reaction to the Peel Committee partition proposal of 1937.
Similar reactions were evident in the Arab world, including
the Palestinians, in reaction to Resolution 181 from 1947.
The 1949 Armistice Agreements set both permanent and
temporary borders to the State of Israel: the borders with
Lebanon, and with Jordan in the Araba region and the Jordan
Valley, were based on international borders determined in
1921-1923, and the border with Egypt was established in 1906.
The borders with Jordan (the West Bank and Jerusalem) and
with Syria (just below the Golan Heights) were established
as armistice borders.
The armistice border with Jordan on the West Bank was
considered the more "sensitive" border for two reasons:
• Security – it directly faces the central region of Israel,
demarcating the country's "narrow waist" (just 14
kilometers).
• Ideology – it maintained, at least for the time being, the
partition of Israel and Jerusalem. (It should be noted that
the armistice border with Syria was also highly sensitive
due to the settlement of Syrian citizens above the Hula
Valley settlements in a clear attempt to gain tactical
superiority).
The partition plan was opposed by people from both the
political left and right (each with their own reasons), as
was the West Bank armistice line. However, the dominance
of the political party in power at the time, the Mapai Party
(Workers' Party of the Land of Israel), along with the authority
of David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, on matters
of state and security, tipped the scales and created a set
of circumstances that persevered for the first 19 years of
Israeli independence.
The Six Day War and its territorial outcomes disrupted
everything once again. Debates and disputes regarding
the "occupied territories" raged throughout Israel immediately
following the war, even crossing political boundaries. This
dispute became concrete after Sadat's visit to Israel in
November 1977, and the signing of the Camp David Accords
in 1978, which produced two decisions of historic significance:
• Israel's agreement to retreat from territories seized in
1967, and the evacuation of Israeli settlements.
• Recognition of the "Palestinian entity", and establishment of
a framework for future agreements (initially to provide the
Palestinians some autonomy). The part of the agreement
regarding the Palestinian issue was designed to serve as
a foundation for future peace agreements between Israel
and the Palestinians. Years later, certain articles of the
Oslo Accords would preserve the outlines set forth in the
1978 Camp David Accords.
1
2
There were many opponents to the peace agreement with
Egypt:
•
In the Arab world
– among countries that rejected any
recognition of the State of Israel, specifically Saudi Arabia
and Syria, which broke off diplomatic ties with Egypt.
Members of theMuslimBrotherhood in Egypt also opposed
the agreement.
•
In the Palestinian world
– both Arafat and certainly
the "Rejectionist Front" believed the agreement to be a
surrender of the Palestinian cause.
•
In Israel
– the majority of opposition stemmed from right-
wing parties, including the Likud Party, and even a handful
of Labor Party members. They argued against ceding
strategic territories, or any evacuation and destruction of
Jewish settlements. Furthermore, parts of the agreement
relating to theWest Bank were, to the ideological objectors,
a return to the dispute over dividing the land of Israel and
the ancestral Jewish homeland.
The dispute over Camp David served as a prelude to the
great and terrible rift produced by the Oslo Accords on
September 13, 1993.
Chapter 2 – Barriers to the peace process
Naturally, there are varied reasons and motives for opposing
the peace process, some practical, some political, and
some even personal, with the merits of each in the eyes of
the beholder.
The following collection of articles extensively reviews the
various barriers to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
3
"Socio-Psychological Barriers to Resolving the Israeli-
Palestinian Conflict: An Analysis of Jewish Israeli Society
"
–Eran Halperin, Neta Oren, and Daniel Bar-Tal address the
deeply rooted
emotional barriers
that make it difficult to
change beliefs and positions, as well as the ability to process
information and take advantage of opportunities that arise.
These obstacles may disrupt any evaluation, even causing
overestimates of one's own ability to meet certain objectives
(such as – "time is on our side"
4
), or of the commitment of
the other side to resolve the conflict and make concessions.
These are evident in the conduct of politicians and political
leaders, in political discourse, and in the attitude of political-
parliamentary and non-parliamentary parties and bodies.
1 "Previous Initiatives and Agreements", Reut Institute, 2004. [This
and all the sources that follow are in Hebrew]
2 "The PLO: The Path to Oslo – 1988 as the turning point in the history
of the Palestinian Liberation Organization", by Moshe Shemesh,
1997.
3 "Barriers to Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict", edited by
Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research,
2010.
4 Ibid.
