Proposals for a Palestinian state currently refers to the proposed establishment of an independent state for the Palestinian people in Palestine on land that was occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967 and before by Egypt (Gaza) and by Jordan (West Bank) since 1949. The proposals include the Gaza Strip, which is currently controlled by the Hamas faction of the Palestinian National Authority, the West Bank, which is administered by the Fatah faction of the Palestinian National Authority, and East Jerusalem which is controlled by Israel under a claim of sovereignty.[1]
The proclaimed State of Palestine is currently recognized by 128 countries.[2][3] The Israeli military commander exercises usufructuary rights in accordance with international law, but he is not the legal sovereign of the disputed territory.[4] The permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people over the natural resources of the Palestinian territories has been recognized by 139 countries. Under agreements reached with Israel, the Palestinian Authority exercises de jure control over many natural resources, while interim cooperation arrangements are in place for others.[5]
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At the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, the victorious European states divided many of its component regions into newly-created states under League of Nations mandates according to deals that had been struck with other interested parties.[6] In the Middle East, Syria (including the Ottoman autonomous Christian Lebanon and the surrounding areas that became the Republic of Lebanon) came under French control, while Mesopotamia, and Palestine (including what became Jordan and Israel) were allotted to the British.
Most of these states achieved independence during the following three decades without great difficulty, though in some regimes, the colonial legacy continued through the granting of exclusive rights to market/manufacture oil and maintain troops to defend it. However, the case of Palestine remained problematic.
Arab nationalism was on the rise after World War II, possibly following the example of European nationalism. Pan-Arabist beliefs called for the creation of a single, secular state for all Arabs.
(see also Palestinian nationalism). (Key terms, events, and proposals are bolded)
The future of Palestine was contentious from the beginning of the Palestine Mandate since the British declared support for a "Jewish national home in Palestine" even though most of the population were Muslim, Jewish and Christian Arabs. It was also, according to one common view, the subject of British promises to the Arabs (creation of a large Pan-Arab state; promised to the Sharif of Mecca in exchange for Arab help fighting the Ottoman Empire) during World War I. Therefore, it is not surprising that many different proposals have been made and continue to be made, including an Arab state, with or without a significant Jewish population, a Jewish state, with or without a significant Arab population, a single bi-national state, with or without some degree of cantonization, two states, one bi-national and one Arab, with or without some form of federation, and two states, one Jewish and one Arab, with or without some form of federation.
At the same times, many Arab leaders maintained that Palestine should join a larger Arab state covering the imprecise region of the Levant. These hopes were expressed in the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement, which was signed by soon-to-be Iraqi ruler Faisal I and the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, which called for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Despite this, the promise of a Pan-Arab state including Palestine were dashed as Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan declared independence from their European rulers, while western Palestine festered in the developing Arab-Jewish conflict.
In light of these developments, Arabs began calling for both their own state in the British Mandate of Palestine and an end to the British support of the Jewish homeland's creation and to Jewish immigration. The movement gained steam through the 1920s and 1930s as Jewish immigration picked up. Under pressure from the arising nationalist movement, the British enforced the White Papers, a series of laws greatly restricting Jewish immigration and the sale of lands to Jews. The laws, passed in 1922, 1930, and 1939, varied in severity, but all attempted to find a balance between British sympathies with the Jews and the Arabs.
Finally, the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine led the British to create the Peel Commission, which produced the first concrete suggestion for a Arab state. The Commission's report published in 1937 called for a small Jewish state in the Galilee and maritime strip, a British enclave stretching from Jerusalem to Yafo and an Arab state covering the rest.[7] The plan also called for a large population transfer. Jewish leaders accepted the plan, while Arab leaders rejected it and the two subsequent proposals offered by the Peel Commission.
World War II (1939–1945) gave a boost to the Jewish nationalism, as the Holocaust reaffirmed their call for a Jewish homeland. At the same time, many Arab leaders had even supported Nazi Germany, a fact which could not play well with the British. As a result, Britain pooled its energy into winning over Arab opinions by abandoning the Balfour Declaration and the terms of the League of Nations mandate which had been entrusted to it in order to create a "Jewish National Home". Britain did this by issuing the 1939 white paper which officially allowed a further 75,000 Jews to move over five years (10,000 a year plus an additional 25,000) which was to be followed by Arab majority independence. The British would later claim that that quota had already been fulfilled by those who had entered without its approval.
In 1947, the United Nations created the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) to find an immediate solution to the Palestine question, which the British had handed over to the UN. As recommended by UNSCOP, the UN General Assembly approved what is known as the Partition Plan in Resolution 181 on November 29, 1947. The plan determined a specific date for the end of the British Mandate, May 15, 1948. More importantly, the proposal called for the creation of two states, while Jerusalem and Bethlehem would be placed under United Nations control.
Jewish leaders of the Jewish agency accepted parts of the plan, while Arab leaders refused it.[8][9][10] Large-scale fighting soon broke out between the Jews and the Arabs. King Abdullah I of Jordan met with a delegation headed by Golda Meir to negotiate terms for accepting the partition plan, but rejected its proposal that Jordan remain neutral. Indeed, the king knew that the nascent Palestinian state would soon be absorbed by its Arab neighbors, and therefore had a vested interest in being party to the imminent war.[11] As the Mandate was set to end, the State of Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948. Almost immediately, Transjordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and the Arab Liberation Army declared war against Israel (see 1948 Arab-Israeli War, known to Israelis as the War of Independence and to Palestinians as the Nakba - the disaster). Over the course of the war, scores of Arab settlements in the new state, mostly small villages, were depopulated due to a variety of often-disputed reasons, including expulsion by Jewish or Israeli troops, fear from attack, or encouragement by the British or Arab officials to leave until the situation had died down (see Palestinian exodus).
Meanwhile, Abdullah of Transjordan sent the Arab Legion into the West Bank with no intention of withdrawing it following the war. Egypt, for its part, took over the Gaza Strip, the last remnant of the Palestinian state. The territory which Israel did not annex, the Palestinian Arabs' allies had taken in its place.[12] As the Palestinian writer Hisham Sharabi would observe, Palestine had "disappeared from the map,"[13] 26 years after appearing as an officially defined, bordered territory.
The birth of Israel led to a major displacement of the Arab population, many of whom left or were forced from their homes for a number of reasons both tactical and political. Many wealthy merchants and leading urban notables from Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem fled to Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan, while the middle class tended to move to all-Arab towns such as Nābulus and Nazareth. The majority of lower class workers ended up in refugee camps. More than 400 Arab villages disappeared due to population shifts, and Arab life in the coastal cities virtually disintegrated. The center of Palestinian life shifted to the Arab towns of the hilly eastern portion of the region—which was immediately west of the Jordan River and came to be called the West Bank.[14]
Nearly 1,400,000 Arabs lived in Palestine (there were also 700,000 Jews) when the war broke out. Estimates of the number of Arabs displaced from their original homes, villages, and neighborhoods during the period from December 1947 to January 1949 range from about 520,000 to about 1,000,000; there is general consensus, however, that the actual number was more than 600,000 and likely exceeded 700,000. Some 276,000 moved to the West Bank; by 1949 more than half the prewar Arab population of Palestine lived in the West Bank (from 400,000 in 1947 to more than 700,000). Between 160,000 and 190,000 fled to the Gaza Strip. More than one-fifth of Palestinian Arabs left Palestine altogether. About 100,000 of these went to Lebanon, 100,000 to Jordan, between 75,000 and 90,000 to Syria, 7,000 to 10,000 to Egypt, and 4,000 to Iraq.[14]
At war's end in 1949, Jordan had control of the West Bank of the Jordan River, including East Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Egypt took control of the narrow Gaza Strip, while Israel controlled the rest of the western Palestine of the British Mandate.
King Abdullah I of Jordan decided to grant citizenship to the Arab refugees and residents living in the West Bank against the wishes of many Arab leaders who still hoped to establish an Arab state. Under Abdullah's leadership, Arab hopes of independence were dealt a severe blow. In March he issued a royal decree forbidding the use of the term "Palestine" in any legal documents, and pursued other measures designed to make the fact that there would not be an independent Palestine clear and certain.[15]
In Gaza, a government calling itself the All-Palestine Government formed, even before the war's end in September 1948. The government, under the leadership of the Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, declared the independence of the Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. The All-Palestine Government would go on to be recognized by Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, while Jordan and the other Arab states refused to recognize it.
In practice, the All-Palestine government was only a publicity stunt, as it was given no real authority by the Egyptian government. In 1959, Egypt's new leader Gamal Abdul Nasser ordered the dismantling of the All-Palestine Government, yet notably refused to grant Palestinians in Gaza Egyptian citizenship.
In June 1967, Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan, the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the area known as the Golan Heights from Syria during the Six-Day War. Israel, which was ordered to withdraw from conquered territories and negotiate final borders by United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, annexed East Jerusalem and extended its laws over the Golan Heights.
Jordan continued to have economic influence over the West Bank until the 1980s, when King Hussein unilaterally cut the link between his kingdom and its residents and the Palestinians of the West Bank. Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
Before the Six-Day War, the movement for an independent Palestine received a boost in 1964 when the Palestine Liberation Organization was established. Its goal, as stated in the Palestinian National Covenant was to create a Palestinian state in the whole British Mandate, a statement which nullified Israel's right to exist.
The PLO would become the leading force in the Palestinian national movement politically, and its leader, Yassir Arafat, would become regarded as the leader of the Palestinian people.
In 1974, the PLO adopted the Ten Point Program, which notably called for the establishment of an Israeli-Palestinian democratic, bi national state (a one state solution). It also called for the establishment of Palestinian rule on "any part" of its liberated territory, as a step towards "completing the liberation of all Palestinian territory, and as a step along the road to comprehensive Arab unity." While this was not seen by Israel as a significant moderation of PLO policy, the phrasing was extremely controversial within the PLO itself, where it was widely regarded as a move towards a two-state solution. The adoption of the program, under pressure from Arafat's Fatah faction and some minor groups (e.g. DFLP, al-Sa'iqa) led many hard-line groups to break away from the Arafat and the mainstream PLO members, forming the Rejectionist Front. To some extent, this split is still evident today.
The declaration of a State of Palestine (Arabic: دولة فلسطين) took place in Algiers on November 15, 1988, by the Palestinian National Council, the legislative body of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).
Currently, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), along with the United States, the European Union, and the Arab League, envision the establishment of a State of Palestine to include all or part of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, living in peace with Israel under a democratically elected and transparent government. The PNA, however, does not claim sovereignty over any territory and therefore is not the government of the State of Palestine proclaimed in 1988.
The 1988 declaration was approved at a meeting in Algiers, by a vote of 253-46, with 10 abstentions. The declaration invoked the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) and UN General Assembly Resolution 181 in support of its claim to a "State of Palestine on our Palestinian territory with its capital Jerusalem". The proclaimed state of Palestine was recognized immediately by the Arab League, and about half the world's governments recognize it today. It maintains embassies in many of these countries and special or general delegations in others. Palestine is also an Observer Member in the United Nations. (See State of Palestine#United Nations representation.)
The declaration is generally interpreted to be a major step on the path to Israel's recognition by the Palestinians. Just as in Israel's declaration of independence, it partly bases its claims on UN GA 181. By reference to "resolutions of Arab Summits" and "UN resolutions since 1947" (like SC 242) it implicitly and perhaps ambiguously restricted its immediate claims to the Palestinian territories and Jerusalem. It was accompanied by a political statement that explicitly mentioned SC 242 and other UN resolutions and called only for withdrawal from "Arab Jerusalem" and the other "Arab territories occupied."[17] Yasser Arafat's statements in Geneva a month later were accepted by the United States as sufficient to remove the ambiguities it saw in the declaration and to fulfill the longheld conditions for open dialogue with the United States.
The current position of the Palestinian Authority is that all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip should form the basis of a future Palestinian state. For additional discussion, see Palestinian territories.
The main discussion since 1993 has focused on turning most or all of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank into an independent Palestinian state. This was the basis for the Oslo accords,[18] and it is favoured by the U.S.[19] The status of Israel within the 1949 Armistice lines has not been the subject of international negotiations. Some members of the PLO recognize Israel's right to exist within these boundaries; others hold that Israel must eventually be destroyed. Consequently, some Israelis hold that Palestinian statehood is impossible with the current PLO as a basis, and needs to be delayed.
The specific points and impediments to the establishment of a Palestinian state are listed below. They are a part of a greater mindset difference. Israel declares that its security demands that a Palestinian entity would not have all attributes of a state, at least initially, so that in case things go wrong, Israel would not have to face a dangerous and nearby enemy. Israel may be therefore said to agree (as of now) not to a complete and independent Palestinian state, but rather to a self-administering entity, with partial but not full sovereignty over its borders and its citizens.
The central Palestinian position is that they have already compromised greatly by accepting a state covering only the areas of the West Bank and Gaza. These areas are significantly less territory than allocated to the Arab state in UN Resolution 181. They feel that it is unacceptable for an agreement to impose additional restrictions (such as level of militarization, see below) which, they declare, makes a viable state impossible. In particular, they are angered by significant increases in the population of Israeli settlements and communities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the interim period of the Oslo accords. Palestinians claim that they have already waited long enough, and that Israel's interests do not justify depriving their state of those rights that they consider important. The Palestinians have been unwilling to accept a territorially disjointed state. It is feared that it would face difficulties similar to those of Bantustan.
A peace process has been in progress in spite of all the differences and conflicts.
In the 1990s, outstanding steps were taken which formally began a process the goal of which was to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict through a two-state solution. Beginning with the Madrid Conference of 1991 and culminating in the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords between Palestinians and Israelis, the peace process has laid the framework for Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and in Gaza. According to the Oslo Accords, signed by Yassir Arafat and then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in Washington, Israel would pull out of the Gaza Strip and cities in the West Bank. East Jerusalem, which had been annexed by Israel in 1980 was not mentioned in any of the agreements.
Following the landmark accords, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was established to govern those areas from which Israel was to pull out. The PNA was granted limited autonomy over a non-contiguous area, though it does govern most Palestinian population centers.
The process stalled with the collapse of the Camp David 2000 Summit between Palestinians and Israel, after which the second Intifada broke out.
Israel ceased acting in cooperation with the PNA. In the shadow of the rising death toll from the violence, the United States initiated the Road Map for Peace (published on June 24, 2002), which was intended to end the Intifada by disarming the Palestinian terror groups and creating an independent Palestinian state. The Road Map has stalled awaiting the implementation of the step required by the first phase of that plan. It remains stalled due to the civil war between Hamas and Fatah, except that on April 27, 2011 it was announced that Hamas and Fatah had reached a reconciliation agreement in a pact which was brokered by Egypt. Hamas, Fatah, and the other Palestinian political factions signed the reconciliation agreement in the official signing ceremony of that agreement which took place on May 4, 2011.
In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip as part of the Disengagement Plan.
In 2008, U.S.-brokered negotiations were ongoing between Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and the outgoing Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert.
In 2011, Al Jazeera published thousands of classified documents that it had received from sources close to negotiators in the 2008 negotiation talks between Israeli Prime Minister Olmert and Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. The documents, dubbed the Palestine Papers, showed that in private the Palestinians had made major concessions on issues that had scuttled previous negotiations. Olmert also presented his ideas for the borders for a Palestinian state, dubbed the "Napkin Map" due to Abbas having to sketch the map on a napkin because Olmert refused to allow Abbas to keep a copy for further consideration. Olmert's proposal largely followed the route of the Israeli West Bank barrier, and placed all of the Israeli settlement blocs and East Jerusalem Jewish neighbourhoods under Israeli sovereignty. Israel would retain around 10% of the West Bank and in return the Palestinians would receive around 5% of Israeli territory adjacent to the southern West Bank and lands adjacent to the Gaza Strip.
In early September 2010 the first peace talks since the Gaza war in 2009 were held in Washington DC between Israeli prime-minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. The pace of the talks were assessed by the US as "break through". However, on 25 September Netanyahu did not renew a 10-month moratorium on settlement construction in the West Bank, which brought him severe criticism from the United States, Europe and the United Nations. Abbas stated that Netanyahu could not be trusted as a 'true' peace negotiator if the freeze was not extended. Netanyahu's failure to uphold the commitments he made just a few weeks earlier "to reaching a comprehensive peace agreement with Palestinians"[20] through extending the term of moratorium has caused a de- facto halt of peace negotiations.[21]
On 28 September 2010, Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, presented to the UN a ″peace plan″ according to which ″parts of Israel's territory populated predominantly by Israeli Arabs would be transferred to a newly created Palestinian state, in return for annexation of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and/or population swap″.[22] The statement came about while Israeli prime-minister Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Abbas were holding peace talks mediated by the United States. In the press conference on 28 September Netanyahu stated "Israel, Palestinians can reach Middle-East peace in a year".[23] However, Liberman's controversial proposal means that "the conflict will not be solved within a year and that implementation of the peace agreement will take generations". Lieberman's proposal was viewed as undermining Netanyahu's credibility in the discussions and causing embarrassment for the Israeli government. According to a New York Jewish leader "Every time when Lieberman voices skepticism for peace talks, he gives Abu Mazen [Abbas] and the Arab League an opportunity to reinforce their claim that Netanyahu isn't serious." On 29 September, while commenting on the Lieberman proposal Netanyahu said that "I didn't see [the] speech beforehand, but I don't reject the idea."
The proposal also caused wide 'outrage' among Israelis and US Jews. Seymour Reich, a former president of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations stated that "If Lieberman can't keep his personal opinions to himself, he ought to resign from the cabinet."[24]
Some Palestinian People see the mass immigration - mainly from Europe, the United States of America, and Arabic countries - of modern-day Israelis to this region of the world and the establishment of the state of Israel as an act of illegal occupation. This occupation has consequences for hundreds of thousands of Arab Palestinians living in refugee camps in several countries in the world, including destruction of villages perpetrated against those Palestinians that are still living in their land today, and the increase in Israeli settlements in the remaining Palestinian villages and lands as well as the death of thousands from each side. Others hold no issue with a two-state solution to the conflict.
The traditional Israeli view has been that there is no such thing as a separate Palestinian people, distinct from other Arabs, at least historically. The borders of historical Palestine and surrounding countries were arbitrarily determined and there are already several Arab nations.
The Israelis maintain that the UN Partition Plan of 1947 was legally binding and the Palestinians' rejection of that plan, and their subsequent attacks on the Jewish community, led Israel to defensively gain land to protect itself. The UN sanctioned Israel's right to keep the land won after the 1948 War of Independence.
However, as of April 2010 the Likud government of Prime Minister Netanyahu have given speeches in favor of the creation of a Palestinian State. According to an April 2010 poll more than 78% of the Israeli public supports a two state solution.
Before the creation of Israel, Arab leaders supported the creation of a united Arab state encompassing all Arab peoples including Palestine, so that no independent Palestinian state would exist, but this became a minority view amongst Palestinians during the British Mandate, and after 1948 became rare. It is still an opinion expressed regularly in the Arab states outside Palestine (especially Syria due to its attachment to the Greater Syria Movement which was launched in 1944 to establish a "Syrian Arab" state that would include Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine.) However, it is generally recognised that such a development has become implausible under current political realities and even those who might favor it in some circumstances support an independent Palestinian state as the most achievable option.
Syria joined Egypt in founding the United Arab Republic (UAR) in 1958 during a period of Pan-Arabism as the first step toward the recreation of Pan-Arab state. The UAR was to include, among others, Palestine. The UAR disintegrated into its constituent states in 1961.
Egypt held Gaza and Jordan annexed the West Bank between 1948 and 1967. During those years, Egyptian President Nasser created the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964. In 1959 Fatah was formed in Kuwait City, Kuwait by a group of ex-pat Palestinian professionals , including Yasser Arafat working in the Gulf states, with similar aims.
Nowadays, most Arabs (Christians and Muslims), and some anti-zionists Jews ,[25] support Palestinians' rights to self-determination and support Palestinian refugees and their right to return to their homes and lands of origin in Palestine [26] (what it is now Israel and Palestinian territories) (see return of Palestinian refugees).
There are several plans for a possible Palestinian state. Each one has many variations. Some of the more prominent plans include:
Several plans have been proposed for a Palestinian state to incorporate all of the former British mandate of Palestine (pre-1967 territory of Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank). Some possible configurations include:
The RAND Corporation's Arc project,[30] developed in concert with Suisman Urban Design,[31] is a sweeping infrastructure plan for a prospective Palestinian state. Following the curved mountain ridge of the West Bank, the Arc establishes a national corridor that would provide swift rail service, roadway, water, power, and parkland for the main Palestinian towns and cities. The corridor - and its lateral branches within each city - would enable the new state to accommodate a fast-growing population by expanding urban neighborhoods and housing stock in a coherent and sustainable manner. This would allow private investment and international aid to be efficiently directed towards an integrated national space, rather than towards a costly array of scattered and disconnected projects.
As part of collection of studies conducted under the auspices of the RAND Corporation’s Center for Middle East Public Policy,[32] the Palestinian Arc study has by far received the most notoriety and broad acceptance from Palestinians, Israelis, Europeans, Americans, and across the Middle East. The Palestinian Arc is an urban planning concept that was devised, in concert with the Palestinian Authority, as the physical foundation for Palestine’s long-term economic and social success. The Arc’s principles of sustainable development are reflected in Prime Minister Fayyad’s current planning for statehood. The Arc is based on RAND’s comprehensive assessment of Palestinian statehood, including its governance, internal security, demography, water, health, education and economy.
RAND has estimated that building the core elements of the Arc (the rail, road, and transport infrastructure) would cost about $8 billion. It would generate up to 160,000 jobs per year over five years in sectors like engineering and construction, where the Palestinian workforce is already strong. These projects would stimulate a range of associated economic activities throughout the region.[33]
In October 2010, the Arc won "Best Masterplan" and "Future Project of the Year"[34] at the 2010 World Architecture Festival.[35][36]
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