Israel was withdrawing through the 90s as part of the Oslo Process, which ended with the Second Initifada.
Look at the Israeli terms of the Camp David summit and you’ll get why the Intifada happened. These are terms no self-respecting state would accept.
The US & Israelis were still hoping Arafat would come back to the table until the Intifada broke out. Peace takes time and some weren’t willing to give it the time it needed.
The US & Israelis were still hoping Arafat would come back to the table until the Intifada broke out.
Israel was pretty clear about what they wanted, and that was not a real, self-sufficient Palestinian state. If you need proof of that, take a look at the modern West Bank. Israel actively funded Hamas in the early 90s to weaken the Palestinian peace movement, and would later take many such actions to divide Palestinians and prevent peace from happening.
The last time the Israeli government seriously considered a two-state solution was in 1947.
Israel was pretty clear about what they wanted, and that was not a real, self-sufficient Palestinian state.
And the PLO was established with the aim of eliminating the state of Israel. Times change. I think Arafat and Rabin were serious at the time, but there was simply too much of a gap to bridge. Since then it’s only gotten worse. Yes, Israel funded Hamas, but at the time they were more concerned about the violence of the PLO. I don’t believe the intent was to create a more dangerous enemy as a pretext for war as some are suggesting now, however it was stupid and short-sighted, and blowback is a much more widely recognized phenomenon today than it was then.
