Suchergebnisse

The Palestinians face bleak strategic prospects. There is a substantial price to pay for the political misjudgements of the past two years by their leadership. Palestinian statehood has been placed in serious doubt, raising the spectre of new, and increasingly violent and disintegrative, trajectories in the Palestinian-Israeli relationship. Ihis narrows the range of future prospects down to two. Firstly, the conflict will continue until the international community ultimately confronts Sharon (or anylike-minded successor) over the nature of the territorial dispensation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem that must be reached if durable Palestinian-Israeli peace is to be attained. Secondly, the conflict will continue until the levels of pain and fatigue in both societies bring about a shift in domestic political balances and force national leaderships to agree the sort of peace deal for which there already is majority support. The cruel irony is that this was attainable in 2000. If the opportunity is missed once more, then the essence of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will change over the coming decade, from a struggle over the terms of partition to one over the national identity and political nature of Israel. (Survival / SWP)