What Is U.S.
Policy on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
The United States has long tried to negotiate a resolution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but several factors, including deep divisions
between and within the parties and declining U.S. interest in carrying out
its traditional honest-broker role, hurt the chances of a peace deal.
A
Palestinian climbs the Israeli barrier in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Mohamad Torokman/Reuters
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UPDATED
Last updated December 15, 2020
Summary
·
The decades-long conflict between Israelis and
Palestinians is rooted in competing claims to the Holy Land, and includes
disputes over borders, Jerusalem, security, and Palestinian refugees.
·
The United States has long sought to broker a
diplomatic solution to the conflict that would result in two states.
·
Many analysts believe the Trump Administration’s
interventions have made this outcome less likely.
Introduction
Israelis
and Palestinians have clashed over claims to the Holy Land for decades, a
conflict that has long been one of the world’s most intractable. Although the
United States is a strong supporter of Israel, it has traditionally tried to
advance a diplomatic solution that would reconcile the competing claims of the
two parties.
Multiple
U.S. administrations have proposed road maps for a peace process that would
result in two states, one Israeli and one Palestinian. However, many critics
say prospects for a so-called two-state solution have dimmed with President
Donald J. Trump’s controversial policy pivots on core components of the
conflict, including Jerusalem’s status and Israeli settlements in the West
Bank.
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by CFR Staff
What is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict about?
The Israeli-Palestinian
conflict is rooted in a century-long territorial dispute over
the Holy Land, a Middle Eastern region with great religious and historical significance to
Christians, Jews, and Muslims.
Increasing
numbers of Jews began moving to Ottoman Palestine—a predominately Arab
region—following the 1896 publication of Theodor Herzl’s The Jewish State, which promoted the idea of a
haven for Jews in their ancient homeland to escape anti-Semitism in Europe. The
migration accelerated after the Holocaust of World War II, in which Nazi
Germany killed six million Jews.
In
1947, after years of Arab-Jewish violence, the UN General Assembly voted for
the establishment of two states in Palestine, one Jewish and the other Arab.
Shortly after, the Jewish community in Palestine declared Israel an independent
state, prompting hundreds of thousands more Jews to emigrate, and precipitating
a war launched by neighboring Arab states.
For
their part, Palestinian Arabs say Jews have usurped their ancestral homeland
with help from Western powers, including the United States and the United
Kingdom. They refer to Israel’s establishment and its defeat of allied Arab
armies in the 1948 war as the Nakba, or
catastrophe, which the United Nations estimated uprooted more than seven
hundred thousand Palestinians.
In
the decades since, the Israeli-Palestinian dispute has continually flared into
conflict, including multistate wars, armed uprisings (intifadas), and terrorist
acts. A major turning point was the 1967 Six-Day War, which culminated in
Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza. In its
aftermath, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 242, which called for
Israel to withdraw from occupied lands to secure and recognize borders in
exchange for peace. The resolution lacked details, but nonetheless was a
milestone, becoming the basis for future diplomacy to end the Arab-Israeli
conflict.
Today,
the region is home to
some two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and three million in the West
Bank. Although most of Israel’s 9.1
million residents are Jewish, there are around two million Arab
citizens. International diplomatic efforts to broker a political settlement
have made limited headway. More recent U.S.-led diplomacy has focused on
resolving several core issues:
Borders.
The notion of having two separate states, one Israeli and the other
Palestinian, commonly referred to as the two-state solution, has had
significant international support for decades. It would establish a Palestinian
state that includes most of the West Bank—with land swaps to compensate it for
Israel’s absorption of some Jewish settlements there—and Gaza, which Israel
unilaterally withdrew from in 2005. Most international diplomacy promoting a
two-state solution favors Israel’s reverting to a version of its pre-1967
borders, but there is no consensus on how doing so could account for
Palestinians within those borders and Jewish Israelis living beyond them.
LEBANON
Golan
Heights*
SYRIA
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
Sea of
Galilee
West
Bank
Jordan
River
Tel Aviv
Ramallah
PALESTINIAN
TERRITORIES
Jerusalem
Dead
Sea
Gaza City
Gaza
ISRAEL
JORDAN
EGYPT
*In March 2019, the United States recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the
Golan Heights, but as of June 2020, it is the only country to do so.
Jerusalem.
The disputed city straddles the border of Israel and the West Bank. Israel has
annexed the whole city as its capital; the Palestinians claim East Jerusalem
for the capital of their state. A two-state solution would require a
Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.
Refugees.
The wars in 1948 and 1967 created some one million Palestinian refugees. The
survivors and their descendants, mostly living in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria,
claim the right to return to Israel, as supported by a 1948 UN General Assembly
resolution. Debate continues on whether survivors’ descendants should also be
considered refugees with that right. Israel sees the right to return as a
threat to its existence as a Jewish state, and believes the refugees should go
to the Palestinian state that would be created as part of a two-state solution.
Security. Israel
views some Palestinian militant groups as existential
threats [PDF], particularly Hamas, the Islamist organization that governs Gaza and
has vowed to destroy Israel. Its suicide bombings and rocket attacks usually
target Israeli civilians. Israel wants these groups to disarm and the
Palestinian state to be demilitarized, but accepts that Palestinians should
have a strong police force. The Palestinians seek an end to Israel’s military
occupation and want full control over their own security, but accept
limitations on their arms. Israel wants to maintain the ability to act in
Palestinian territory against threats to its security.
Mutual
recognition. Each side seeks recognition of its state by the other,
as well as the international community. Most Israeli Jews want to see Israel
recognized as a Jewish state, while Palestinians want Israel to acknowledge
their forced displacement under the Nakba.
End of
conflict. Both sides seek a peace agreement that would end their
conflict and honor the claims of each side, and lead to peace and normalization
of Israel’s relations with all Arab states, as provided for in the Arab
League’s Arab
Peace Initiative.
What are U.S. interests in the dispute?
The
Middle East has long been of central importance to the United States as
successive administrations pursued a broad set of interrelated goals including
securing vital energy resources, staving off Soviet and Iranian influence,
ensuring the survival and security of Israel and Arab allies, countering
terrorism, promoting democracy, and reducing refugee flows. Correspondingly,
the United States has sought to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which
has been a major driver of regional dynamics, with an eye toward obtaining
these strategic objectives while balancing its support for Israel and pushing
for broader regional stability.
At
the same time, the dispute has been a core concern of the American Jewish
community and Christian Evangelicals, both strong supporters of Israel.
Some experts say U.S. interest in resolving the
conflict has waned in recent years.
However,
some experts say U.S. interest in resolving the conflict has waned in recent
years. After the start of the Arab Spring in 2011, other regional conflicts,
such as wars in Syria and Yemen, Iran’s push for dominance in the region, and
terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and the self-proclaimed Islamic State posed
more immediate threats to U.S. interests. Additionally, U.S. relations with
Iran and the Arab Gulf states no longer seem to hinge on Israeli-Palestinian
issues, making the conflict even less of a priority, says CFR’s Philip H.
Gordon, who worked on Middle East peace negotiations at the White House during
the Barack Obama administration.
U.S.
interest in the greater Middle East also faded as other regions gained
priority, as highlighted by the Obama administration’s “Pivot to Asia.” With
its significant policy changes, the Trump administration is aiming to resolve
the conflict in Israel’s favor and impose a solution on the Palestinians.
How has the U.S. been involved in the conflict?
The
United States has been a central player in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for
more than half a century. It became involved shortly
after World War II, joining the United Kingdom in a 1946 inquiry [PDF]
that recommended one hundred thousand Holocaust survivors relocate to
Palestine, which would be neither a Jewish nor an Arab state. The United States
then became the first country to recognize Israel as a sovereign nation in
1948.
After
the 1967 Six-Day War, the United States attempted to mediate the broader
Arab-Israeli conflict along with Britain, France, Russia, and the United
Nations. However, it was the 1973 war, in which Israel struggled early on to
defend itself against invading Egyptian and Syrian forces, that compelled the
United States to take the lead in future diplomacy. Although Israel won the
conflict militarily, the Arab powers delivered a major psychological blow.
The
war was also a major turning point for U.S. foreign policy in that it prompted
Arab oil producers to impose a harmful oil embargo on the United States, and it
brought the United States—which supported Israel—and the Soviet Union—which
armed Egypt and Syria—close to a nuclear confrontation after a period of
détente. The war also proved a boon for the Palestinian cause, with the Arab
League recognizing the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) as the “sole legitimate
representative of the Palestinian people” in 1974.
Timeline of Israeli-Palestinian Relations
1947: UN General
Assembly Resolution 181 calls for Palestine to be divided into Jewish and Arab
states and designates the city of Jerusalem as a separate entity.
1948: Israel
accepts UNGA Resolution 181 and declares its independence. It repels armies
from nearby Arab countries that oppose its existence. UNGA Resolution 194
establishes Palestinians’ right of return.
1950
1967: Responding
to a mobilization by Arab states, Israel launches preemptive strikes and
captures the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the Gaza Strip,
and the Sinai Peninsula. UN Security Council Resolution 242 enshrines the “land
for peace” vision that becomes the basis of future Arab-Israeli negotiations.
1970
1973: During the
Third Arab-Israeli War, the United States backs Israel against a coalition of
Arab states attempting to regain lost territory, arranges a cease-fire, and
launches the U.S.-led peace process.
1978–1979: U.S. President
Jimmy Carter hosts Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister
Menachem Begin at Camp David, where they lay out a framework for peace in the
Middle East that includes Palestinian autonomy. After further negotiations,
Egypt and Israel sign a peace treaty.
1980
1987–1993: The first
intifada leads to widespread violence, resulting in the deaths of several
hundred Israelis and nearly two thousand Palestinians.
1988: Palestinian
Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat accepts UNSC Resolution 242 as the
basis for Israeli-Palestinian negotiation.
1993: Secret
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations held in Norway result in the Oslo Accords,
which call for the withdrawal of Israeli troops in stages from the West Bank
and Gaza, and Palestinian self-government. The PLO recognizes Israel’s right to
exist, and Israel recognizes the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian
people.
1994: Israel and
Jordan sign a peace treaty brokered by the United States.
1995: The Oslo II
Accords establish Palestinian self-government in Gaza and 40 percent of the
West Bank.
1990
1991: The Madrid
Conference, cohosted by the United States and the Soviet Union, opens
negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians for the first time.
2000: Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Arafat attend a Camp David summit convened by
U.S. President Bill Clinton to discuss borders, settlements, refugees, and
Jerusalem, but talks end without an agreement. Clinton announces parameters for
an independent Palestinian state living in peace with Israel.
2002: The Arab
Peace Initiative offers Israel peace and normalized relations with the Arab
world after a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After terrorist
attacks inside Israel, its army retakes control of Palestinian-governed
territory in the West Bank and later begins building a security barrier around
settlement blocs in East Jerusalem.
2000
2000–2005: After the
2000 peace process collapses, mistrust on both sides sparks the second
intifada, in which one thousand Israelis and more than three thousand
Palestinians are killed.
2003: U.S.
President George W. Bush announces a road map to end violence and restart
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations leading to a Palestinian state.
2005: Israel
withdraws from Gaza, including from all settlements there. President Bush sends
a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon recognizing the reality of
settlement blocs in the West Bank.
2008–2009: After Hamas
launches rocket attacks on Israeli civilians from Gaza, Israel goes to war with
the Palestinian militant group there. The weekslong conflict kills over one
thousand Palestinians and thirteen Israelis.
2013–2014: The Barack
Obama administration relaunches Israeli-Palestinian final status negotiations,
but talks break down over disagreements on settlements, the release of
Palestinian prisoners, and other issues.
2010
2017: U.S.
President Donald J. Trump announces his decision to relocate the U.S. embassy
to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as Israel’s capital.
2018: The United
States slashes bilateral aid to the Palestinians and the UN Relief and Works
Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), closes the PLO office in Washington, DC,
and opens its embassy in Jerusalem.
2019: The Trump
administration recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and voices
its disagreement with a decades-old State Department opinion that says Israel’s
West Bank settlements are inconsistent with international law.
2020: President
Trump announces his vision for Israeli-Palestinian peace, which provides for
Israel to annex 30 percent of the West Bank and for a smaller Palestinian
state. Later, his administration brokers deals for multiple Arab states to
normalize relations with Israel.
2020
Source : CFR research.
In
the months after the fighting, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger served
as the principal intermediary between the Arab states and Israel. His shuttle
diplomacy among Middle East capitals in 1974 and 1975 helped de-escalate
the war and disentangle the combatants.
In
1978, U.S. President Jimmy Carter hosted the Camp David peace talks between
Israel and Egypt, which produced two frameworks that would lay a foundation for
future Mideast diplomacy. The first called for talks involving Egypt, Israel,
Jordan, and the Palestinians about Palestinian self-rule in Gaza and the West
Bank. The second called for a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, which the
two governments signed in 1979 at the White House. Though Jordan was also a
party in the 1973 war, it did not join the talks, fearing condemnation from
other Arab nations. A separate Israel-Jordan peace treaty was signed in 1994.
Although
the United States was left out of negotiating the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords—under
which Palestinian leaders recognized Israel’s right to exist, and Israel
recognized Palestinian autonomy in Gaza and the West Bank—the disputing parties
signed the final agreement at the White House. The United States and the Bill
Clinton administration played a larger role in 1998, when it sponsored negotiations
between Israel and the PLO that led to the Clinton Parameters for the
establishment of a two-state solution. Since then, successive administrations
have proposed their own plans for a two-state solution: George W. Bush’s Road
Map to Peace, Secretary of State John Kerry’s Six Principles, and Trump’s Peace
to Prosperity.
While
trying to broker a deal between the parties, the United States has shielded
Israel from international criticism, which some say has hindered diplomacy to
resolve the conflict. Since 1970, the United States has used its veto power as a
permanent member of the UN Security Council to block resolutions censuring
Israel dozens of times because it sees the United Nations as a forum that is
biased against Israel. Since 1980, the United States has only once allowed the
Security Council to condemn Israel for its settlement construction, in late
2016, when the outgoing Obama administration abstained from a vote on the
matter.
Many
analysts say Trump has abandoned the role of honest broker between Israel and
the Palestinians and adopted a firmly pro-Israel stance. In August 2020,
the Trump administration mediated an agreement between Israel and the United
Arab Emirates, known as the Abraham Accord, in
which the two countries pledged to begin normalizing ties. Soon after,
Bahrain, Sudan, and then Morocco announced similar U.S.-brokered deals.
What is the U.S. position on Palestinian statehood?
For
nearly two decades, the United States has explicitly supported a two-state solution that
calls for separate Israeli and Palestinian states with borders resembling those
that existed before the 1967 war, which include the Gaza Strip, the West Bank,
and parts of East Jerusalem. The Clinton Parameters provided the outlines for
the establishment of a Palestinian state and the resolution of the other final
status issues. George W. Bush became the first U.S. president to publicly
endorse a Palestinian state, which was represented in the 2003 Road Map for Peace plan
put forth by the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United
Nations. The Obama administration also tried to advance a two-state solution,
but talks collapsed in
2014 over disagreements on settlements, the release of Palestinian prisoners,
and other issues. In 2016, Secretary Kerry outlined
principles for a two-state solution based on those final status
talks.
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Trump’s plan, dubbed Peace
to Prosperity [PDF], would potentially establish a Palestinian
state but give Israel sovereignty over an essentially undivided Jerusalem,
including the Old City and the holy sites, relegating the Palestinian capital
to a sliver of East Jerusalem. The plan would not grant Palestinian refugees
the right to return to their former lands but promises some $50 billion worth
of investment in a developing Palestinian state. The conceptual map provided
in Trump’s plan suggests that the Palestinian territory in the West
Bank would shrink to
70 percent as Israel annexes the Jordan Valley and all its settlements there.
Critics have called the plan—which was created without consulting Palestinian
leaders—a win for
Israel on all the major final status issues. Palestinian
Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas rejected
the plan, saying it “annuls the legitimacy of the Palestinian
rights, our rights to self-determination, freedom, and independence, in our own
state,” and asked the UN Security Council to follow suit, as the African Union,
Arab League, and Organization of Islamic Cooperation have done. In June
2020, the PA made a counterproposal to establish a demilitarized,
independent Palestinian state in Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank.
Despite
its long-standing support for a two-state solution, the United States has
traditionally not supported Palestinian bids for statehood at the United Nations,
saying this matter should only be decided through negotiations with Israel. The
PA has pursued full membership for Palestine at
the United Nations since 2011, a move that requires approval by the Security
Council, where the United States has a veto. The PA has yet to garner enough
support for the bid, but in 2012, 138 countries at the UN General Assembly
voted to recognize Palestine as a nonmember observer state.
What is the U.S. position on Jerusalem?
When
the UN General Assembly voted to divide British-controlled Palestine into
separate Arab and Jewish states in 1947, it set aside the city of Jerusalem as
a corpus separatum, or separate body, recognizing its
shared religious significance for Christians, Jews, and Muslims. However, newly
independent Israel established its seat of government in the western half of
the city and later captured East Jerusalem from Jordan in 1967. Israel then
expanded the municipal borders of Jerusalem to incorporate neighboring
Palestinian towns and effectively annexed it.
As
part of the 1993 Oslo Accords—the last significant agreement on the
dispute—Israel and the PLO affirmed that claims to Jerusalem would only be
decided in final status negotiations. Today, Israel views all of Jerusalem as
its capital, while the PA claims East Jerusalem as the seat of a future
Palestinian state, viewing Israel’s hold on the land as an occupation.
For
decades, the United States and most other countries that have relations with
Israel kept their embassies in Tel Aviv, so as not to preempt a future peace
deal. Although a 1995 U.S. law [PDF]
required the relocation of the American embassy to Jerusalem, successive
presidents waived the requirement “to protect the national security interests
of the United States.” However, Trump declined to do so in 2017, and announced
his intention to move
the embassy to Jerusalem and recognize the city as Israel’s
capital. Supporters of the relocation argued there was no national security
imperative prohibiting the move, and that U.S. diplomatic representation to
Israel ought to be based at the country’s seat of government. The announcement
prompted Palestinian officials to break
off relations with the Trump administration.
What is the U.S. position on Israeli settlements?
Shortly
after the 1967 war, Israel began building settlements in some of the
territories it had seized. Settlement construction
began under Labor party governments seeking to strengthen
defense in parts of the West Bank that had seen heavy fighting during the
Arab-Israeli wars, but it increased rapidly as some settlers viewed the land as
their religious and historical right, and others found economic incentives to
live there. By 2019, some six
hundred thousand Israelis were living in settlements in the
West Bank and East Jerusalem.
For
years, the United States officially condemned these settlements—branding them
an obstacle to peace—but avoided outright calling them illegal to avoid the
possibility that Israel would face international sanctions. A 1978 State Department legal opinion stated that
Jewish settlements in occupied territory are not admissible under international
law, yet President Ronald Reagan stated in a 1981 interview that the
settlements were “ill-advised” but
“not illegal.” George H.W. Bush was the first president to link the amount of aid that Israel would receive to its
settlement building, deducting the cost of settlement construction from U.S.
loan guarantees. However, Clinton later allowed exemptions for settlement
construction in East Jerusalem and for “natural growth.” In 2004, George W.
Bush wrote a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon recognizing that
the “new realities,” or settlements, would make it impossible for Israel to
revert to pre-1967 borders in any peace agreement. Most administrations came to
believe that Israel would keep its three largest settlement blocs in exchange
for ceding other land to the Palestinians in any peace deal, thinking it
unrealistic that Israel could force so many of its citizens to leave the
settlements. While the Obama administration took actions to shield Israel from
political movements that sought to penalize Israeli businesses operating in the
West Bank, it also delivered a rebuke of Israel’s settlements by abstaining
from a UN Security Council vote declaring the settlements illegal.
As
it has done with other components of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the
Trump administration has pivoted toward a view of Jewish settlements that is
markedly pro-Israel. In November 2019, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
voiced disagreement with the 1978 State Department opinion, saying civilian
settlements in the West Bank are “not, per se, inconsistent with international
law,” and not an obstacle to the peace process. The announcement prompted more
than one hundred members of Congress to sign a letter
of disapproval [PDF]. Commenting on the move, CFR’s
Gordon wrote that “if there was already a yellow light from the
United States for settlement expansion, the [Trump] administration just turned
it green.”
Israel’s
Possible Annexation of the Jordan Valley
Under
Trump’s peace plan, Israel would absorb about 30 percent of the West Bank by
extending sovereignty to all Jewish settlements there and to the Jordan Valley.
The plan has the general support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his
former rival Benny Gantz, with whom he formed
a unity government in April 2020. Netanyahu was expected to
move forward with annexation in July 2020, a proposal condemned by U.S.
lawmakers from both major parties, human rights experts, and leaders worldwide.
However, as part of the Abraham Accord with the UAE, Israel agreed
to halt
annexation temporarily.
How much U.S. aid goes to Israelis and Palestinians?
The
United States has long been Israel’s ally and its leading security collaborator
because the United States supports the existence of a Jewish state. During the
Cold War, many U.S. defense strategists saw Israel as the best partner in the
fight against Soviet influence in the Middle East, and it later proved to be a
strong contributor to U.S. counterterrorism efforts.
Today,
Israel remains the United States’ closest
strategic partner in the Middle East. Both countries are
concerned about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its support for Islamist
militants, particularly Lebanon’s Hezbollah and
Hamas, the Palestinian group that controls Gaza. As a result of these
shared interests, the United States has pledged to help safeguard Israel’s
military superiority over any hostile combination of countries in the region.
By law, the U.S. government must ensure that any arms sales to other Middle
Eastern states do not “adversely affect Israel’s
qualitative military edge over military threats to Israel”
[PDF].
The
United States began providing Israel with military assistance after its
withdrawal from Arab territories as part of the peace process. Washington
considered it a responsibility to provide this security aid because Israel was
taking risks for peace. The United States also gave large aid packages to Egypt
and Jordan in exchange for their commitments to the peace process.
Since the end of World War II, the United States has
provided more cumulative foreign aid to Israel than it has to any other
country.
Since
the end of World War II, the United States has provided more cumulative foreign aid to
Israel than it has to any other country. The United States gave Israel
significant economic assistance from 1971 to 2007, but due to Israel’s
considerable economic growth beginning in the 1990s, it now receives mostly
military aid. In fiscal year 2020, more than half of all U.S. foreign military aid [PDF]
was headed to Israel, which uses most of it to purchase U.S. arms. Under a 2016
memorandum of understanding, the United States is committed to providing nearly
$4 billion to Israel each year, including $500 million for missile defense.
U.S. Foreign Aid to
Israel and the Palestinian Territories
Constant 2016 dollars
$5 billion
$4
Israel
$3
$2
$1
Palestinian territories
$0
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
2014
2016
2018
Source : U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID).
For
many years, the United States also provided aid to
Palestinians, mostly to support government and humanitarian programs.
Washington gave more than $5 billion total between 1994 and 2018. The United
States has also provided more than $6 billion in aid to the UN Palestinian
refugee agency (UNRWA) since 1950. Aid flows were restructured in 2007, after
Hamas broke violently with the PA—led by the rival Fatah party—and
seized control of the Gaza Strip. The United States considers Hamas a terrorist
organization and takes measures to prohibit it from receiving any assistance.
U.S.
aid to the Palestinians began shrinking under the Trump administration in 2018,
as it reduced assistance to the West Bank and Gaza and discontinued
contributions to UNRWA. In 2019, Trump signed an antiterrorism law that allowed
Americans to sue recipients of U.S. foreign aid, including the PA, over alleged
complicity in acts of war. Fearing lawsuits, the PA requested that Washington cut off its aid.
Since then, Washington has only provided the Palestinians with a one-time
donation of $5 million to combat the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.
What are the prospects for a resolution to the
conflict?
The
outlook for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is bleak. It’s highly unlikely
that the Palestinians will receive a package of concessions from Israel that is
more favorable than those that the Palestinians have rejected in the past. Some
experts have suggested that the prospects for a two-state solution will
continue to fade, especially if the Israeli government annexes settlements in
the West Bank and the Jordan Valley, actions it agreed to “suspend” as part of
the Abraham Accord with the UAE. But many
analysts say that deal and a similar one with Bahrain have
reduced the likelihood of new talks between Israel and the PA. The two
agreements run counter to the Arab Peace Initiative, which called for Israel to
withdraw to pre-1967 borders and recognize an independent Palestinian state as
conditions for Arab League member states to normalize relations with Israel.
Meanwhile, political divisions between Hamas and the PA will remain a challenge
to any future negotiated settlement.
These
dynamics may put the Israelis and Palestinians on a path toward a one-state
outcome, which many observers view as perilous given the possibility
that, with Arabs forming at least half the population, Israel will no longer be
a Jewish state. And if Israel were to deny Palestinians equal rights in order
to remain a Jewish state, that would undermine its future as a democracy.
Despite these concerns, there’s growing interest in the notion of a one-state
solution. It has become more popular among Israelis [PDF], and
a 2020 poll [PDF]
of Palestinians showed that just over one-third would support it.
Recommended Resources
CFR’s
Philip H. Gordon and Robert D. Blackwill discuss how to repair the U.S.-Israel relationship in this
Council Special Report.
For Foreign Affairs, CFR’s Martin Indyk looks at the shortcomings of Trump’s Middle East policy.
Top
Middle East experts discuss the future of U.S.-Israel relations at this CFR
symposium.
Tamara
Cofman Wittes and Adrianna Pita look at what the Trump plan would mean for Israelis and Palestinians in
a podcast from the Brookings Institution.
Mohammed Haddad
compares Trump’s peace plan to previous proposals in this interactive data visualization for Al Jazeera’s AJ
Labs.
Corrections: A
previous version of this article incorrectly referred to Ottoman
Palestine as the “British Mandate of Palestine,” which was not established
until 1920. The article also incorrectly said the UN General Assembly voted for
the partition of Palestine in 1948. These errors were corrected on July 28,
2020.
Will Merrow created
the graphics for this article.
For media inquiries on this topic, please reach
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