On the ground, the Palestinian-Israeli reality is an unprecedented spectacle of senseless death, fear and horror. Beneath the surface, however, there is a new sense of cautious hope, at least among experienced negotiators in the region, that a unique set of conditions may be emerging that could provide the best opportunity this century to create a lasting peace settlement and a Palestinian state.
That doesn’t mean either Palestinians or Israelis have suddenly become peace-minded. The Israeli public remains furious at Hamas and distrustful of Palestinians over the Oct. 7 atrocities and the continuing drama of civilian hostages, and of course Palestinians will never forgive Israel for the disproportionate slaughter of civilians in Gaza and for settler attacks in the West Bank.
But both populations are also turning dramatically against the two organizations that have made it their mission to block a peace agreement for most of this century – Hamas and the Likud party.
The Palestinians of Gaza, as Mideast scholar Hussein Ibish observed recently, have come to oppose Hamas sharply in recent months, after a brief flourish of support in October, to the point that only around 29 per cent now express trust in the religious-extremist organization. Hamas, which seized control of the coastal territory in 2007, says its mission is to oppose the creation of parallel states of Palestine and Israel. Its control over Gaza since then has prevented any serious peace talks from proceeding.
“The evident political peril facing Hamas,” Mr. Ibish wrote, represents “a major opening for the West, Arab countries and Israel.”
That means nothing as long as Israeli Prime Minister and Likud Leader Benjamin Netanyahu remains in power. He has devoted his career to preventing a Palestinian state and a peace agreement, to the extent of empowering Hamas to prevent that outcome. But Israelis have taken to the streets against him and his far-right coalition partners over their conduct of the war and their disregard for the hostages, to the point that there’s a good chance his coalition government could be gone by the end of this year.
If Israel were to regain something resembling the more-moderate coalition government it had in 2021 and 2022 (which, for the first time since the 1990s, included parties representing Israel’s one-fifth Arab population) and some manifestation of the Palestinian Authority were to achieve legitimacy in Gaza, then, as Jonathan Rynhold of Bar-Ilan University recently wrote, it likely “would be able to provide a political horizon for Palestinian statehood.”
A third factor makes that possibility even more likely: The recognition, by most developed countries, that no resolution to the Israel-Hamas war will be workable without a Palestinian state.
Rather than the traditional view of statehood as the final step in a prolonged peace process, delivered after all concessions have been met by Israel and Palestine, there is now a consensus that statehood should be recognized earlier. That change was reflected in the statement issued by Global Affairs Canada on May 10 after Canada joined 24 other countries in abstaining from the UN General Assembly’s vote to recommend Palestine for eventual recognition as a UN member: “Canada is prepared to recognize the State of Palestine at the time most conducive to lasting peace, not necessarily as the last step along that path.”
That change in position resembles the current view of the Biden administration, I’m told. And, as the British international-strategy scholar Lawrence Freedman recently observed, one of the few current points of unity within the G20 countries is “virtual unanimity in the two-state solution as the only solution to the conflict” – a point U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken describes as a new “commonality.” The U.S. and its allies have been rightly criticized for giving support and legitimacy to Mr. Netanyahu’s excesses, but this less-noticed change in their Mideast negotiating stand may have more lasting implications.
The Israeli-Palestinian peace process was founded on the decisions made in 1947, when a majority of UN members agreed to decolonize the British possessions in the Levant into two parallel countries, centred on the region’s two major religious communities, with a shared capital in Jerusalem.
After much of the second putative country, Palestine, was seized militarily by Jordan for 19 years, then occupied by Israel, the peace process sought to grant it statehood (and recognize Jerusalem as the joint capital) only after negotiated concessions: Recognition of Israel and renunciation of terrorism by Palestinian leaders; withdrawal of settlements (or exchange of land for them) and return of some refugees to Israel.
Hamas and Likud have rejected those concessions, and thus blocked the peace process. The last seven months of horrific violence have been the consequence of this inaction. That failure may soon drive both out of leadership, and open up a path – albeit a very difficult one – to that 77-year-old promise becoming reality.
Doug Saunders