Israel and Palestine – war is not a solution
Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty at Camp David in 1978. They recognized each other as states and ended the state of war that had existed between them since 1948. Israel also returned the last part of the Sinai Peninsula still under its control to Egypt.
It was also stipulated that the rights of the Palestinians should be recognized and the Israeli settlements built on the occupied Palestinian territories should be dismantled. In return, Israeli ships were given free passage through the Suez Canal, and the Strait of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba were also recognized as international waterways and therefore also passable for Israel. – Source: https://www.dw.com/de/z%C3%A4her-frieden-das-camp-david-abkommen/a-45510109
This treaty was a treaty for the benefit of third parties: Israel and Egypt thereby agreed on a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, even though the Palestinians were not parties to the treaty. The Camp David Treaty could not legally bind the Palestinians and their organizations - PLO and later Hamas - to anything. Nevertheless, the hope was that this would end Palestinian terror.
Until the Camp David conference, the two countries had faced each other in a total of four wars: in the war of 1948/49, which immediately followed the founding of the state of Israel, then during the Suez crisis in 1956, in the Six-Day War in 1967 and finally in the so-called Yom Kippur War in 1973. A spiral of violence that Carter wanted to stop and, as a result, has stopped to this day.
Now Egypt is not Palestine. But Egypt was the main Arab power against Israel and had fought all the wars against Israel. The Peace of Camp David has stopped this spiral of violence between Egypt and Israel to this day. Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas and the PLO in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank have repeatedly attempted uprisings, attacks and intifadas. But there was no more war.
30 years ago, in 1993, Israelis and Palestinians agreed in Washington on the Oslo peace process. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, US President Bill Clinton and PLO leader Yasser Arafat achieved the seemingly impossible by committing to peace negotiations in Oslo. Unfortunately, these have not yet come to any conclusion. There is no peace treaty.
Today the PLO hardly plays a role anymore. Hamas and Hezbollah attack Israel with rockets from Iran. In the 1990s, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel again allowed settlements to be built in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. This violated the Camp David Peace Treaty. After a short interruption in 2005, this has recently been increasingly continued.
In 2021, Netanyahu was voted out as Prime Minister of Israel. At the end of 2022 he was re-elected prime minister with the support of the religious Jewish parties. He is against Israel's withdrawal from the occupied territories in the West Bank because he sees this as a repeat of the disengagement plan, which, in his view, was a mistake. Israel's unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005 contributed neither to peace nor to Israel's security. – Source: https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/129549.netanjahu-abzug-aus-gaza-war-ein-fehler.html
Netanyahu is only partially in favor of a two-state solution. In 2009 he announced that he would insist on recognizing Israel and a demilitarized Palestinian state if there were future steps towards peace with moderate negotiating partners. Netanyahu also rules out the evacuation of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Instead, in his view, all Jewish settlers should be integrated into a future Palestinian state. This means that Netanyahu only recognizes a Palestinian state under conditions. – Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Netanyahu
Since 2023, he has been pushing settlement construction in the West Bank again. To do this, he even withdrew the Israeli division that was stationed there from the Gaza Strip and had it relocated to the West Bank. This was one of the reasons why Hamas was able to take hostages and destroy houses and streets in its terrorist attack from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory on October 7, 2023.
I heard this information live in a television interview with an Israeli military insider, but didn't find it published anywhere. There is only very weak evidence in this direction, for example here: (QUOTE) Many people in Israel ask whether the prime minister had the wrong priorities. A focus on the occupied West Bank, which the current Israeli government claims as its own with unprecedented clarity. On his coalition with some right-wing extremist forces. And on the so-called judicial reform, which could help him in the corruption trial and which divided Israel domestically. (END OF QUOTE) – Source: https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/kommentar-israel-hamas-gazastreifen-100.html
So much for the facts. For historical and political context, I quote verbatim from the Deutschlandfunk background report from November 5, 2023 entitled “The geostrategic background of the Hamas attack”:
(QUOTE)
Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack on Israel marks the beginning of another war in the Middle East. Hamas' terror was directed against the Israeli civilian population during the attack. The Hamas terrorists also murdered children and the elderly. The Israeli military was completely taken by surprise.
According to Israeli government figures, more than 1,400 people were killed in the terrorist attack and in the days that followed. At least 240 people were also kidnapped by Hamas into the Gaza Strip. Israel's retaliatory strikes in the Gaza Strip have so far killed more than 11,000 people, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health. The numbers cannot be independently verified.
The major attack by Hamas is also referred to as Israel's "9/11" - a comparison with the Islamist terrorist attacks on the USA on September 11, 2001. The historian Moshe Zimmermann spoke on Deutschlandfunk of a "pogrom". According to Israeli President Izchak Herzog, not since the Holocaust have as many Jews been killed in one day as in the Hamas attack.
Experts see several motives for the attack on Israel: Hamas wants to torpedo Israel's peace process with Saudi Arabia and profile itself as a leading force in the Palestinian struggle, it is said. In addition, the major attack could be seen as an attempt to exploit the domestic political polarization in Israel due to the highly controversial judicial reform of the far-right coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The timing of the attack apparently referred to the 50th anniversary of the start of the Yom Kippur War in October 1973.
Hamas' goal is the destruction of Israel, says Kobi Michael from the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv. “They have believed for years that they can bring about salvation through armed struggle. Their aim is to sow extreme fear among the population and mistrust between civil society and the military.”
Hamas was founded in 1987. The name stands for “Organization of the Islamic Resistance”, but also means “zeal” or “fighting spirit” in Arabic. Hamas emerged from the Palestinian branch of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood. The group emerged in opposition to the more compromise-ready Fatah party of long-time Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
In its founding document, Hamas cites the conquest of Israel and an Islamic state of Palestine in its place as its goal. To do this, she uses anti-Semitic clichés about a Jewish-Zionist global conspiracy. In addition to its military arm, the Qassam Brigades, Hamas consists of a social aid organization and a political party.
Hamas is classified as a terrorist organization by the EU, USA and Israel. In 2006 it became the strongest force in the elections in the Palestinian territories. In 2007, the organization took control of the Gaza Strip after conflicts with the Fatah party.
(QUOTE END)
Five weeks after the start of Hamas' terrorist attack on Israel, there are more and more political statements that see a way out of this impasse on the one hand in a two-state solution, as was already agreed as a goal in 1973, but on the other hand that exclude Hamas as a partner in peace negotiations:
November 13, 2023 • 5:55 p.m.
Scholz: Two-state solution only without Hamas
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has emphasized that a two-state solution for Palestinians and Israelis will only be possible without the radical Islamic Hamas. This organization is not the basis for a two-state model, emphasizes Scholz at the NGG union. “This is a terrorist organization and it must be fought,” he added. The background was the question of how the Gaza Strip, which Hamas currently has under its control, should be governed in the future.
November 13, 2023 • 10:02 p.m.
Borrell presents plan for the future of the Gaza Strip
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has presented a plan for the future of the Gaza Strip after the war between Israel and the radical Islamic group Hamas. In it, Borrell called on Arab countries to play a greater role in a future Palestinian administration. The international community has failed "politically and morally" to reach a lasting solution to the long-running conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, Borrell told reporters in Brussels on Monday evening. It is now time to step up efforts to find a two-state solution.
Long before the Hamas attack on Israel and immediately after the Hamas attack on Israel, the President of the United States of America, Joe Biden, once again and emphatically called for and favored the two-state solution:
December 30, 2022, 12:06 a.m.
US President Joe Biden insists on a two-state solution for Israel
In the Middle East conflict, Biden reiterates his support for a two-state solution. But Israel's new government is planning a tougher line against the Palestinians.
US President Joe Biden wants to continue to advocate for a two-state solution in the Middle East conflict. Biden reaffirmed this after the inauguration of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is in coalition with, among other things, extreme right-wing and religious parties in his new government.
“I look forward to working with Prime Minister Netanyahu, with whom I have been friends for decades,” said Biden. As during his previous term in office, the USA would "continue to support the two-state solution and oppose policies that endanger its viability."
October 16, 2023, 10:29 a.m.
Joe Biden warns Israel against re-occupying the Gaza Strip
The US President continues to support a two-state solution. Hamas must be eliminated, but an occupation would be a “big mistake,” said Biden.
US President Joe Biden has warned Israel against re-occupying the Gaza Strip. “I think that would be a big mistake,” Biden said in an interview on CBS’ 60 Minutes.
Hamas, which rules in the Gaza Strip, “does not represent the entire Palestinian people,” he argued. Therefore, there must be a Palestinian Authority and a path to a Palestinian state, Biden said in the CBS interview. But a two-state solution could only succeed after “the extremists have been eliminated,” he said; This would require an invasion of the coastal strip.
October 26, 2023, 12:02 p.m.
Israel war: Biden calls for a “vision” for a two-state solution – and is probably having scenarios examined
Tel Aviv/Washington - A two-state solution for Israel and Palestine has repeatedly failed over the decades - and has seemed even more unattainable since the Hamas massacre in Israel on October 7th. At the same time, the war in Israel and the Gaza Strip makes it clear that a solution to the conflict is essential to bring long-term peace to the region.
US President Joe Biden also recalled this when he mentioned the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine on Wednesday (October 25). After the fight against Hamas, Israel should not return to its pre-war status, but should work towards a two-state solution with the Palestinians, Biden emphasized. The Israeli newspaper Times of Israel reports on this.
“There is no going back to the status quo of October 6th,” Biden said at a press conference. This means that Hamas can no longer “terrorize” Israel and use Palestinian civilians as “human shields.”
Likewise, there must be “a vision for what comes next,” and from the US perspective, this must be a two-state solution. This requires a “concentrated effort from all parties – Israelis, Palestinians, regional partners, global leaders.”
Germany and Europe stumbled blindly into this new Middle East war. The President of the United States of America, Joe Biden, warned against the escalation of the situation through further settlement policies well before the Hamas attack on Israel and immediately after the new government took office in Israel. And he also immediately mentioned the conditions that alone can lead to a pacification of the situation: a two-state solution and the elimination of the radical Islamic Hamas. European politicians are slowly moving towards this line. Why not earlier?
About the author: Otfrid Weiss has an advanced law degree, is Ministerialrat a.D. and colonel of reserve. After his administrative career, he worked in business for 21 years, including 14 years at SAP, Microsoft, Vision Consulting and Deloitte. From 1972 to 2003 he was a member of the German-Israeli Society (DIG) for 32 years.
