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Charles
Lipson
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E-mail: c-lipson@uchicago.edu Voice: 773.702.8053 Fax: 773.702.1689
Charles Lipson Professor of Political Science University of Chicago 5828 S. University Ave. Chicago, IL 60637 |
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The Peace Process:
Why It Began..Why It Failed..Where to Now?
Since
its birth in 1948, Israel has faced near-constant threats to its very
existence. For almost four decades, those threats were mainly conventional
inter-state wars. Israel had (and still has) a small population compared
to its neighbors and faced the dangerous possibility of a two-front war,
led by Syria and Egypt. Israel managed to defeat its Arab neighbors in
1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973. After this final clash, Egypt's Anwar Sadat
finally accepted the military reality. His country could not defeat Israel
for the foreseeable future. Sadat's decision to make peace, ratified by
his successor, Mubarek, has left Israel fundamentally secure since Syria
could not go to war alone. At home, Israel reaped the rewards of its stable
polity and its long-standing commitment to education. The country prospered
from technological innovation and a high-knowledge economy.
Having won on the conventional battlefield, Israel faced a new challenge:
dealing with a large, rapidly growing, and increasingly hostile Arab-Muslim
population living in the territories it had conquered. After the first
uprising (the 1987-89 Intifada), most Israelis agreed that the Jewish
state could not permanently rule a large, hostile Palestinian population
on the West Bank and Gaza. That set the stage for prolonged negotiations
with the Palestinians for a state of their own. In return, Israel wanted
peaceful acceptance within the region. Ultimately, Yasser Arafat rejected
Israel's far-reaching concessions without bothering to make a serious
counter-offer. That led, predictably enough, to a second Palestinian uprising,
which gradually turned into a grueling, deliberate war of terror and attrition.
Israel eventually won this second low-intensity war, though at great
cost to both Israelis and Palestinians. With that victory and America's
deposing Saddam Hussein, Israel now faces a fundamentally new strategic
landscape. It faces three core challenges: what kind of relationship to
establish with the Palestinian Authority and, relatedly, how to settle
long-standing disputes over territory in the West Bank and Jerusalem;
second, how to deal with terrorist threats posed by Hamas and Hezbullah
(which survived its fight with Israel in summer 2006); and, finally, what
to do about Iran's emerging nuclear capacity, coupled with its aggressively
anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetroic.
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Israel has crucial advantages of its own--a technological lead, a vibrant economy, and a superb military--but it must sustain them, prevent a "brain drain" of high-tech workers, avoid civil strife within Israel (over what security policies to pursue), and sustain close relations with the United States.
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My special web page on Middle East News. Because there is so much breaking news about the Middle East, and so many news sources, I have developed a special web page. It has top news stories plus easy links to major Mideast newspapers (in English). It should be a useful site for anyone interested in the region. To go there, click here. |
