Comment by burningChrome
Comment by burningChrome 2 months ago
Sorry, my bad. Its actually 5, not 8.
https://lawandsocietymagazine.com/how-palestine-rejected-off...
1st Rejection - The suggested split was heavily in favor of the Arabs. The British offered them 80% of the disputed territory, the Jews the remaining 20%. Yet, despite the tiny size of their proposed state, the Jews voted to accept this offer. But the Arabs rejected it and resumed their violent rebellion.
2nd Rejection - Ten years later, in 1947, the British asked the United Nations to find a new solution to the continuing tensions. Like the Peal Commission, the UN decided that the best way to resolve the conflict was to divide the land. In November 1947, the UN voted to create two states. Again, the Jews accepted the offer and again, the Arabs rejected it. Only this time, they did so by launching an all-out war. Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria joined the conflict. But they failed. Israel won the war and got on with the business of building a new nation. Most of the land set aside by the UN for an Arab state, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, became occupied territory. Occupied not by Israel, but by Jordan.
3rd Rejection - 20 years later, in 1967, the Arabs led this time by Egypt and joined by Syria and Jordan, once again sought to destroy the Jewish state. The 1967 conflict, known as the Six-Day War, ended in a stunning victory for Israel. Jerusalem and the West Bank, as well as the area known as the Gaza Strip, fell into Israel’s hands. The government split over what to do with this new territory. Half wanted to return the West Bank to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt in exchange for peace. The other half wanted to give it to the region’s Arabs, who had begun referring to themselves as the Palestinians, in the hope that they would ultimately build their own state there. Neither initiative got very far. A few months later, the Arab League met in Sudan and issued its infamous three-NOs, no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel. Again, a two-state solution was dismissed by the Arabs.
4th Rejection - In 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak met at Camp David, with Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Nasser Arafat, to conclude a new two-state plan. Barak offered Arafat a Palestinian state in all of Gaza, and 94% of the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital. But the Palestinian leader rejected the offer. In the words of U.S. President Bill Clinton, “Arafat was here 14 days and said no to everything.” Instead, the Palestinians launched a bloody wave of suicide bombings that killed over 1,000 Israelis and maimed thousands more, on buses, in wedding halls, and in pizza parlors.
5th Rejection - In 2008, Israel tried yet again. Prime Minister Ehud Omar went even further than Ehud Barak had, expanding the peace offer to include additional land to sweeten the deal. Like his predecessor, the new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, turned the deal down.
The first two do not count, Israel did not even exist. They had nothing to offer, they wanted to take some of the land from the Arabs for their own state. They owned less than ten percent of Mandatory Palestin that they had purchased from Arabs and the United Nations decided to give them more than half of the land - admittedly including a lot of desert - for their own state. None of the Arab nations and obviously not the Palestinians agreed to that. Ben-Gurion took the offer and established the state of Israel, not because he considered it fair - he said he would be mad if he was a Palestinian - and not because he was satisfied, he saw it as a step to eventually take over all of Mandatory Palestin.
I can not say much about number three but your quote says that it did not get very far, so I am not sure why this is on a list of rejected offers if there was not even an offer, only considerations.
The way Camp David is described also does not match reality. They failed to agree on several points and therefore there was never an offer that could be rejected. One point of contention was the right to return for the Palestinians expelled by the Israelis. You can not say one side blocked it, the Palestinians wanted more than what Israelis offered, they could have accepted less or the Israelis could have offered more.
Number five, the realignment plan, that was a proper offer, but the characterization in your quote is still misleading. Israel unilaterally proposed to withdraw from most of the Westbank and permanently annex six percent of it containing the major settlements. There was also some other stuff including some land swaps included. I am not sure if the reason for the failure are welk known, you find claims about rejections, claims about just not accepting, that story about not being allowed to look at the map before agreeing, ... And given that it was an unilateral offer, I am not sure that it addressed all points deemed relevant by the Palestinians, for example what happens to the refugees. I would love if someone could provide additional insights.