Palestine

What does two state mean?

Initially that they want to give half to palestine and half to israel and each govern both sides ⇒ issue is that israel controls majority of the resources

Now, palestine would only get a sliver of land rather than all of it ==> the question abt two state solution became "can Palestine govern itself?" = was the the international world going to back a palestinian state?

What was the intifada of 1987?

Palestinian protests and civil disobedience against Israelis

Initially meant spiritual growth, and not associated with violence

Why has the conflict intensified to this point?

Palestine and israel conflict may be where it's at now bc of hamas's extremist views and growth ⇒ this likely led to a shift in collective mindset and the rise of netanyahu


When one side has power, it makes it difficult to end conflicts ⇒ ex: china with the uyghurs ⇒ they cannot go deep into china and see or stop what is happening (all they have is satellite imagery)

International relations

Why does us have a relationship with israel?
• geopolitics (they allow for access to the middle east) ⇒ democratic country (democracies are more likely to be allied with democracies); netanyahu is questionable, but he was democratically elected
• Wanted an ally there so if us launched wars they could
• Price gawodring ⇒ we give money for foreign aid ⇒
• neocons ⇒ neoconservatives = foreign policy thinkers (republican establishment); a more hawkish philosophy that us foreign policy should always prioritize itself and aggressive with foreign policy

Camp David (2000)

Unsuccessful meeting between Clinton, Barak, Arafat, trying to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

• was supposed to address final-status issues, but failed to find resolutions ⇒ Taba (a yr later), consensus emerged around monetary compensation as the response to refugees ⇒ united national general assembly resolution 194, (dec. 1948) offered compensation in exchange of not returning to their homes
/
resolutions ended after 2nd Intifada attack and the election of sharon in 2001

What caused the refugee crisis?

Nekba (1948) = geula (redemption)

+ stemming from intentional failure to address ongoing and historical injustices

Why did the peace process not work?

peace process was not meant to solve refugee crisis, but to undermine the framework that made it a problem to begin with
• (1) framing as humanitarian issue ⇒ stemming from P sovereignty being treated as humanitarian issue, rather than a question of justice and national self determination ⇒ during peace process, only some parts of west bank and gaza had potential determination

(2) peace process dissolved the refugee issue by imposing temporality to the conflict ⇒ blocking Palestinian memory of 1948 ⇒ erecting the green line as potential border delineated territorial and historical negotiations (only the land conquered in 1967 and the history that followed was open to negotiations) ⇒ anything prior was placed off limits, and therefore off memory

temporality: a state of existing in or having some relationship with time

Liberal zionist consensus in 1988

Israel systematically denied its responsibility for the refugee problem ==> P state, not I, will be responsible for the issue of refugees and wash I's hands of it's past crimes

Ex: ...this is why in the Taba negotiations (2001) I rejected legal, historical, and moral responsibility ⇒ why negotiators insisted monetary compensation to P refugees be indirect—that is, paid by an international fund and administered by an international commission (direct compensation would imply responsibility for the past)

Appeal of transitional justice

1 it prescribes a wide range of legal & symbolic mechanisms to deal w/ the nekba
2 supports integrative solutions to the conflict (variants of the one state solution) that maintain the unity of all P
3 allows for a swift transition away from the status quo

Primary appeal: Deals with historical and enduring injustices

Solutions:

1) reparations: reparations cover a wide spectrum of remedies for wrongs ⇒ (according to UN) restituting original property to refugees, aiding return, ending ongoing violations, holding perpetrators accountable, and implementing a variety of measures to prevent to reoccurrence of injustice ⇒ I must reckon with it's past through tj mechanisms

2) Integration: reframes the entire land of historic P as one political unit and P as one ppl
• counters the fragmentation of the Oslo accords that divided P into separate entities: (1) P citizens to Israel, refugees, members of the diaspora, east jerusalemites, west bankers, and gazans