Lies of a Peace Process

Joseph Puder
frontpagemag.org
08 October '10

The term “peace process,” writes William B. Quandt in Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict since 1967, began to be widely used “sometime in the mid-1970’s” to describe “the American-led efforts to bring about a negotiated peace between Israel and its neighbors.” As Quandt explained it, “The phrase is synonymous with the gradual, step-by-step approach to resolving one of the world’s most difficult conflicts.” Quandt added, “In the years since 1967 the emphasis in Washington has shifted from the spelling out of the ingredients of ‘peace’ to the ‘process’ of getting there.”

In the aftermath of the Six Days War of 1967, with Israel in control of the Sinai, the Golan Heights, Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, a fierce debate began in Israel over how to make peace with its Arab enemies. The political-left saw an opportunity to use the captured territories as bargaining chips for peace — hence the land for peace formula.

The political-right, on the other hand, looking pragmatically at Arab hostility and the Arab world’s unwillingness to neither make peace with Israel (nor recognize or negotiate with the Jewish State), argued for keeping most of the captured territories (certainly Judea and Samaria) and maintained that Israel had as much of a claim to the territories as the Jordanian monarchy or the Arab-Palestinians. Moreover, they asserted that the Arabs would never make a full and sincere peace with Israel.

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