Michael Oren: The Death of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
The Abraham Accords merely dealt a coup de grace to this myth, but it had in fact been dying for decades. The process began with the Egypt-Israel peace treaty of 1979, the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO and the following year, Israel’s peace agreement with Jordan. Two Gulf wars, in 1991 and 2003, proved once again that the Arabs had faced bigger threats than Israel, and the Arab Spring of 2011 demonstrated that Middle Easterners had other things on their minds, such as democracy and freedom.UNRWA's education filled with hate, calls to jihad and violence - report
Yet still the myth persisted, albeit in a pared-down form. If, in the past, regional stability was only attainable through Arab-Israeli peace, now that peace could be achieved solely through Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation and the creation of a Palestinian state. This notion was enshrined in numerous organizations such as the U.S.-based Alliance for Middle East Peace and the European Union’s Middle East Peace Projects, which were not really dedicated to regional peace but almost exclusively to an Israeli-Palestinian accord. “Recognizing that the Israeli-Palestinian issue was at the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict,” the Foundation for Middle East Peace was established in Washington.
Not surprisingly, then, Palestinian-Israeli linkage became official American policy. “Of all the problems the administration faces globally ... This is the epicenter,” President Obama’s National Security Adviser, Jim Jones, declared in 2010. “If God had appeared in front of the President and said he could do one thing on the planet it would be the two-state solution.” Six years later, Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that “There will be no ... Separate peace with the Arab world without ... Palestinian peace. That is a hard reality.”
Like the Arab-Israeli linkage concept, the reduced Israeli-Palestinian version was disproved by the Abraham Accords and the agreement between Israel and Morocco. Though the Arab signatories continued to pledge fealty to the Palestinian cause, they effectively sidestepped the issue and even hinted that the Palestinians themselves were to blame. After rejecting three offers of statehood in the West Bank and Gaza—in 2000, 2001, and 2008—and then failing to take advantage of the eight years of Barack Obama’s highly sympathetic presidency, the Palestinians could no longer wield a veto power over peace. Eager to access Israeli technology and to ally with Israeli military strength, many Arabs states were ready to move on.
Their decision has irrevocably changed the region and created numerous opportunities. In addition to wedding the world’s most innovative state with some of the most affluent, the treaties will help erect a united front against common threats. They will also alter the peacemaking paradigm. If, in the past, the assumption was that Arab countries would first sign peace agreements with Israel and then only gradually normalize their relations with it, now normalization comes first with peace rendered largely a formality. If formerly Israel enjoyed peace with the leaders of Egypt and Jordan but not with their citizens, now the peace is not only between governments but peoples.
But there is one achievement that these diplomatic breakthroughs have not produced: an end to Middle Eastern conflict. On the contrary, such disputes will continue to plague the region and even proliferate. In place of the Arab-Israeli conflict, there is now a broader and potentially more explosive showdown between the Sunnis supported by Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and the Gulf states, and the Shiites backed by Iran. There is battle between moderate Sunnis and Islamic extremists, many of them embraced by Turkey. And there will still be civil wars in Syria and Yemen and chronic instability in Iraq. And there will be an unresolved conflict between Israel and the Palestinians waged in the U.N. and in the international courts but also, occasionally, on the battlefield.
Educational content produced by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is filled with hate and encouragement to jihad, violence and martyrdom, and entirely devoid of any material that promotes peace and peace-making, according to the research institute IMPACT-se based out of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.JCPA: An Israeli Official’s Meeting with Moroccan King Hassan II in 1993
IMPACT-se describes itself as a “research, policy and advocacy organization that monitors and analyzes education,” according to “international standards on peace and tolerance as derived from UNESCO declarations and resolutions.”
According to the report, children in the Gaza Strip are called upon to "defend the motherland with blood."
It can take the form of a math problem asking students to identify the correct number of martyrs from the First Intifada, to the complete eradication of Israel, a UN member state, from any maps featured in UNRWA-created books, with the entire territory being labelled as a modern-day Palestine with no demarcation lines.
When it is mentioned, Israel is usually referred to as “The Enemy” or the “Zionist Occupation,” a clear violation of the UN’s principles of neutrality that UNRWA is expected to prioritize, explained IMPACT-se in the research.
From 1992 to 1994, I served as political advisor to the late Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, In that capacity, I was sent by Rabin to brief the King of Morocco, Hassan II, on Israel’s positions on the peace talks in 1993 with PLO leader Yasser Arafat after a bitter crisis over security responsibilities in the Judea, Samaria, and Gaza territories.
In view of the renewal of relations between Israel and Morocco, it is important to recall the 1993 encounter with the King and to take notice of his attitude towards Arafat and the Palestinian issue. The following appears in the book Between Rabin and Arafat, published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs in 2016.
On December 15, 1993, while Prime Minister and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin was touring Gaza, Military Secretary Danny Yatom called me from the front and informed me that I was supposed to travel the next day with Member of the Knesset Rafi Edry to Morocco – and possibly to Tunis – in order to enlist the support of the King of Morocco and the President of Tunisia in the Israeli position in the negotiations with the PLO.
The meeting with King Hassan II of Morocco took place on December 18, 1993, at his Rabat palace. The King received us cordially in his grand chamber, and the conversation lasted about an hour – that is 20 minutes beyond its allotted time. The meeting was also attended by General Qadiri and Morocco’s Foreign Minister Abd al-Latif Filali. The conversation flowed, mostly in French and a bit of Arabic.
MK Edry opened and gave the King the Prime Minister’s blessing and explained that we had been dispatched to update His Majesty on the latest developments in negotiations with the PLO. He noted that the Prime Minister regularly briefs world leaders, especially President Clinton, President Mubarak, President Mitterrand, and him.
King Hassan II said, “Let me tell you first all I know. I met yesterday (December 17, 1993) with Mahmoud Abbas and told him that I was going to meet MK Edri and Dr. Neriah tomorrow. Abbas expressed warm words about Neriah and said he was a serious interlocutor. In truth, the Palestinians are frustrated with Arafat’s positions.