Abstract:
This article examines the rise and fall of the Peace Process and questions the reason for which the United States of America was successful in bringing the two sides to the negotiating table during the 1990s. It investigates the reason for which the process ultimately failed, as well as the reason for which Washingtonwas unsuccessful in restarting the peace process in the past decade. It is argued that the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the Arab states’ most important ally, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)’s decision to back Saddam Hussein during the First Persian Gulf War, and the rise of Islamic movements in theoccupied territories were the main reasons for which the PLO decided to negotiate with Israel. The subsequent Peace Process was a major political, economic and public image success for Washington and Tel-Aviv, while it was damaging to the Palestinian cause. Not only did the PLO recognize Israel and the Zionist movement, but it also ceded most of the West Bank in the process. Finally, it is argued that after the collapse of the process during the early 2000s, Donald Trump has attempted to restart the negotiations, but has failed thus fardue to the inexistence of strong leaders in both Palestinian and Israeli sides, the rise of Hamas as a resistance movement, and the disenchantment of the Palestinian people with the Peace Process.
Machine summary:
ir) (Received: Sep. 9, 2018 Accepted: Jan. 2, 2019) Abstract This article examines the rise and fall of the Peace Process and questions the reason for which the United States of America was successful in bringing the two sides to the negotiating table during the 1990s.
It is argued that the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the Arab states’ most important ally, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)’s decision to back Saddam Hussein during the First Persian Gulf War, and the rise of Islamic movements in the occupied territories were the main reasons for which the PLO decided to negotiate with Israel.
The conference, which was architected by James Baker III, the foreign minister of the United States at the time, was based on previous US initiatives for “solving” the Arab-Israeli conflict, namely the two track approach, which separated the Palestinian and Arab issues, the self government concept and the transitional arrangements concept, which was derived by the Camp David Accords of 1978 (Aruri, 2003).
The strategic, political and economic benefits the Israelis were able to attain by engaging in the Peace Process are in line with the neorealist theory discussed earlier, which emphasizes that states seek to maximize their interests, particularly in terms of security and power, in their foreign policies.
In fact, various Arab states tried hard to improve their relations with the world’s only remaining superpower after the end of the Cold War. This gave Washington unprecedented leverage to forward its policies in the Middle East (Primakov, 2009; Kolander, 2016; Elbahtimy, 2019).