The Road to Settlement
Part 7 of the series “The Palestine Question” · Section Three, Chapter Two (1)

The Road to Settlement:
From the Right of Return to Oslo

It began as a “refugee issue,” became “the cause of a people with the right to self-determination,” and ended with an agreement granting self-rule over part of the land. How did that shift happen, step by step?

For high-school & university students5 themes · 35-minute readQuiz at the end

Timeline (1948–1994) · tap any point

Earliest on the left.

Chapter introduction

What Does “Peaceful Settlement” Mean?

Not necessarily “just” or “in the middle”; usually a picture of the balance of power.

A settlement, usually

A resolution of a dispute between warring states, or between parties within one country, which they sign and abide by. It can be temporary: both sides use it to buy time until circumstances change.

In the Palestinian case

The author considers the term “misleading”: this is not a border dispute between two countries but colonization and seizure by force. Any settlement will inevitably take from the owners’ land, freedom or sovereignty, and any solution accepted under today’s balance of power will be temporary, ending when its causes end.

The author’s view in brief: the settlements on offer do not talk about removing oppression, but at best about “oppression without oppression,” legitimizing most of what was seized. Any “just and lasting” settlement must rest on ending the occupation and restoring rights in full.
One: 1948–1967

“A Refugee Issue”

In this period the world treated Palestine as a humanitarian problem, not the cause of a people.

Resolution 194 (11 December 1948)What does the “right of return” mean? Flip the cards

130+times the UN reaffirmed the resolution by 2021, with no practical step to compel Israel
800 / 920kof the population of the area seized by the Zionists were driven out
7 millionPalestinian refugees in early 2021

The Lausanne trickHow did Israel get into the UN?

Over time the great powers leaned toward economic solutions for the refugees and resettling them where they were, not returning them to their land or granting them political rights. In this context UNRWA was created by Resolution 302. Meanwhile the Arab state never came into being: Jordan formally annexed the West Bank (11 April 1950), and the Gaza Strip was placed under Egyptian administration.

Two: 1967–2000

From “Liberating Palestine” to “Removing the Effects of Aggression”

After 1967 the bargaining was over land that had not been occupied before, and the 1948 land dropped out of the discussion.

Three frameworks of proposals

Arab proposalsIsraeli withdrawal from the land occupied in 1967.
Israeli proposalsEnd the state of war and normal relations with the Arabs, while denying Palestinian rights.
International proposalsAttempts to combine the two visions, depending on the proposer’s ties to each side.

The Allon Plan (July 1967)The basis of Israeli proposals until the late 20th century

The Jordan River as the eastern border, annexing the Jordan Valley up to 15 km wide with rapid settlement, and Jewish suburbs east of Jerusalem.
Avoid annexing the Arab population as far as possible, with Palestinian self-rule in the areas not annexed.
Annex the Gaza Strip with its original inhabitants only, moving its 1948 refugees to the West Bank or El-Arish.
Solve the refugee problem “regionally” with model villages in the West Bank and perhaps Sinai.

Resolution 242: the game of “the”22 November 1967 · choose the text’s language

Britain drafted it and the Security Council adopted it unanimously. It calls for withdrawal of Israeli forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict, and for ending the state of war and recognizing every state’s right to live in peace within “secure and recognized boundaries.”

Withdrawal lines unclearnot clearly defined.
Accepts pre-1967 expansionwhich was illegal.
Palestine as mere “refugees”no political rights for the Palestinian people.
Conditional withdrawaldependent on other conditions.

The PLO and the factions rejected it as “the final liquidation of the cause,” as did Syria, Iraq and Algeria; Jordan and Egypt accepted it.

The 1970s: the people return to the map

Why these resolutions matter: they turned the issue from “refugees” into a people with the right to self-determination, delegitimized the 1967 occupation including Jerusalem, and isolated Israel politically. But General Assembly resolutions are non-binding recommendations; the binding body is the Security Council, where an American veto is always ready.
Camp David 1978 and the Fez Plan 1982

The First Arab Settlement with Israel

Sadat visited Jerusalem and addressed the Knesset (19 November 1977), then signed with Begin under Carter’s sponsorship (17 September 1978).

What Egypt got

It recovered Sinai under conditions restricting its forces there, in return for permanent “peace” and political, economic and cultural normalization.

What was offered to the Palestinians

Self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza for a transitional period of no more than 5 years, negotiated by Egypt, Jordan, Israel and Palestinian representatives “as agreed” (i.e., with Israel’s consent), with Israeli forces remaining at certain locations, and final-status talks based on Resolution 242.

The agreement provoked one of the strongest waves of rejection in the Arab world. Relations with Egypt were cut at the Baghdad summit (1979), and the “Steadfastness and Confrontation Front” was formed. An Islamist group assassinated Sadat on 6 October 1981. The Palestinian component collapsed after unanimous Palestinian and Jordanian rejection.

“The most dangerous episode of the hostile conspiracy since 1948… a complete surrender by Sadat to Menachem Begin’s plan… we cannot bargain with or appease any liquidation project such as self-rule.”
PLO statement on Camp David
The author points out that the PLO leadership itself signed, fifteen years minus four days later, an agreement similar in substance (Oslo), and accused its opponents of what Sadat had accused his.

The Fez Plan (September 1982)Originally the plan of Prince Fahd bin Abdulaziz

Adopted by the Arab summit after the resistance left Beirut: withdrawal from all the 1967 lands including Jerusalem, removal of settlements, an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital under PLO leadership, and Security Council guarantees of peace among all states in the region. It represented the Arab line of the 1980s: implicit recognition of Israel in return for a state in the West Bank and Gaza.

The PLO: from armed struggle to Oslo

The Road to Oslo

Drag the slider to see how the official Palestinian programme changed.

The world changes (1988–1991)

The Iran–Iraq war ended with both countries exhausted, and oil prices fell. Then the Arabs split after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait (August 1990); Gulf aid to the PLO stopped because it sided with Iraq, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from Kuwait. The Soviet Union collapsed, leaving America the sole superpower, and the socialist states opened the gates of emigration to Israel, which celebrated its millionth immigrant (May 2000). In this climate America drew the Arabs into the Madrid Conference (October 1991).

The Oslo Accords (13 September 1993)The “Declaration of Principles,” or “Gaza–Jericho First”

After two years of public talks that failed to break Israeli intransigence, secret negotiations were revealed that had run since 20 January 1993, behind the back of the official delegation headed by Haidar Abdel-Shafi and without most PLO leaders knowing. Mahmoud Abbas and Shimon Peres signed it in Washington in the presence of Arafat, Rabin and Clinton.

18%of the West Bank under the Authority’s security and administrative control (Area A) until 2000
20–25%Area B: Palestinian administrative control, joint security
4 issuespostponed to final status: Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, and the state’s borders and sovereignty

Oslo in the balanceThe views of the author and the agreement’s critics, and of its defenders

Main criticisms

  • Palestine is the cause of all Muslims, and no generation may give up the right of later ones; trusted scholars ruled such a settlement impermissible
  • The PLO leadership decided alone, without referring to the people
  • It recognized “Israel’s right to exist” on 77% of Palestine
  • No mention of self-determination or a state, and no description of the West Bank and Gaza as “occupied”
  • No army, no borders, and an Israeli veto on legislation
  • The Authority was obliged to suppress resistance, and Palestinian ranks split
  • It ended Israel’s international isolation and removed the UN as the reference

Defenders’ arguments

  • The best possible given the imbalance of power and Arab and Muslim weakness
  • A chance to build facts on the ground and establish a Palestinian Authority
  • Salvaging what land could be saved before annexation and confiscation swallowed it
  • Israel for the first time formally recognized the Palestinian people and its rights, the PLO as its representative, and the unity of the West Bank and Gaza
“He has trapped his people in a snare with no exit.”
Edward Said on Arafat after Oslo

The author argues that the agreement reached a dead end with the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada (28 September 2000), since the core issues that should have been settled by 1998 were not, while settlement and Judaization doubled.

The Wadi Araba Treaty (26 October 1994)Jordan, the third Arab party to normalize after Egypt and the PLO

For group discussion

  1. A single word (“the”) can change the meaning of an international resolution. What does that teach us about reading agreements carefully?
  2. Compare the PLO’s statement on Camp David (1978) with its position on Oslo (1993). How do you explain the shift?
  3. Present fairly the strongest argument of Oslo’s critics and the strongest of its supporters. Which convinces you more, and why?
Wrap-up

Test Yourself

12 questions on the peace process up to 2000.