> Can you provide backup for this? It's based on my reading from various people who were there and who have commented on the process afterwards. There is a mas

> Can you provide backup for this? It's based on my reading from various people who were there and who have commented on the process afterwards. There is a massive gap between how this is discussed in the American popular media and how it's discussed among experts. > Is your only issue with it that it's missing the word "state"? In a process that is supposedly going to lead to a Palestinian state, don't you think it's a bit curious that it is never actually spelled out that there will be a Palestinian state? The reason for the absence of any explicit statement that the "final status" will be a Palestinian state is that the Israeli government at the time opposed the creation of a Palestinian state. The Israeli government believed that it could resolve the Palestinian question through some sort of semi-autonomous status under ultimate Israeli control. It may be that Rabin would eventually have accepted a Palestinian state, had he not been assassinated, but this was his public position at the time of his death [0]: "We view the permanent solution in the framework of the State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. "We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority. The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six-Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines." He goes on to state a number of conditions that would be utterly unacceptable to the Palestinians, including: All of Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty: "First and foremost, united Jerusalem, which will include both Ma’ale Adumim and Givat Ze’ev -- as the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty, while preserving the rights of the members of the other faiths" Israeli military control over the Jordan River Valley, which would be the eastern half of the putative Palestinian "entity": "The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term." (emphasis added) What Rabin is spelling out here is much less than a Palestinian state. It is essentially a plan for the Palestinians to be able to run local civic affairs, while under ultimate Israeli control. What that would mean in practice would be that the Palestinian "entity" would be at the mercy of the Israeli government, with little ability to take independent actions that the Israeli government disliked. The Israelis would control the borders, and their troops would be able to move in at any moment in the event of a disagreement. This Palestinian entity would not even include the largest, most important Palestinian city: East Jerusalem. That's why the Oslo Accords do not mention a "Palestinian state." The Israelis were not prepared to accept one. > Why would they have the ability to vote in Israeli elections? The idea is to have a separate state, with its own government. Because the Israelis did not envision a separate state. They envisioned an entity under ultimate Israeli control. In practice, that translates to a kind of second-class citizenship, where you do not have the right to vote for the government that exercises ultimate authority over the territory you live on. Israeli citizens would get to vote for the government that has all the guns. Palestinian "citizens" would get to vote for a local civic government that doesn't have any guns, with Israeli troops standing by, ready to move in whenever they want. > you're still wrong about Camp David, Taba and the 2008 offer. Camp David was utterly unacceptable for the same reasons I've discussed earlier. The Israelis offered something far less than a sovereign state, and they demanded extremely significant concessions on territory and other issues. The Palestinians managed to move the Israelis a bit at Taba, but then the negotiations broke down because the Israeli government was facing electoral defeat, with Israeli hardliners under Ariel Sharon set to take over. The 2008 offer was again utterly unserious - it was issued as a non-negotiable ultimatum, and included poison pills like Israeli annexation of Ariel, that the Israelis knew the Palestinians could never accept. > You seem to view everything as 100% Israel's fault, giving no agency at all to the Palestinians The Palestinians have very little agency. They have no army and no money. They live under military occupation. They have no significant international backers, and their opponent, Israel, is backed by the world superpower. They tried nonviolent resistance in the First Intifada, and were met with a brutal military response. They tried recognizing Israel and negotiating, asking for a sovereign state on 22% of the land, but they got nowhere. They tried violent resistance in the Second Intifada, and got crushed. They tried slowly working towards international recognition to build pressure on Israel, but again have had very little success. Even their attempts to organize an international boycott Israel have been essentially made illegal in much of the West. > It's also on them to advance peace, denounce terror, and work towards a two-state solution. That's what the Palestinians did in the 1990s, and it got them nowhere. Israel is in a position where it does not feel that it has to make any concessions. Until Israel feels pressure from the outside world, it will not do so. 0. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/pm-rabin-speech-to-knesset-on-ratification-of-oslo-peace-accords https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/pm-rabin-speech-to-knes...