Israel's Peacemaking under Security Challenges: Implications of a Retrospective Outlook

41 Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. 43, No.3, Spring 2020 Israel’s Peacemaking under Security Challenges: Implications of a Retrospective Outlook Gilead Sher* Adelaide Duckett** Israeli Involvement in Peace Processes Israel’s first conflict began as a state-in-the-making in 1947 and intensified with its establishment as a state in the War of Independence in 1948, involving all of its neighboring states of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, which were supported by Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and others. The war came to an end with the 1949 armistice agreements. These established the armistice lines including the Green Line, and an end to the war, but not a formal peace as no state yet recognized the State of Israel. Conflict continued throughout the 1950s between Arab troops and Fidayeens and Israeli forces but did not escalate into full-scale war. In 1956, the Suez crisis resulted in an Israeli invasion of the Sinai Peninsula, allowing Israel to reopen the Straits of Tiran. Israel subsequently retreated from the Sinai Peninsula, only to recapture it a decade later in the Six-Day War of June 1967. *Gilead Sher is currently the Isaac and Mildred Brochstein fellow in Middle East Peace and Security at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. He was chief of staff and policy coordinator to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, a senior negotiator at the Camp David summit and Taba talks, and a delegate to the 1994–95 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement negotiations under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He is an IDF Colonel who served in reserve service as a brigade commander and a deputy division commander. Sher heads the Center for Applied Negotiations and is a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). He is the author of The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations, 1999–2001 and coeditor of Negotiating in Times of Conflict and Spoiling and Coping with Spoilers. **Adelaide Duckett is a student at the University of Chicago working under Gilead Sher and the Center for Applied Negotiations. Attacked by five Arab states, which were supported by eight additional ones, Israel swiftly conquered the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. As a result of the war, Israel expanded its territory significantly, but the admirable victory of the 19-year-old country fighting for its life has not been translated, as of yet, into serving the core values of a Jewishdemocratic state. In an attempt to regain their lost territories, Egypt and Syria in October 1973 launched a surprise attack on Yom Kippur, the most sacred holiday in Judaism. The fighting lasted less than three weeks and ended with an Israeli victory and no major territorial changes. The end of the Yom Kippur War marked the start of the first major peace process in Israel’s history. After a summit conference in Geneva aimed at resolving the conflict collapsed with Syria’s refusal of attendance, the U.S. began acting as mediator, concluding an Israeli-Syrian Agreement on Disengagement in May 1974 and establishing a channel of communication between Israel and Egypt. Two years of indirect negotiations, punctuated by a change in Israeli leadership in the election of Yitzhak Rabin as Prime Minister, resulted in an interim agreement reached in September 1975. The agreement secured Israeli use of the Suez Canal, an Israeli withdrawal in the Sinai Peninsula, and the establishment of a demilitarized buffer zone between the new borders. This agreement laid the foundation for a full framework for peace reached in 1978. Following the unprecedented November 1977 visit to Israel by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, U.S. President Jimmy Carter offered to facilitate negotiations between the two nations at Camp David. Intense negotiations resulted in two documents: the Framework for Peace in the Middle East1 and the Framework for the Conclusion of a Peace Treaty2 between Egypt and Israel. The Framework for Peace in the Middle East set forth a plan for reaching a final status settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, which led the foundations 42 1 “Camp David Accords: The Framework for Peace in the Middle...