Baker III, saw an opening for international intervention. Bush and his secretary of state, James A. the financial and diplomatic backing of many of its Arab allies. When Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait, most Arab countries joined the U.S.-led coalition to push them out. In the 1990s, the international order in the Middle East realigned as a result of the gulf war. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity, with some material reordered and added from follow-up interviews. We assembled a panel of scholars and experts - three Palestinian, three Israeli and an American - to help us understand the history of Oslo: Was it a genuine chance for peace? Was it doomed from the start? Why did it unravel? The reasons for that failure - and the lessons it has to teach us - have been debated ever since. It ran through most of the 1990s and came as close as any negotiated process ever has to resolving this intractable conflict. This was known as the Oslo peace process, named for the city where the secret talks took place. and what would become their most sustained effort to reach a settlement. An opportunity for something unprecedented began to take shape: the first direct dialogue between Israel and the P.L.O. under pressure for different reasons, momentum built for the two sides to negotiate a resolution. Over the following years, with Israel and the P.L.O. Television footage of the First Intifada (which means “shaking off” in Arabic) showed Israeli soldiers beating children throwing stones, eroding Israel’s international standing. leaders in exile in Tunisia, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza mounted a locally led popular uprising in December 1987. Palestinian refugees carrying their belongings as they prepared to cross the wrecked Allenby Bridge over the Jordan River from the Israeli-occupied section of Jordan, 1967.Ī political shift began in the late 1980s. As a result, Israel refused to negotiate with the P.L.O., considering it a terrorist group. factions conducted bombings, hijackings and other attacks, including the killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. In 1968, when Yasir Arafat became chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the group’s charter called the establishment of Israel illegal and sanctioned armed resistance in what it saw as a struggle for liberation. Many Palestinians, living under occupation or as refugees around the world, still saw the founding of Israel as an act of dispossession that had robbed them of their land and homes. When Egypt mobilized troops on the border in 1967, Israel launched pre-emptive airstrikes, and in a war fought in six days against a coalition of Arab states, Israel took over contested territory, beginning a military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. Negotiations between Israel and Palestinians barely existed for decades, and subsequent military conflicts made the situation more difficult. So too did periodic efforts to resolve it. Barbed wire covering the roadway in Jerusalem at Zion Square on May 19, 1948, during the Arab-Israeli war.Ĭhronic conflict followed.
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