This is a brilliant analysis Peter. Also so happy to hear of your friendship with Mehdi. He, like you, is a lit candle in the dark. Bless both of you.💔🇺🇸
Thank you for this post. Hard not to note the numbers of dead because of South Africa v. Israel and the US. Fewer than 100 killed by white South African forces in the incursions listed at the top of the essay.
Israel has killed more than 2,000 in Lebanon and another 2,000 (along with the US) in Iran.
And also, there's the genocide in Gaza.
Hard not to conclude that Israel is worse than white South Africa, if one needs to rank the atrocities and the atrocious. And, of course, we Americans are on their side (as we were with white South Africa for a long time).
This was excellent. Peter, thank you so much. I would just add two things to consider in connection with your analysis. First, there is an American parallel to the South African and Israeli situations and that is how white southerners for many decades explained the unhappiness of black Americans in the South during the Jim Crow decades. It was all the fault of outside agitators! It is not hard to see the parallels. Second, while two great South Africans, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, often compared the apartheid system in South Africa to Israel's policies in the Occupied Territories, they both insisted that the Israeli system was more brutal. The relative body counts, which are only a partial measure of the atrocities and barbarities, bear that out. Beginning with the Nakba in 1948, with its estimated 750, 000 Palestinians "ethnically cleansed" and 15,000 (mostly civilians) killed through the 20, 000 or so Lebanese (again, mostly civilians) killed in 1982 to the now (at least) 72,000 killed and (roughly) 170, 000 horribly wounded (roughly a 10% civilian casualty rate) in Gaza, the sheer scale of Israeli mass murder of brown skinned people of Arabic descent by the state of Israel dwarfs the South Africa kill rate of black South Africans. Saying so does not in any way whitewash the apartheid S.A. regime, which was awful and richly deserved defeat, but it is worth remembering.
You are a very wise man, Peter. It is so important to keep to simple basic human facts when so many deep-rooted emotions are involved, and you are very good at it, a haven of clarity in our deeply confused world. Thank you.
Once again, historical comparisons are flawed. Israel accepted to end the occupation in 2001, 2008 and 2014. It did not change anything to Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran’s policies. But since Peter Beinart believes that Tel Aviv is an occupied territory, I understand where his leniency toward these entities calling for the destruction Israel comes from…
Revisionists love to say that both Israelis and Palestinians approved the Clinton parameters with reservations.
1) On December 29, 2000, Israel’s former Foreign Affairs Minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, phoned Arafat to drop all reservations.
Shlomo Ben-Ami. Prophets without Honor: The 2000 Camp David Summit and the End of the Two-State Solution. Oxford University Press, 2022 (pp. 160–165)
2) During the Taba Summit in January 2001, he offered the Palestinians the equivalent of 100% of the West Bank, instead of the 97% Clinton called for.
Shlomo Ben-Ami. Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. Oxford University Press, 2006 (p. 274)
3) Two other Israeli negotiators offered the Palestinians the equivalent of 100% of the West Bank: Yair Hirschfeld and Nimrod Novick.
Yair Hirschfeld. Track-Two Diplomacy toward an Israeli-Palestinian Solution, 1978–2014. Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. (p. 136)
4) Ben-Ami went even further by offering the Palestinians exclusive sovereignty over the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary provided that this area would also be recognized as a Jewish holy site (Clinton merely called for a vertical sovereignty with the Palestinians getting sovereignty over the surface and Israel over the remains of the Jewish temples underneath).
Shlomo Ben-Ami. Prophets without Honor: The 2000 Camp David Summit and the End of the Two-State Solution. Oxford University Press, 2022 (p. 227)
So when revisionists claim that Israel did not fully agree with the Clinton parameters, that’s not entirely untrue. Israel went beyond Clinton’s peace plan!
As for the Palestinian Authority (PA):
1) It was not willing to swap more than 2.4% of the West Bank (requiring the uprooting of more than 40% of the settlers). Clinton called for a 4-6% land swap (uprooting merely 20% of them).
3) The PA was adamant that Israelis had to accept exclusive responsibility for the Nakba (Clinton merely called on Israel to be held partially responsible for the refugee problem).
4) The PA demanded an individual right to Israel proper for all refugees, while they insisted only on the return of the refugees living in Lebanon. Israel and Clinton did not accept this formula as it would open a Pandora’s box by allowing refugees to take Israel to international courts by arguing that the right of return is an individual right that no political agreement can abrogate. Instead, Clinton called for a right of return to the future Palestinian state only. In exchange, he offered the refugees a multi-billion dollar compensation fund ($30 billion according to Dennis Ross).
Shlomo Ben-Ami. Prophets without Honor: The 2000 Camp David Summit and the End of the Two-State Solution. Oxford University Press, 2022 (pp. 168-169, 320)
—In 2008, Olmert offered the equivalent of 100% of the West Bank to the Palestinians. Revisionists claim that the Palestinians were right to ignore his peace plan, as he was a lame duck because of his legal woes. Had the PA approved this peace plan, it would have turned the 2009 election into a referendum on peace. No peace agreement can be adopted without consulting the population anyway. This was another missed opportunity.
Ehud Olmert. Searching for Peace: A Memoir of Israel. Brookings Institution Press, 2022. (pp. 290-297)
—In 2014, Netanyahu accepted the first draft of Kerry’s peace plan, which called on a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders. The Palestinians opposed this framework, as it did not explicitly refer to the partition of Jerusalem. It merely referred to the claims of both parties over Jerusalem.
—However, the PA also refused to answer the second draft that clearly mentioned the partition of the city (Israel never saw it, although Yitzhak Molcho, Netanyahu’s former chief of staff, gave his blessing to the improvement of this peace plan).
—Revisionists argue that Abbas was right to decline the Kerry-Obama principles, as Israel expanded settlement activities during this period. Nothing prevented the Palestinians from calling the bluff by endorsing this peace plan provided that Israel approves it as well. Abbas did not test for Israel, he merely left the table of negotiations.
John Kerry. Every Day is Extra. Simon & Schuster. 2018. (pp. 466–470)
Ben Caspit. The Netanyahu Years By Ben Caspit. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2017 (p. 473)
In their latest book, Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, who succeeded after Taba in imposing the revisionist understanding of the failure of the peace process, acknowledge now that the Clinton parameters fail to address the minimum needs of the Palestinian refugees.
Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, Tomorrow is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine. Farrar, Straus, Giroux. 2025
I’m not trying to justify or excuse Israeli expansionism. But my views have always been consistent:
1) Nothing justifies Israeli expansionism.
2) But Israel is not the only one to blame for the failure of the peace process (unless one believes that the Palestinians have no agency).
3) Zionism was not a choice, it was a necessity, as Jews had nowhere to go. Even in the late 1940s they were still persecuted, and there was no way of predicting the decline of antisemitism during the second part of the 20th century. (Cultural Zionists could not rescue all the Jews in danger, as they were willing to accept restrictions on Jewish immigration to avoid a conflict with the Arabs.)
4) The Arabs were morally right to oppose Zionism, as they are not responsible for the misfortune of the Jews. This is precisely why this conflict is not a struggle between good and evil but a tragic a clash of rights.
5) Having said that, there is a way to reconcile Israel’s existence as a Jewish state with Palestinian refugee rights: a confederation with open borders. A confederation can even have its own armed forces (existing alongside national armies) and a joint foreign policy (when both states agree on foreign policy issues, they can speak with one voice, and when they disagree, they abstain). Such a confederal entity would have the whole trappings of a federation, but each member state would retain veto power over major policy issues. This is more or less what Folke Bernadotte proposed in 1948.
Far left anti-Zionism may be very fashionable nowadays, but it won’t age well. Just look at Trotskyism or Maoism in the 1970s. Nothing remains of these political cults.
Bernard, you use the word "revisionist" 5 times. A revisionist is, by definition, someone who examines and tries to change existing beliefs about how events happened or what their importance or meaning is. Here, you are the revisionist, by saying that "Israel accepted to end the occupation in 2001, 2008 and 2014." The most convincing evidence that Israel did not accept to end the occupation in 2001, 2008, and 2014 is that Israel did not end the occupation in 2001, 2008, or 2014. Instead, it chose to continue the occupation, and not because anyone outside Israel was insisting that Israel continue that occupation. Your long post overlooks that well-known fact.
Itamar Rabinovich is the one who created this typology with regards to the explanations of the failure of the peace process. He claims that there is an “orthodox” interpretation, an “eclectic” one, and a “revisionist” one. I am not using this term in a normative way.
I used to be a hardcore revisionist when I was young (at 38, I can no longer call myself young!) Things began to change in 2009, when I heard about Abbas’ failure to respond to Olmert’s offer. But I still gave the Palestinians the benefit of the doubt. The final straw that broke the camel’s back was on June 8, 2017, when Amir Tibon revealed that Abbas also failed to respond to the Kerry-Obama principles.
I do not fault the Palestinians for rejecting the Clinton parameters. I blame them for not saying clearly that they want more than just a state in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem. If they want more, they should say it clearly and come up with creative ideas. There is no shortage of creative ways of reconciling Palestinian and Israeli claims. Before the 10/7 massacre, 1/3 of Israelis were in favour of an Israeli-Palestinian confederation in spite of the fact that no political force promoted this idea.
As for Israel’s failure to relinquish the West Bank, once again, you treat the Palestinians (including Palestinian extremists) as if they had no agency. You know very well what destroyed Israel’s peace camp: terrorism. And terrorism is not a response to the occupation. Hamas does not fight for the establishment of a Palestinian state. It fights for the destruction of Israel (and for the creation of an Islamic state).
Without Hamas’ attacks, Netanyahu would have never won the 1996 election. Without the Second Intifada, Sharon would have not been elected Israeli Prime Minister in 2001 (there would have been no early election in 2001). In 2006, Olmert was elected on a program calling for a unilateral pullout of more than 90% of the West Bank. The Second War of Lebanon in 2006 forced him to shelve his disengagement plan, as Israelis understood that if Israel were to withdraw from the West Bank on a unilateral basis, Hamas would use this piece of land as a launch pad to fire rockets on Israel (this is ultimately what happened in Gaza).
I am not making excuses for Israeli expansionism. But one cannot ignore the fact that Palestinian extremists have destroyed Israel’s peace camp.
You’ve reached a point where you show no empathy whatsoever for Israelis. I don’t mind, but you don’t even try to understand them anymore. That’s a serious mistake.
"As for Israel’s failure to relinquish the West Bank, once again, you treat the Palestinians (including Palestinian extremists) as if they had no agency."
And then you criticize Palestinians for exercising the agency that they do have. They have not had the power to end the Israeli occupation: not now, not in 2001, not in 2008, not in 2014. The Israelis have chosen to exercise their agency and their power to continue their occupation, not to end it.
The Palestinians had agency to end the occupation in 2001, 2008 and 2014. All they had to do was to say yes to the various peace plans on the table. It would have turned the following Israeli election into a referendum on peace. Since 2000, most Israelis believe that the Palestinians want to destroy them. Had the Palestinians said yes to those peace plans, it would have totally changed this perception.
You seem to see the world only through power relations. I’m sorry to say that you fell for the most grotesque form of postmodernism. As I said, far left cults don’t age well…
Anyhow, our discussion just proves one thing: whether we like it or not, we all subscribe to Hegel’s philosophy of state as the embodiment of a people’s absolute spirit. That’s probably why we have such heated discussions despite the fact that our views are not so far apart from one another (federation vs. confederation).
Israel will never accept to be stripped of their state, with good reason. However, Victor Hugo said in 1849, that there must be a “superior unit” (to the nation-state). He called for the establishment of the United States of Europe not to strip European nations of their sovereignty, but rather for the sake of uniting them into a “nation of nations.” We’ll probably see the completion of a united Europe in our lifetime. I’m less optimistic about the Middle East. I don’t believe that calling for the dismantling of Israel will accelerate the unification of the Middle East. Quite the contrary.
It has been bait and switch: every negotiation, every promise, every context. The Palestinians are alone while the US and Israeli collude on the next entrapments. That has been the reality in the past and it still is. This time, though, those who believe in real peace are not buying it. Give me a reason to trust the US and Israel in anything they say when weapons continue to be sent and continue to be used.
So what are you suggesting exactly, a unilateral pullout of the West Bank? This is not what UNSCR 242 calls for. Res 242 calls for a withdrawal of the occupied territories in exchange for peace. But anyhow, in 2006, Olmert was elected on a program calling for a unilateral pullout of the West Bank. The Likud Party ended up with only 12 seats that year, and around 2/3 of Israelis were willing to relinquish nearly all the occupied territories even without a peace agreement. You know very well why the disengagement plan was shelved: the Second War of Lebanon in 2006. Hamas’ coup in Gaza a year later was the final nail in the coffin of unilateralism. You know all this better than me.
Israel just can’t leave the West Bank on its own. It can certainly freeze settlement activities and transfer full civil powers to the PA. Israelis can also redeploy the IDF far from Palestinian population centers near the borders. That would create a Palestinian proto-state on more than 80% of the West Bank. But Israel cannot end the occupation on its own without ironclad security guarantees. Israelis won’t commit suicide to please the Western intelligentsia.
By the way, you blame Israelis for the power imbalance at the table of negotiations (only Israel can relinquish territories). This is what happens when you win the war. After WW2, the U.S. negotiated its pullout of West Germany and Japan, not the other way around.
But again, from your perspective, only Israelis have agency. So much so, that you blame them for having won the Six-Day War.
There is a word North American leftists love to use against Israel: "exceptionalism" (alongside "ethnostate", "settler colonialism" and other meaningless catchwords). There is indeed a real form of exceptionalism on your part… against Israel.
I appreciate this commentary, but would push to take it a step further. What Netanyahu and his government have wanted all along is to annex the West Bank (and much of Gaza), creating Greater Israel and erasing the "Palestinian" question by erasing any land base for Palestinians. The only forces that might have stood in the way of this goal were Iran and its associated armed entities (principally Hezbollah, but also Hamas and the Houthis), and those are now on their way to being neutralized, since Netanyahu was finally able to convince a U.S. president to go along. With total U.S. acquiescence, Netanyahu is on his way to implementing a "no state solution" to the Palestinian issue. And any Palestinian who objects too loudly will apparently now be subject to the death penalty. This is unbelievably tragic. Maybe it will prove a bridge too far for the Saudis, but somehow I doubt it.
Of course it's all aboutthe Palestinians. That's why Israeli governments in the later 1980s backed the growth of Islamic groups in Gaza, to split the Palestinian national movement and create a rival to the PLO at the time when the US agreed to talk to the PLO. The Israeli governor of Gaza had funding to help that growth. And that's why Rabin was assassinated in 1995 because the Oslo details, though unspecific on many issues, seemed to promise the posibility of a Palestinian state - Netanyahu and ariel Sharon led the charge vs Rabin at rallies where Rabin was portrayed on posters as Hitler. C Smith
The focus on 'immigrants' in the UK, where I live, on 'illegal asylum seekers' (an entity which does not exist in law: there is no legal requirement to enter the UK in a particular way, and asylum seekers are not in the slightest bit illegal unless and until they have had their claims for 'refugee' status rejected), that focus is being used to persuade ordinary people here to blame all the ills we face on these so-called 'illegals'. So our health service, which has been massively underfunded for years, is struggling, our schools, ditto underfunded, are struggling, our waterways are filled with sewage, much of our population is struggling to pay bills - all of these problems are being successfully blamed on illegal asylum seekers and other 'immigrants'. Very close parallel to the kind of transference of blame that Peter is talking about . And very close to Trump's anti-immigrant obsession, and used to achieve the same ends.
Your love affair with the Arafat-era Palestinans is wearing thin. Your world view seems to be centered on their plight which has been substantially self-inflicted. I, unlike you, and the majority of Jews do remember the bloodfests of not only October 7th, but those from Arafat's Intifadas and the PA's continuing bounty on the heads of Jews. Perhaps you should recall that the Separation Barrier and Checkpoints were Israel's reaction to the cold-blooded murders celebrated by those you so blindly support.
And what, may I ask you, was the reason underlying these "bloodfests"? It has always been obvious to many in the world, much less so in the US, that they were taking place because of Israel's continuing and rather ruthless occupation, and before that, because of Israel's aggressive treatment and dispossession of the native population when the state was created. Peter's "love affair" with Palestinians is actually a love of justice for the oppressed. This human value doesn't change as time goes by, it is an immutable building block towards a more peaceful and pluralistic world.`Violence begets violence, and sadly, Israel chose to make it its modus operandi a long long time ago. It will have to accept at some point that this is a road to nowhere, just to more grief and pain for all involved - Israelis and Palestinians alike.
From your reply, I would hope that you are too young to remember the cold-blooded murder of innocent Jews by the Arafat-era Palestinians. These included the SBarro Pizzeria bombing, mudering 16 people, including 7children and maimed 130 others.; amongst too many to list here (all available to research if you so choose);all during the second Intifada. The Separation Barrier, check points and "ruthless occupation" were a direct result of the blood-lust demonstrated by Peter's enamourds. If Peter and his cadre are in persuit of justice, as you claim, where is the justice for those men, women and children mudered, to this day, by his Palestinians? Where is justice when the mastermind behind the SBarro massacre is living safely in Jordan and feted as a hero by the Palestinian Street. Where is justice when the PA continues to pay the murderers of Jews salaries and pensions. As I posted, Peter's Palestinians and only they are responsible for what has befallen them.
This is a late reply, apologies! In actual fact, I am just a bit younger than the state of Israel, and as I was growing up in France, the news were reporting killings such as you mentioned. In those days, memories of WW2 were very fresh, and full support was given to the brave Israelis being victimised by Arabs. French news were also reporting atrocities committed by Arab independence fighters against the French army. The message was clear: Arabs were the baddies. I remember reading Leon Uris' Exodus as a teenager, and being very impressed by the bravery of Israelis.
It is not until my mid-twenties that I started coming across conflicting stories. The first one, which shocked me, was how some kibbutz, one of these that miraculously and tenaciously turned the desert into a garden, had in fact taken over the water supply from the local inhabitants who then had no water left for themselves. That's when I started making sure I never bought any produce from Israel ever again, and also informing myself about the fate of Palestinians.
Worse was to come to my attention as years went by, and, with increasing knowledge and maturity, the awful realisation that only half the story had ever been told (and not very truthfully), just as the French atrocities in North Africa had carefully been kept hidden. So, Israel, maybe you should open your eyes a little bit. How would you have reacted if you were a Palestinian, subjected to an abject dehumanising treatment for the last 70 years by an oppressor with powerful allies and demonstrably bad faith in its resolve to peacefully settle the injustice towards Palestinians?
Israel does bear a lot of responsibility for the direction it has chosen, and what has befallen it ever since as a consequence. This has now left most of the world totally horrified.
Absolutely true and well said! It has been the handwriting on the wall for decades. Hezbollah was formed by the people Israel exiled into Lebanon. Troublemakers for Israel became Hezbollah and were basically responsible for pushing Israel out of Lebanon the last time. It looks like history will again repeat itself.
The Impassioned Religious War: Jews Versus Muslims
Historically like the Crusades in the 11th to the 13th centuries, religious wars fail because at their root they involve the emotional passions about whose religion is better….in the case of the fascist Israeli Jewish state it becomes us versus those pesky Arabs who are a Muslim population This is the central problem with any theocratic state and America should take notice since the CNPP(Christian National Pedo Party) wants to dissolve the separation of church and state, giving us an Israel or worse Iran
The recent historical rise of these attacks over the last 7 decades by the fascist Israeli state have all been incited by the Israeli state not by the Arab states including Iran Even the Oct 7 attack by Hamas was aided by Netayahu’s lax policies and serious Palestinian oppression But the current Iranian conflict has clearly been a Jewish state effort including illegally the USA, claiming that Iran posed an existential threat
Netanyahu has long wanted this opportunity to draw the support of the American Jewish diaspora into his religious war and finally found a doofus in Cheeto to back his religious retribution And Cheeto clearly needs his wealthy Jewish donors in the midst of plummeting polling numbers and the “holy war” also draws the support of the CNPP
Now the American Jewish diaspora is propagating it’s pro-war campaign through the wealthy donor class(AIPAC and subsidiaries) and Jewish commentators(eg Jake Tapper, Bill Maher), supporting Muslim genocide in the Gaza strip and Iran However this Netayahu gamble will backfire as there is definite Gentile animus toward Cheeto and his “holy war” which has become a geopolitical financial disaster
The difference in numbers noted by Adam G notwithstanding, this analysis of the "fundamental root of the problem" WITH the clarifying parallel of S. Africa feels REALLY helpful. For wider distribution (in written/interview/whatever form), please!?
This is a brilliant analysis Peter. Also so happy to hear of your friendship with Mehdi. He, like you, is a lit candle in the dark. Bless both of you.💔🇺🇸
Thank you for this post. Hard not to note the numbers of dead because of South Africa v. Israel and the US. Fewer than 100 killed by white South African forces in the incursions listed at the top of the essay.
Israel has killed more than 2,000 in Lebanon and another 2,000 (along with the US) in Iran.
And also, there's the genocide in Gaza.
Hard not to conclude that Israel is worse than white South Africa, if one needs to rank the atrocities and the atrocious. And, of course, we Americans are on their side (as we were with white South Africa for a long time).
This was excellent. Peter, thank you so much. I would just add two things to consider in connection with your analysis. First, there is an American parallel to the South African and Israeli situations and that is how white southerners for many decades explained the unhappiness of black Americans in the South during the Jim Crow decades. It was all the fault of outside agitators! It is not hard to see the parallels. Second, while two great South Africans, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, often compared the apartheid system in South Africa to Israel's policies in the Occupied Territories, they both insisted that the Israeli system was more brutal. The relative body counts, which are only a partial measure of the atrocities and barbarities, bear that out. Beginning with the Nakba in 1948, with its estimated 750, 000 Palestinians "ethnically cleansed" and 15,000 (mostly civilians) killed through the 20, 000 or so Lebanese (again, mostly civilians) killed in 1982 to the now (at least) 72,000 killed and (roughly) 170, 000 horribly wounded (roughly a 10% civilian casualty rate) in Gaza, the sheer scale of Israeli mass murder of brown skinned people of Arabic descent by the state of Israel dwarfs the South Africa kill rate of black South Africans. Saying so does not in any way whitewash the apartheid S.A. regime, which was awful and richly deserved defeat, but it is worth remembering.
Well put. There is obviously a racial element at play here.
You are a very wise man, Peter. It is so important to keep to simple basic human facts when so many deep-rooted emotions are involved, and you are very good at it, a haven of clarity in our deeply confused world. Thank you.
Always enlightening. Thank you.
Once again, historical comparisons are flawed. Israel accepted to end the occupation in 2001, 2008 and 2014. It did not change anything to Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran’s policies. But since Peter Beinart believes that Tel Aviv is an occupied territory, I understand where his leniency toward these entities calling for the destruction Israel comes from…
Bernard: "Israel accepted to end the occupation in 2001, 2008 and 2014."
Carl Sagan: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Fair enough!
Revisionists love to say that both Israelis and Palestinians approved the Clinton parameters with reservations.
1) On December 29, 2000, Israel’s former Foreign Affairs Minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, phoned Arafat to drop all reservations.
Shlomo Ben-Ami. Prophets without Honor: The 2000 Camp David Summit and the End of the Two-State Solution. Oxford University Press, 2022 (pp. 160–165)
2) During the Taba Summit in January 2001, he offered the Palestinians the equivalent of 100% of the West Bank, instead of the 97% Clinton called for.
Shlomo Ben-Ami. Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. Oxford University Press, 2006 (p. 274)
3) Two other Israeli negotiators offered the Palestinians the equivalent of 100% of the West Bank: Yair Hirschfeld and Nimrod Novick.
Yair Hirschfeld. Track-Two Diplomacy toward an Israeli-Palestinian Solution, 1978–2014. Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. (p. 136)
4) Ben-Ami went even further by offering the Palestinians exclusive sovereignty over the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary provided that this area would also be recognized as a Jewish holy site (Clinton merely called for a vertical sovereignty with the Palestinians getting sovereignty over the surface and Israel over the remains of the Jewish temples underneath).
Shlomo Ben-Ami. Prophets without Honor: The 2000 Camp David Summit and the End of the Two-State Solution. Oxford University Press, 2022 (p. 227)
So when revisionists claim that Israel did not fully agree with the Clinton parameters, that’s not entirely untrue. Israel went beyond Clinton’s peace plan!
As for the Palestinian Authority (PA):
1) It was not willing to swap more than 2.4% of the West Bank (requiring the uprooting of more than 40% of the settlers). Clinton called for a 4-6% land swap (uprooting merely 20% of them).
https://webhome.weizmann.ac.il/home/comartin/israel/ben-ami.html
2) It demanded exclusive sovereignty over the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary (without recognizing any Jewish connection to this area).
Shlomo Ben-Ami. Prophets without Honor: The 2000 Camp David Summit and the End of the Two-State Solution. Oxford University Press, 2022 (p. 227)
https://webhome.weizmann.ac.il/home/comartin/israel/ben-ami.html
3) The PA was adamant that Israelis had to accept exclusive responsibility for the Nakba (Clinton merely called on Israel to be held partially responsible for the refugee problem).
https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/Peace%20Puzzle/12_Palestinian%20Response%20to%20the%20Clinton%20Parameters_January%201%202001.pdf
https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/Peace%20Puzzle/10_Clinton%20Parameters.pdf
4) The PA demanded an individual right to Israel proper for all refugees, while they insisted only on the return of the refugees living in Lebanon. Israel and Clinton did not accept this formula as it would open a Pandora’s box by allowing refugees to take Israel to international courts by arguing that the right of return is an individual right that no political agreement can abrogate. Instead, Clinton called for a right of return to the future Palestinian state only. In exchange, he offered the refugees a multi-billion dollar compensation fund ($30 billion according to Dennis Ross).
https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/Peace%20Puzzle/10_Clinton%20Parameters.pdf
Shlomo Ben-Ami. Prophets without Honor: The 2000 Camp David Summit and the End of the Two-State Solution. Oxford University Press, 2022 (pp. 168-169, 320)
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/opinion/09ross.html
—In 2008, Olmert offered the equivalent of 100% of the West Bank to the Palestinians. Revisionists claim that the Palestinians were right to ignore his peace plan, as he was a lame duck because of his legal woes. Had the PA approved this peace plan, it would have turned the 2009 election into a referendum on peace. No peace agreement can be adopted without consulting the population anyway. This was another missed opportunity.
Ehud Olmert. Searching for Peace: A Memoir of Israel. Brookings Institution Press, 2022. (pp. 290-297)
—In 2014, Netanyahu accepted the first draft of Kerry’s peace plan, which called on a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders. The Palestinians opposed this framework, as it did not explicitly refer to the partition of Jerusalem. It merely referred to the claims of both parties over Jerusalem.
—However, the PA also refused to answer the second draft that clearly mentioned the partition of the city (Israel never saw it, although Yitzhak Molcho, Netanyahu’s former chief of staff, gave his blessing to the improvement of this peace plan).
—Revisionists argue that Abbas was right to decline the Kerry-Obama principles, as Israel expanded settlement activities during this period. Nothing prevented the Palestinians from calling the bluff by endorsing this peace plan provided that Israel approves it as well. Abbas did not test for Israel, he merely left the table of negotiations.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2017-06-08/ty-article-magazine/.premium/exclusive-obamas-plans-for-mideast-peace-revealed/0000017f-f58f-ddde-abff-fdef4a8c0000
John Kerry. Every Day is Extra. Simon & Schuster. 2018. (pp. 466–470)
Ben Caspit. The Netanyahu Years By Ben Caspit. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2017 (p. 473)
In their latest book, Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, who succeeded after Taba in imposing the revisionist understanding of the failure of the peace process, acknowledge now that the Clinton parameters fail to address the minimum needs of the Palestinian refugees.
Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, Tomorrow is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine. Farrar, Straus, Giroux. 2025
I’m not trying to justify or excuse Israeli expansionism. But my views have always been consistent:
1) Nothing justifies Israeli expansionism.
2) But Israel is not the only one to blame for the failure of the peace process (unless one believes that the Palestinians have no agency).
3) Zionism was not a choice, it was a necessity, as Jews had nowhere to go. Even in the late 1940s they were still persecuted, and there was no way of predicting the decline of antisemitism during the second part of the 20th century. (Cultural Zionists could not rescue all the Jews in danger, as they were willing to accept restrictions on Jewish immigration to avoid a conflict with the Arabs.)
4) The Arabs were morally right to oppose Zionism, as they are not responsible for the misfortune of the Jews. This is precisely why this conflict is not a struggle between good and evil but a tragic a clash of rights.
5) Having said that, there is a way to reconcile Israel’s existence as a Jewish state with Palestinian refugee rights: a confederation with open borders. A confederation can even have its own armed forces (existing alongside national armies) and a joint foreign policy (when both states agree on foreign policy issues, they can speak with one voice, and when they disagree, they abstain). Such a confederal entity would have the whole trappings of a federation, but each member state would retain veto power over major policy issues. This is more or less what Folke Bernadotte proposed in 1948.
Far left anti-Zionism may be very fashionable nowadays, but it won’t age well. Just look at Trotskyism or Maoism in the 1970s. Nothing remains of these political cults.
Bernard, you use the word "revisionist" 5 times. A revisionist is, by definition, someone who examines and tries to change existing beliefs about how events happened or what their importance or meaning is. Here, you are the revisionist, by saying that "Israel accepted to end the occupation in 2001, 2008 and 2014." The most convincing evidence that Israel did not accept to end the occupation in 2001, 2008, and 2014 is that Israel did not end the occupation in 2001, 2008, or 2014. Instead, it chose to continue the occupation, and not because anyone outside Israel was insisting that Israel continue that occupation. Your long post overlooks that well-known fact.
Itamar Rabinovich is the one who created this typology with regards to the explanations of the failure of the peace process. He claims that there is an “orthodox” interpretation, an “eclectic” one, and a “revisionist” one. I am not using this term in a normative way.
I used to be a hardcore revisionist when I was young (at 38, I can no longer call myself young!) Things began to change in 2009, when I heard about Abbas’ failure to respond to Olmert’s offer. But I still gave the Palestinians the benefit of the doubt. The final straw that broke the camel’s back was on June 8, 2017, when Amir Tibon revealed that Abbas also failed to respond to the Kerry-Obama principles.
I do not fault the Palestinians for rejecting the Clinton parameters. I blame them for not saying clearly that they want more than just a state in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem. If they want more, they should say it clearly and come up with creative ideas. There is no shortage of creative ways of reconciling Palestinian and Israeli claims. Before the 10/7 massacre, 1/3 of Israelis were in favour of an Israeli-Palestinian confederation in spite of the fact that no political force promoted this idea.
As for Israel’s failure to relinquish the West Bank, once again, you treat the Palestinians (including Palestinian extremists) as if they had no agency. You know very well what destroyed Israel’s peace camp: terrorism. And terrorism is not a response to the occupation. Hamas does not fight for the establishment of a Palestinian state. It fights for the destruction of Israel (and for the creation of an Islamic state).
Without Hamas’ attacks, Netanyahu would have never won the 1996 election. Without the Second Intifada, Sharon would have not been elected Israeli Prime Minister in 2001 (there would have been no early election in 2001). In 2006, Olmert was elected on a program calling for a unilateral pullout of more than 90% of the West Bank. The Second War of Lebanon in 2006 forced him to shelve his disengagement plan, as Israelis understood that if Israel were to withdraw from the West Bank on a unilateral basis, Hamas would use this piece of land as a launch pad to fire rockets on Israel (this is ultimately what happened in Gaza).
I am not making excuses for Israeli expansionism. But one cannot ignore the fact that Palestinian extremists have destroyed Israel’s peace camp.
You’ve reached a point where you show no empathy whatsoever for Israelis. I don’t mind, but you don’t even try to understand them anymore. That’s a serious mistake.
"As for Israel’s failure to relinquish the West Bank, once again, you treat the Palestinians (including Palestinian extremists) as if they had no agency."
And then you criticize Palestinians for exercising the agency that they do have. They have not had the power to end the Israeli occupation: not now, not in 2001, not in 2008, not in 2014. The Israelis have chosen to exercise their agency and their power to continue their occupation, not to end it.
The Palestinians had agency to end the occupation in 2001, 2008 and 2014. All they had to do was to say yes to the various peace plans on the table. It would have turned the following Israeli election into a referendum on peace. Since 2000, most Israelis believe that the Palestinians want to destroy them. Had the Palestinians said yes to those peace plans, it would have totally changed this perception.
You seem to see the world only through power relations. I’m sorry to say that you fell for the most grotesque form of postmodernism. As I said, far left cults don’t age well…
Anyhow, our discussion just proves one thing: whether we like it or not, we all subscribe to Hegel’s philosophy of state as the embodiment of a people’s absolute spirit. That’s probably why we have such heated discussions despite the fact that our views are not so far apart from one another (federation vs. confederation).
Israel will never accept to be stripped of their state, with good reason. However, Victor Hugo said in 1849, that there must be a “superior unit” (to the nation-state). He called for the establishment of the United States of Europe not to strip European nations of their sovereignty, but rather for the sake of uniting them into a “nation of nations.” We’ll probably see the completion of a united Europe in our lifetime. I’m less optimistic about the Middle East. I don’t believe that calling for the dismantling of Israel will accelerate the unification of the Middle East. Quite the contrary.
It has been bait and switch: every negotiation, every promise, every context. The Palestinians are alone while the US and Israeli collude on the next entrapments. That has been the reality in the past and it still is. This time, though, those who believe in real peace are not buying it. Give me a reason to trust the US and Israel in anything they say when weapons continue to be sent and continue to be used.
So what are you suggesting exactly, a unilateral pullout of the West Bank? This is not what UNSCR 242 calls for. Res 242 calls for a withdrawal of the occupied territories in exchange for peace. But anyhow, in 2006, Olmert was elected on a program calling for a unilateral pullout of the West Bank. The Likud Party ended up with only 12 seats that year, and around 2/3 of Israelis were willing to relinquish nearly all the occupied territories even without a peace agreement. You know very well why the disengagement plan was shelved: the Second War of Lebanon in 2006. Hamas’ coup in Gaza a year later was the final nail in the coffin of unilateralism. You know all this better than me.
Israel just can’t leave the West Bank on its own. It can certainly freeze settlement activities and transfer full civil powers to the PA. Israelis can also redeploy the IDF far from Palestinian population centers near the borders. That would create a Palestinian proto-state on more than 80% of the West Bank. But Israel cannot end the occupation on its own without ironclad security guarantees. Israelis won’t commit suicide to please the Western intelligentsia.
By the way, you blame Israelis for the power imbalance at the table of negotiations (only Israel can relinquish territories). This is what happens when you win the war. After WW2, the U.S. negotiated its pullout of West Germany and Japan, not the other way around.
But again, from your perspective, only Israelis have agency. So much so, that you blame them for having won the Six-Day War.
There is a word North American leftists love to use against Israel: "exceptionalism" (alongside "ethnostate", "settler colonialism" and other meaningless catchwords). There is indeed a real form of exceptionalism on your part… against Israel.
Lies.
I appreciate this commentary, but would push to take it a step further. What Netanyahu and his government have wanted all along is to annex the West Bank (and much of Gaza), creating Greater Israel and erasing the "Palestinian" question by erasing any land base for Palestinians. The only forces that might have stood in the way of this goal were Iran and its associated armed entities (principally Hezbollah, but also Hamas and the Houthis), and those are now on their way to being neutralized, since Netanyahu was finally able to convince a U.S. president to go along. With total U.S. acquiescence, Netanyahu is on his way to implementing a "no state solution" to the Palestinian issue. And any Palestinian who objects too loudly will apparently now be subject to the death penalty. This is unbelievably tragic. Maybe it will prove a bridge too far for the Saudis, but somehow I doubt it.
Of course it's all aboutthe Palestinians. That's why Israeli governments in the later 1980s backed the growth of Islamic groups in Gaza, to split the Palestinian national movement and create a rival to the PLO at the time when the US agreed to talk to the PLO. The Israeli governor of Gaza had funding to help that growth. And that's why Rabin was assassinated in 1995 because the Oslo details, though unspecific on many issues, seemed to promise the posibility of a Palestinian state - Netanyahu and ariel Sharon led the charge vs Rabin at rallies where Rabin was portrayed on posters as Hitler. C Smith
Yep, all the blacks in the Jim Crow South were happy as pigs in mud until those Commie Northern outside agitators got them all riled up.
The focus on 'immigrants' in the UK, where I live, on 'illegal asylum seekers' (an entity which does not exist in law: there is no legal requirement to enter the UK in a particular way, and asylum seekers are not in the slightest bit illegal unless and until they have had their claims for 'refugee' status rejected), that focus is being used to persuade ordinary people here to blame all the ills we face on these so-called 'illegals'. So our health service, which has been massively underfunded for years, is struggling, our schools, ditto underfunded, are struggling, our waterways are filled with sewage, much of our population is struggling to pay bills - all of these problems are being successfully blamed on illegal asylum seekers and other 'immigrants'. Very close parallel to the kind of transference of blame that Peter is talking about . And very close to Trump's anti-immigrant obsession, and used to achieve the same ends.
Dear Peter,
Your love affair with the Arafat-era Palestinans is wearing thin. Your world view seems to be centered on their plight which has been substantially self-inflicted. I, unlike you, and the majority of Jews do remember the bloodfests of not only October 7th, but those from Arafat's Intifadas and the PA's continuing bounty on the heads of Jews. Perhaps you should recall that the Separation Barrier and Checkpoints were Israel's reaction to the cold-blooded murders celebrated by those you so blindly support.
And what, may I ask you, was the reason underlying these "bloodfests"? It has always been obvious to many in the world, much less so in the US, that they were taking place because of Israel's continuing and rather ruthless occupation, and before that, because of Israel's aggressive treatment and dispossession of the native population when the state was created. Peter's "love affair" with Palestinians is actually a love of justice for the oppressed. This human value doesn't change as time goes by, it is an immutable building block towards a more peaceful and pluralistic world.`Violence begets violence, and sadly, Israel chose to make it its modus operandi a long long time ago. It will have to accept at some point that this is a road to nowhere, just to more grief and pain for all involved - Israelis and Palestinians alike.
From your reply, I would hope that you are too young to remember the cold-blooded murder of innocent Jews by the Arafat-era Palestinians. These included the SBarro Pizzeria bombing, mudering 16 people, including 7children and maimed 130 others.; amongst too many to list here (all available to research if you so choose);all during the second Intifada. The Separation Barrier, check points and "ruthless occupation" were a direct result of the blood-lust demonstrated by Peter's enamourds. If Peter and his cadre are in persuit of justice, as you claim, where is the justice for those men, women and children mudered, to this day, by his Palestinians? Where is justice when the mastermind behind the SBarro massacre is living safely in Jordan and feted as a hero by the Palestinian Street. Where is justice when the PA continues to pay the murderers of Jews salaries and pensions. As I posted, Peter's Palestinians and only they are responsible for what has befallen them.
This is a late reply, apologies! In actual fact, I am just a bit younger than the state of Israel, and as I was growing up in France, the news were reporting killings such as you mentioned. In those days, memories of WW2 were very fresh, and full support was given to the brave Israelis being victimised by Arabs. French news were also reporting atrocities committed by Arab independence fighters against the French army. The message was clear: Arabs were the baddies. I remember reading Leon Uris' Exodus as a teenager, and being very impressed by the bravery of Israelis.
It is not until my mid-twenties that I started coming across conflicting stories. The first one, which shocked me, was how some kibbutz, one of these that miraculously and tenaciously turned the desert into a garden, had in fact taken over the water supply from the local inhabitants who then had no water left for themselves. That's when I started making sure I never bought any produce from Israel ever again, and also informing myself about the fate of Palestinians.
Worse was to come to my attention as years went by, and, with increasing knowledge and maturity, the awful realisation that only half the story had ever been told (and not very truthfully), just as the French atrocities in North Africa had carefully been kept hidden. So, Israel, maybe you should open your eyes a little bit. How would you have reacted if you were a Palestinian, subjected to an abject dehumanising treatment for the last 70 years by an oppressor with powerful allies and demonstrably bad faith in its resolve to peacefully settle the injustice towards Palestinians?
Today, I listened to this 972Mag podacst - maybe you should too, to gain some insight as to how your own opinions were deliberately shaped: https://www.972mag.com/podcast-israeli-education-jewish-supremacy/?utm_source=972+Magazine+Newsletter&utm_campaign=7d8a5194b3-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_05_19_03_26_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-edcd6a43a8-1401610114.
Israel does bear a lot of responsibility for the direction it has chosen, and what has befallen it ever since as a consequence. This has now left most of the world totally horrified.
Absolutely true and well said! It has been the handwriting on the wall for decades. Hezbollah was formed by the people Israel exiled into Lebanon. Troublemakers for Israel became Hezbollah and were basically responsible for pushing Israel out of Lebanon the last time. It looks like history will again repeat itself.
The Impassioned Religious War: Jews Versus Muslims
Historically like the Crusades in the 11th to the 13th centuries, religious wars fail because at their root they involve the emotional passions about whose religion is better….in the case of the fascist Israeli Jewish state it becomes us versus those pesky Arabs who are a Muslim population This is the central problem with any theocratic state and America should take notice since the CNPP(Christian National Pedo Party) wants to dissolve the separation of church and state, giving us an Israel or worse Iran
The recent historical rise of these attacks over the last 7 decades by the fascist Israeli state have all been incited by the Israeli state not by the Arab states including Iran Even the Oct 7 attack by Hamas was aided by Netayahu’s lax policies and serious Palestinian oppression But the current Iranian conflict has clearly been a Jewish state effort including illegally the USA, claiming that Iran posed an existential threat
Netanyahu has long wanted this opportunity to draw the support of the American Jewish diaspora into his religious war and finally found a doofus in Cheeto to back his religious retribution And Cheeto clearly needs his wealthy Jewish donors in the midst of plummeting polling numbers and the “holy war” also draws the support of the CNPP
Now the American Jewish diaspora is propagating it’s pro-war campaign through the wealthy donor class(AIPAC and subsidiaries) and Jewish commentators(eg Jake Tapper, Bill Maher), supporting Muslim genocide in the Gaza strip and Iran However this Netayahu gamble will backfire as there is definite Gentile animus toward Cheeto and his “holy war” which has become a geopolitical financial disaster
The difference in numbers noted by Adam G notwithstanding, this analysis of the "fundamental root of the problem" WITH the clarifying parallel of S. Africa feels REALLY helpful. For wider distribution (in written/interview/whatever form), please!?
What an astute analysis. And it is an apt explanation of the most destructive force dominating Middle Eastern history in the last hundred years.
Solve one problem to end violence and destruction in the entire region