1/ The predominant view of the ‘International Community’ is that Israel occupies Palestinian territory – usually meaning the ‘West Bank’, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. On the basis of this assumption, numerous peace plans and schemes have been proposed over many decades to provide the Palestinians with a West Bank/Gaza Strip-based state. A partial list of such plans includes the following:
- The Reagan Plan.
- The Oslo Accords.
- Camp David Accords.
- The Clinton Parameters.
- The Middle East Road Map.
- The Arab/Saudi Plan.
- The Mitchell Plan.
- The Kerry Plan.
- The Deal of the Century.
2/ Yet despite the claimed expertise and authority of their authors, two features of these schemes standout:
- All failed to solve the conflict.
- All failed to address the Palestinian intention to destroy Israel.
Yet the aim of destroying Israel remains the insurmountable obstacle to a peaceful and successful resolution of the conflict. Having failed to address this, none of these plans have been able to ask or answer a simple and obvious question: how can a Palestinian state intent on destroying Israel possibly produce a peaceful and successful 2-State Solution?
3/ Further, completely ignoring the UN Charter, many international organizations and many states, headed by the UN itself, have failed to condemn the open and explicit eliminationist aims of entities and states (such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the PA and Iran). They have also failed to insist that threats to destroy a member-state of the UN are impermissible and demand that they are immediately abandoned. Likewise, the UN does not express solidarity or support for Israel faced with these threats.
4/ These systemic failures mean that the UN effectively tolerates aims and aggression which are completely at odds with UN aspirations. By making zero efforts to persuade or dissuade the Palestinians and others to abandon their eliminationist aims, the UN gives licence to their continuation. This makes the UN an obstacle to the resolution of the conflict and to the solution it claims to want. That is, it helps perpetuate the conflict.
5/ Therefore, an urgent issue for Israel is to find a way to attack and, make inroads into the UN approach, and to reverse it. This requires a systematic plan. Hopefully, the Trump presidency will work out well for Israel in this regard and provide time for this to be developed. But four years is not long. The issue of what happens post-Trump needs preparation. In particular, there is a great necessity to restore bipartisanship in the US.
6/ Above all, this requires a political strategy in order to expand and cement institutional and personal connections. For proposals how this can be achieved, see my article A 5-Step Israeli Action Plan for the UN in the ‘Times of Israel’.