🤥 Arabs and Palestinians have always rejected Israel’s peace proposals. Peace was never a priority.

Palestinians were offered proposals but not peace proposals. None of Israel’s proposals to the Palestinians contemplated the right of return (which is an internationally recognized human right), nor control over borders, currency, or its own resources. Palestinians were offered proposals to accept the status quo (occupation, apartheid, dispossession), not sovereignty or self-determination over contiguous land.

Netanyahu continuously boasts that it was he who derailed the peace process. Israeli fundamentalists continue to build settlements in the West Bank, making Palestinian statehood impossible. All of Israel’s proposals to the Palestinians were for non-sovereign non-contiguous plots of land under effective Israeli sovereignty. Israel’s Foreign Minister in the Camp David talks in 2000, Shlomo Ben-Ami, admitted that PM Ehud Barak’s supposed generous offer was not something the Palestinians should accept. In 1948, Palestinians made up ⅔ of the population and owned around 90% of the land of Palestine, and the UN partition plan offered them a state over only 45% of Palestine, and would have left them a majority even in the Jewish state.

Palestinians have made historic compromises to achieve peace, but to no avail. Like all colonized and occupied people, Palestinians know that peace and reconciliation can only be achieved with freedom and equality for all. Peace without restorative justice is never sustainable.

Palestinians are the ones who do not have a partner in peace. Israel persistently denies Palestinians equal rights as well as sovereignty. Despite many concessions by Palestinians, Israel consistently acts in bad faith, prioritizing the expansion of its illegal settlement enterprise over coexistence at every turn and in contravention of peace agreements and the Geneva conventions.

The Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 offered normalization of relations between the Arab world with Israel in return for complete Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Palestinian Territories, a just settlement for Palestinian refugees and the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, all in accordance with multiple UN resolutions on the matter. In fact, it was re-endorsed by the Arab League in 2007 and 2017. But Israel rejected it as “non-starter” over the withdrawal requirements.

It’s not peace Palestinians reject, but apartheid. Palestinians agreed to peace with two sovereign states side by side. Israel hijacked the two-state solution, morphing it into a one-state reality where Israel controls everything and everyone, and only Jewish Israelis have full rights.

Palestinians recognized Israel and agreed to relinquish 78% of historic Palestine in exchange for sovereignty in the remaining 22%. Israel responded by tightening its military occupation, confiscating more land and implanting hundreds of thousands of illegal settlers in Palestinian territory.

Any serious analysis of the ‘Peace Process’ shows that Israel was never fully committed to the most important requirement for lasting peace, namely the creation of a viable Palestinian state with sovereignty and self-determination. Which begs the question: why doesn’t Israel want peace?

Palestinians desperately want a just peace. Like any other people, they demand to be free from what major human rights organizations (including Israeli organization B’Tselem) define as Israeli apartheid. As the South Africans know better than anyone, there can be no real peace without dismantling apartheid.

Palestinians accepted many peace proposals only to be undermined by Israel and the U.S. Furthermore, many Arab states have peace treaties with Israel. Even so, Israel has insisted on minimizing, ignoring or delaying any final resolution of the core issues.

Israeli PM Netanyahu and his associates have admitted on several occasions – most recently in December 2023 – that they purposefully blocked the creation of a Palestinian state during and after the Oslo accords. This, combined with Israeli actions, is proof of Israel’s lack of commitment to a lasting peace.

Israel has crushed any possibility of a genuine sovereign Palestinian state by seizing land in East Jerusalem and the West Bank to continue the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements (there are over 700,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem). Any peace talks that do not address Israel’s settlements and discriminatory laws provide cover for the advancement of Israeli colonialism. Justice and equal rights should be the cornerstone of any durable peace.

The PLO has been committed to peace since 1993. It signed the Oslo Agreement, and agreed to a two-state solution despite the fact that Israel would have received 78% of historical Palestine. Its goal is an independent sovereign free State of Palestine that can provide and protect the West Bank and Gaza comprehensively. The demands of Palestinians (including the PLO and Hamas) are clear: the right of refugees to their homes and for Palestinians to be allowed self-determination to have a state of their own. Until we begin engaging with Palestinians politically, not militarily, there will be no security for either side.