Comment by karmakurtisaani
2 years ago
I mean clearly it did not give Palestinians everything they wanted if they rejected it. Indeed,
> This was unacceptable to Abbas, who had made it clear that he could allow over 60% of the settlers to remain in place, as long as the Ariel settlement, which formed a significant obstacle to Palestinian development, was removed.
I'm no expert on the situation in Israel/Palestine, and I doubt few of us here are. But for sure these proposals are extremely complicated and you have to be aware of a lot more than how the map looks like in order to fully judge the implications of a proposed peace plan.
Furthermore, it's very likely that actors like Iran were influencing Palestinian decisions, and if the proposal was not in their favor, they would go against it.
In any case, I find the view of outright dismissing Palestinians as not willing to take the best possible offer and only wanting war rather naive. The whole conversation around the topic, including people salivating over how to imprison people better with better technology, is so damn toxic.
> In any case, I find the view of outright dismissing Palestinians as not willing to take the best possible offer and only wanting war rather naive.
And yet, it's true. Are the Palestinians better off now? Are they likely to get a country via war? Nope.
They squandered their best opportunity, and they are unlikely to ever get it again.
You started this chain by saying Israel has done everything except try for peace and I think I've pretty conclusively proven that that is simply not true. Israel has tried, but Palestinians are unwilling to accept anything less than everything.
Or perhaps they need to try longer and harder. They're the ones with the bigger guns, more powerful allies, more overall resources and more stable government.
If you look into the history of settlements in the West Bank, the picture gets a bit more complex than "Israel has tried".