How Many Olive Branches Must Israel Extend?

Israel has repeatedly taken risks for peace. Hamas chose terrorism, and Palestinian leaders have repeatedly failed to turn negotiations into permanent peace.

At some point, we have to stop pretending history began yesterday.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict did not begin on October 7, 2023. It did not begin with the latest Israeli government. And it certainly did not begin because Israel somehow woke up one morning and decided it did not want peace.

For decades, Israel has been told to negotiate. Make concessions. Take risks. Extend another olive branch.

Israel has done those things.

Go back to 1993 and the Oslo process. Israel recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization as the representative of the Palestinian people. Yasser Arafat’s PLO, in return, recognized Israel’s right to exist in peace and renounced terrorism. The process created the Palestinian Authority and was supposed to lead eventually to negotiations over borders, Jerusalem, refugees, and a permanent settlement.

That was no small gamble for Israel.

Then came Camp David in July 2000.

President Bill Clinton brought Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Arafat together because he believed the moment had come to tackle the hardest questions. Clinton himself described peace as a “two-way street.”

For two weeks they wrestled with issues that had poisoned the region for generations.

No final agreement emerged.

We should be accurate about what happened. Barak did not literally offer Arafat “everything.” Serious disagreements remained. But Israel was negotiating over Palestinian statehood, territory, Jerusalem, and security. Later that year, Clinton proposed parameters putting forward a sovereign Palestinian state in Gaza and the vast majority of the West Bank, territorial swaps and arrangements for Jerusalem and refugees. Both sides accepted those parameters as a basis for additional negotiations, with reservations. They still never reached a final peace.

That history matters.

Israel has extended olive branch after olive branch, sometimes successfully. Israel made peace with Egypt. Israel made peace with Jordan. Israeli governments negotiated with Palestinian leaders and contemplated a Palestinian state.

Yet Israelis are still waiting for peace with the Palestinians.

And then there is Hamas.

Hamas is not a misunderstood peace movement. It has pursued its objectives through terrorism and armed conflict. October 7 demonstrated most horrifyingly what that means for ordinary Israelis.

Murdering civilians is not resistance to be romanticized. Kidnapping people is not diplomacy. Terrorizing families does not move Palestinians closer to a decent future.

It moves everybody farther away.

The Palestinian Authority deserves its share of scrutiny, too. It is important to distinguish the PA from Hamas. The Palestinian Authority has negotiated with Israel and has maintained security cooperation at various times. But Palestinian leadership must ultimately be judged by whether it can help produce and sustain a peaceful political settlement.

More than three decades after Oslo, that settlement still does not exist.

Plenty of blame goes around in a conflict this old. Israeli governments have made controversial decisions. Palestinians have legitimate aspirations for political rights and self-government. Israelis have legitimate arguments among themselves about settlements, borders, and what compromises should be made.

But one fact should be beyond argument.

Israel cannot make peace by itself.

A peace agreement requires Palestinian leaders who will tell their own people something difficult: Israel is not temporary.

Israel is not going to disappear.

Seven million Israeli Jews are not packing their bags and leaving because Hamas wants them gone or because somebody chants a slogan at a protest thousands of miles away.

Any Palestinian leadership serious about peace has to accept that reality, confront terrorism, and build institutions capable of living beside Israel rather than fighting an endless war against it.

And Israel has obligations too. Any durable settlement must provide Palestinians with political rights, dignity, security and a future after permanent conflict.

That is what makes the past failures so painful.

Think of what Palestinians might have built during all these years if their politics had centered on institution-building, economic development and peaceful coexistence instead of allowing terrorism and rejectionism to consume the future repeatedly.

Think of what Israelis and Palestinians could have constructed together.

There can still be another olive branch. There probably will have to be.

But after decades of failed negotiations and rivers of blood, Israel is entitled to ask a simple question before taking another enormous risk:

When Israel extends its hand this time, will someone finally take it?  Or will we see more of the same!

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Endnotes

1. The Oslo Accords and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process
U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1993-2000/oslo

2. Remarks by President Clinton Upon Leaving for Camp David, July 11, 2000
The White House, Clinton Presidential Archives
https://clintonwhitehouse5.archives.gov/textonly/library/hot_releases/July_11_2000.html

3. Presidential Remarks at Israel Policy Forum Gala, January 7, 2001
The White House, Clinton Presidential Archives, Clinton Parameters
https://clintonwhitehouse5.archives.gov/library/hot_releases/January_7_2001_2.html

4. White House Press Briefing, January 3, 2001
Clinton Presidential Archives, Israeli and Palestinian Responses to the Clinton Parameters
https://clintonwhitehouse5.archives.gov/library/hot_briefings/January_3_2001.html

Carolyn Spencer is a contributing writer for Direct Line News.

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