What Palestinians really want in a peace agreement
"End the occupation" is a simple slogan, but what is the substance behind it? In this essay, part three in a series, an Israeli tour educator explains the Palestinian point of view.
This essay is part three in a series. Read parts one and two first.
How many times have you watched the following conversation play out on television in some form over the past 25 years?
It’s a debate between an Israeli and a Palestinian.
The host asks the Palestinian: “What do you want from Israel?”
The Palestinian says:
“We want an end to the Israeli occupation, an independent Palestinian state on the pre-1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital, and a just solution to the refugee issue in accordance with UN resolutions and international law.”
It is an answer that sounds clear, tangible, specific, reasonable, and negotiable.
The host asks the Israeli: “What do you want from the Palestinians?”
The Israeli says:
“Peace.”
At this point, the average viewer says to themselves: “Ok, how about Israel just gives the Palestinians the list of things that the Palestinians say they want and then Israel will get peace? Why is this so hard?”
The host then presses the Israeli about why the Israeli government has not said yes to peace. The Israeli responds with one or more of the following sentences: Palestinians have turned down many generous offers, Israel’s security requires defensible borders, Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel, Jews have the right to live in Judea, and Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
You’ve heard it all before. By this point in the conversation, the two sides are talking past each other, the host is yelling, the viewers are frustrated, and nobody is learning anything.
The purpose of my writing is to change that.
In my first essay, I presented what I said was a flawed paradigm for understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I said I would present a better theory that is based on a deeper understanding of the identities of both sides.
In my second essay, I explained who the Jewish people are and what they are looking for in a peace agreement.
In this essay, I will explain who Palestinians are, how Palestinians see the Jewish people, and what Palestinians are looking for in a peace agreement.
This essay is a good-faith effort to “steel man” the Palestinian perspective – in other words, to present Palestinian identity and political demands in the most fair, authentic, and compelling manner possible.
We must start from the beginning.
Who are the Palestinians?
Palestinians answer this question in the same way that Jews answer this question:
Palestinians are a people.
There is a logical question that follows.
Where are Palestinians from?
Palestinians have a simple answer:
Palestinians are from Palestine.
Palestinians are a people from Palestine.
When Palestinians speak about Palestine, it sounds something like this:
Palestine is an ancient land. It has been home to many cultures and civilizations for thousands of years. Palestine got its current borders after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century. The British and the French drew lines on the map and created new countries. Whoever was living in the borders of Palestine at that time was Palestinian: Muslims, Christians, and a small number of Jews. Palestine had a huge Arab majority. In other words, Palestine was Arab.
Everything changed when the Zionists started immigrating to Palestine. The Zionists were a group of Europeans – mostly Russians at first – who claimed that they were part of the Jewish people returning home after 2,000 years of exile.
The Zionist claims could not possibly be true, according to Palestinians, for three reasons:
1. Jews are not a people. “The Jewish people” is an invention of the Zionists. Judaism is a religion, but Jews are not a people. Jews are not a nation. There are Polish Jews, Iraqi Jews, American Jews, Russian Jews, Moroccan Jews, and many other kinds of Jews. Jews come from many nations. They are not one nation.
2. Jews are not from Palestine. Since Jews are not a people, they cannot be from one place. Jews are from many places. There were Jews in Palestine before the Zionists arrived, but the Zionists who came from Russia were obviously not from Palestine. The Zionist story is one of immigration, not indigeneity.
3. Jews from Russia had no connection to the Jews of ancient times. The Russian “Jews” were not descended from ancient Israelites. (It is Palestinians who are the real descendants of the Israelites.)
These three points are a key part of Palestinian national political identity.
Palestinians say: Jews are not a people, Jews are not from Palestine, and Jews today have no connection to people who lived in Palestine more than 2,000 years ago.
Most Jews have trouble understanding how Palestinians could believe these things about Jews and Zionism. Allow me to try to explain the Palestinian viewpoint.
Imagine you are taking a class on comparative religion. It’s the first day of the semester. The students are introducing themselves and summarizing their religious beliefs and traditions.
One of the students says the following:
“Hi everyone, my name is Gaga. I am Babylonian. I pray in the Akkadian language. My people, the Babylonian people, dream that one day we will return to the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, the land of Babylonia. When this day comes – may it be in our time – we will be ruled by a king who is a direct descendant of our great king, Hammurabi. Our Temple will be rebuilt. All the nations of the world will know our gods. There will be peace on earth.”
How would you react if you heard such a person today? Be honest. You would think they are crazy. What do you mean you are Babylonian? The Babylonian Empire ceased to exist more than 2,500 years ago! How can you be Babylonian today? Nobody can trace their ancestry that far back. That sounds fake.
I think you know where I am going with this.
That’s exactly how Jews sound to others. Many people think Jews are fake. It’s hard to believe that Jews – Judeans – exist. Where are all the other ancient nations today? The Babylonians, the Philistines, the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Nabateans – today they are only in history books. The Jewish people, the people of Judea, are alive and revived.
That’s a lot to process. It is unprecedented in history that a people that lost its homeland remained a people for the next 2,000 years, remembered where it was from, and dreamed that one day it would return. Nobody has ever heard of such a thing from any other people. It’s understandable that Palestinians would not see Zionist immigrants from the Russian Empire as what the Zionist immigrants claimed to be: a people coming home.
Besides, Zionism was not a theoretical exercise for the people of Palestine. The Zionists were not moving to an empty land.
The people of Palestine saw the new Zionist immigrants as insane. Most Jews in the world at the time thought the Zionists were insane, too.
Now you understand where Palestinians are coming from. They say:
Palestinians are a people – an Arab people.
Palestinians are from Palestine.
Jews are not a people.
Jews are not from Palestine.
Jews – Zionists – are foreigners in Palestine.
Really, Zionists are worse than foreigners. A foreigner can be a guest.
Zionists are not guests.
Zionists are colonizers.
Of course the Zionists are colonizers. Who do you think let them come to Palestine in order to build settlements? The British – a colonial power if there ever was one. Zionism was a British plot all along.
This is how Palestinians say it happened:
During World War I, Arabs in the Middle East revolted against the Ottoman Empire. The British, who had encouraged the revolt, promised the Arabs that they would achieve independence in their own unified nation. But the British also promised Palestine to the Jews – before the British had even conquered the territory from the Ottomans. Once the British became the rulers of Palestine, they allowed Jews to immigrate to Palestine in large numbers. The local Arabs did not want Jewish immigration, but the British held Palestine’s doors open and allowed the Jews to enter. The British kept their promise to the Jews, but not to the Arabs.
Over the next 30 years of British rule in Palestine, the Jews went from being 10 percent of Palestine to being one-third of Palestine.
In 1947, the British announced that they were going to leave Palestine. The big question at this time was: How should Palestine be governed when the British leave? The Arabs of Palestine had a simple answer: majority rule. The Jews did not agree to this. They wanted a state of their own in Palestine.
With no ability to bridge the gaps between Arabs and Jews, the British invited the United Nations to send a special committee to Palestine in order to study the situation and make a suggestion for how the territory should be governed when the British leave. The United Nations proposed that Palestine be partitioned into an Arab state and a Jewish state, and that the cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem would be part of a separate international zone.
It was a ridiculous idea, the Arabs said. There was no justice in carving out a piece of Palestine for the Zionists who were a foreign minority, installed by a colonial power.
The British said they were going to leave Palestine with or without a political solution. Palestine was not their problem any more, they said. Everyone knew that the departure of the British would leave a power vacuum. Even before the British left, the security situation in Palestine collapsed. Panic spread. The intercommunal violence intensified everywhere in Palestine.
When the British finally left on May 15, 1948, Palestine should have remained a single territorial unit, led by the Arab majority. The Arabs of Palestine would have put an end to Jewish immigration. But history would play out differently.
This is how Palestinians explain what came next:
The Jews – the Zionists – declared independence and named their secessionist state “Israel.”
The Zionists – a fake people, a foreign people, a colonial people, an infidel people – stole the land of Palestine.
The Zionists expelled the Arabs of Palestine – the Palestinians – from their homes.
Around 700,000 Palestinians became refugees – in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and beyond. This trauma and humiliation is known as the nakba, or catastrophe.
In 1967, the Zionists occupied more of historic Palestine (the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem). Palestinians call this the naksa, or setback.
The Zionists settled in this newly occupied territory just as they had settled in pre-1948 Palestine.
On top of all of this, the Jews occupy and defile the third holiest site in Islam – Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
In order for there to be peace, Palestinians say, all of these injustices must be reversed.
Palestinians demand:
Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem
A sovereign and independent state in these territories
A capital in East Jerusalem
Sovereignty over the holy sites in Jerusalem (the Old City and the Mount of Olives)
And most importantly:
The Right of Return for Palestinians displaced in 1948 and their descendants, who today number five million people.
These are the things that Palestinians are looking for in a peace agreement with Israel.
How to achieve these rights and how the future state of Palestine should be governed are issues that divide Palestinians. But there is virtually no disagreement among Palestinians about the rights themselves.
The purpose of negotiations with Israel, according to Palestinians who favor negotiations, is to discuss how these rights will be achieved in practice.
I asked in essay one: Why do Palestinians want a state?
The answer is: in order to fulfill what Palestinians say are their rights. (Scroll up if you forgot the list.)
Before deciding whether or not to accept any offer from Israel, Palestinians will ask themselves: Will such a state be the fulfillment of our rights or will it mark the surrender of our rights?
If a Palestinian state is the means by which Palestinians achieve what they say are their rights, then Palestinians will say yes to that state and have no further claims.
If a Palestinian state does not result in Palestinians achieving what they say are their rights, then Palestinians may say yes to that state, but their conflict with Israel will continue.
This is my theory, and I’m sticking to it.
In my next essay, I will answer the questions that may be on your mind at this point:
If Palestinians achieve what they say are their rights, where does that leave Israel?
Is there any middle ground between the Israeli and Palestinian positions?
Is a two-state solution the obvious solution – and the only solution – to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
I welcome your comments.
I'm waiting for the next installment in this series. Thank you for your clear writing style. I want to know the hardest part--how do these disparate perspectives reconcile. 🌱🌿
"Palestine should have remained a single territorial unit, led by the Arab majority." I guess that sounds logical but you haven't yet factored in that "wars have consequences", especially when the other side started the war and lost. Wars are very costly in terms of human life and physical material. My New Zealand grandfather died fighting to liberate the Holy Land, and he is buried in the British Military Cemetery near Jerusalem. I'm speaking on his behalf, and on behalf of all the other ANZACS who didn't return to their families.
You also haven't yet mentioned the San Remo Conference of 1920, which incorporated the Balfour Agreement, or the high representation of Jewish men fighting in WWI, and the other Jewish support which earned the indigenous Jews the right to reconstitute their ancestral homeland, should the Allied Powers be fortunate enough to win the war. You also haven't mentioned that the Hejazi Arabs (not the Arabs of Palestine who fought with the Ottoman Turks or stayed neutral, but the ones from Arabia) were granted self-determination in 99% of the carved-up Ottoman Middle East land. Those countries today are Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, some with huge oil and gas resources. Israel is tiny and has few natural resources.
It's great that one-fifth of Israeli citizens today are Arabs who have equal rights with Jews. Their families made a good choice to accept life in the newly independent state of Israel. But those Arabs who were living in Palestine in 1948, a large number who had only arrived as "economic migrants" after 1920 when the British and Jewish people created economic opportunities, should have been encouraged to move to one of the Arab countries, or elsewhere, if they didn't accept the Jewish state of Israel then, or they still don't accept it.
Compare the situation in Israel with the enforced population exchange of 1.5 million Greeks and Turks to create the new state of Turkiye in 1924. Compare Israel with the 16+ South Asians who moved countries to create the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in 1947. And please don't forget the 800,000 Jews who were exiled from, or were persecuted and had to flee their multi-generational homes in the Arab lands after the creation of the Jewish state leaving behind huge wealth in property and businesses.
I appreciate your work in educating people, and I'm looking forward to your next essay. I travel in Muslim-majority countries and I was close by in Dahab Sinai on October 7, and during the 2021 Gaza War, so I have considerable experience of Middle East thinking.
PS: I love your daily briefings on the Israeli Citizens Spokespersons' channel.