“The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity — they always reject peace”

The aphorism is Abba Eban’s, and it is repeated as though the record of formal Palestinian and Arab proposals were empty. It is not, and the proposals are lodged as United Nations documents anyone can pull.

On 15 November 1988, meeting in Algiers, the Palestine National Council adopted a Declaration of Independence and a Political Communiqué, circulated to the General Assembly and Security Council as document A/43/827–S/20278. The Council called for an international conference convened under United Nations auspices “on the basis of Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973)” — the resolutions premised on Israeli withdrawal from territory occupied in 1967 and on the recognition of every state in the region within secure boundaries — demanded Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied since 1967 including Arab Jerusalem, called for the removal of the settlements, sought a solution of the refugee question in accordance with United Nations resolutions, and restated the PLO’s rejection of terrorism in all its forms. Whatever else that was, it was a decision by the Palestinian national movement to seek a state on the 22 per cent of historic Palestine occupied in 1967 and to leave the remaining 78 per cent to Israel. No comparable territorial concession has been offered in the other direction.

Fourteen years later the offer came from every Arab state at once. On 28 March 2002 the Council of the League of Arab States, meeting at summit level in Beirut, adopted the Arab Peace Initiative (Summit resolution 14/221, circulated as A/56/1026–S/2002/932). It called upon Israel “to withdraw fully from the occupied Arab territories, including the Syrian Golan to the line of 4 June 1967, and from the territories in southern Lebanon that are still occupied”; “to arrive at a just and agreed solution to the Palestine refugee problem in accordance with United Nations General Assembly resolution 194 (III)”; and “to accept the establishment of an independent, sovereign Palestinian State in the Palestinian territories occupied since 4 June 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.” In return the Arab states undertook to “consider the Arab-Israeli conflict at an end and enter into a peace agreement between them and Israel while achieving security for all the States of the region,” and to “establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace.” The Initiative expressly urged “the Government of Israel and all Israelis to accept the foregoing Initiative in order to safeguard the prospects for peace and spare further bloodshed.” It was reaffirmed by the Arab League in 2007 and has never been formally accepted by any Israeli government.

The second half of the claim — that Palestinians squandered the negotiating years — is answered by what happened to the land during those years. The International Court of Justice recorded in July 2024 that after its 2004 opinion on the wall, “the construction of the wall continued, as well as the expansion of settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” and that by 2023 approximately 465,000 settlers resided in the West Bank across around 300 settlements and outposts, with some 230,000 more in East Jerusalem. The Court further noted that Palestinian construction “is entirely prohibited in 70 per cent of Area C and severely restricted in the remaining 30 per cent,” that “less than 1 per cent of Area C is available to Palestinians for building housing and infrastructure,” and that the growth rate of the settler population in the West Bank is significantly higher than that of the population in Israel or of Palestinians in the West Bank. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported in February 2024 that the number of settler outposts had risen to 162.

A negotiation in which one party’s physical stake in the territory expands continuously throughout is not a negotiation that failed for want of Palestinian assent. The documents establishing what was offered, and by whom, are public; the aphorism survives because they are rarely read.

Sources

• Political Communiqué and Declaration of Independence of the Palestine National Council, 15 November 1988 — UN document A/43/827–S/20278 (PDF)
• Arab Peace Initiative, Beirut summit, 28 March 2002 — UN document A/56/1026–S/2002/932 (PDF)
• International Court of Justice, advisory opinion of 19 July 2024 — on continued settlement expansion and settler numbers (PDF)
• Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory — Report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, A/HRC/55/72, 1 February 2024 (PDF)