Israeli prime minister and Palestinian president to work toward peace treaty in 2008

PETER VIGLIETTA
News Editor

SOURCE: Nationmaster.com

Last Tuesday marked the second time the president of the United States has attempted to commission a peace treaty between the government of Israel and the Palestinian authorities. The political conflict in the land now known as Israel is almost a century old, but can be traced back to biblical times.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas met with President George W. Bush in Annapolis, Maryland last week to sign an agreement promising that they would both work to attain peace in the region by the end of 2008.

Annapolis is the first time in seven years that America has taken a diplomatic interest in the Arab-Israeli conflict. According to a Nov. 28 article from The New York Times, Bush announced that the conference was meant to "lay the foundation of a new nation: a democratic Palestinian state that will live side-by-side with Israel in peace and security."

"Camp David, Oslo, the Madrid Conference, and now Annapolis- all a waste of time," said Issac Moddel, a 25-year-old Israeli who served in the Israeli army for three years and now lives near Tel Aviv and studies international relations. Moddel was interviewed via Facebook and instant messages. "The Arabs have never kept to any of the agreements."

Moddel said that in the Gaza and West Bank regions, there is fighting every day between the Israeli army and a number of Arab militant groups. While Palestine is not recognized by the international community as a sovereign nation, Israel agreed to recognize the Palestinian government under the Oslo Accords of 1993. Palestinians living in Israel are constituents of a separate, Palestinian government.

Many have expressed doubt as to the potential success of the peace talks, viewing it mostly as symbolic diplomacy on the part of the United States. Similar attempts have been made on several occasions to end the conflict, which is deeply rooted in religious and ethnic divisions and for which both side continues to blame the other.

"I suppose I do not need to mention the fact that Israel is completely illegal in the first place," said Nawal Bint Adley Essa, a 21-year-old Palestinian college student from Jerusalem, interviewed via Facebook. "That being said, I do not believe that Olmert or the government have sincere intentions of changing its ways. There are ridiculously harsh restrictions on the Palestinian people. Basic needs are not being met. So am I supposed to believe that anything they promise will become a reality?"

Issues that were addressed in the peace talks include the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the status of the city of Jerusalem. Theodore Steinberg, English professor at Fredonia and faculty advisor for the Jewish Student Union (JSU), pointed out the irony of the fight over Jerusalem since it has no natural resources. The fight over Jerusalem, he said, comes from the fact that it is a holy city for both Jews and Muslims.

"A lot of people don't know what's going on and I think a lot of people who are in it don't understand why it's going on," said Mike Davidson, senior political science major and president of the Jewish Student Union at Fredonia. "It goes back to biblical times."

According to MidEastWeb.org, a non-profit informational Web site about the history and current events of the Middle East, the area that is now the Jewish state of Israel was, in ancient times, Judea. Judea was conquered by the Romans and renamed Palestine which was later conquered and inherited by Arabs who practiced the Islam religion. From this came the development of the Zionist movement, a movement to win the region back for the Jews.

In 1917, the Ottomon Empire was split up by the Allied powers after World War 1. Following the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the League of Nations granted Palestine (the region that is now the state of Israel) to Britain under a mandate to create a home for the Jewish people. Religious and ethnic tensions between the Muslims and Jews remained strong, and in 1948, the United Nations enacted Resolution 181, a plan to split the land into Arab and Jewish states, sometimes referred to as the Partition Plan.

The Arabs rejected this plan and war broke out once the United Nations left. In what became known as the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, or the War of Independence, Israel defeated Egypt, Syria, Jordon, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and other Arab armies. This created hundreds of thousands of Palestinians refugees, and more wars broke out during 1956, 1976, 1973 and 1982.

1964 marked the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) led by Yasser Arafat until his death in 2004. While Arafat was long opposed to the existence of Israel, he agreed to sit down with Israeli leaders for peace conferences such as the Madrid Conference of 1991 in Washington, D.C., the 1993 Oslo Accords and the 2000 Camp David Summit.

Moddel, said there are a number of different militant organizations that the Israeli army fights. These include the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and Islamic Jihad.

"A lot of people say this is Bush's last ditch effort to save his legacy but I would still be hopeful without being too naïve," Steinberg said. "Both sides are going to have to give things up."

The two rival political factions in Palestine are Fatah, which is led by Abbas, the current president and successor to Yasser Arafat and Hamas, led by Ismael Haniyeh. Right now, the current president, Mahmoud Abbas, is with Fatah, while the Palestinian parliament is controlled by Hamas.

"This whole thing with Annapolis, it's a meeting to agree to agree to meet," Davidson said. "I find it funny that the only part of the Middle East that has no oil is Israel, yet everyone wants it. They're stuck on a few little points and they're not looking at the broader picture that they're all human and they all need to learn how to coexist peacefully so they'll all be safer and more productive and more economically satisfied in the end."