Most foreign policy pundits argue that conditions are not ripe for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and advise the United States to limit its ambitions to building confidence between the parties, while improving the Palestinian performance as a reliable partner.
President Reuven Rivlin addressed precisely this issue Nov. 22, expressing hope that President-elect Joe Biden will help restore confidence between the parties. Summing it up bluntly, Rivlin said, "We can say two states for two people, one state for all the people, federation, confederation, we can do a lot — but first of all we have to build confidence.’’
To deny the importance of mutual trust between Israel and the Palestinians is tantamount to denying motherhood and apple pie, but is "confidence building" an indispensable precondition for reaching a permanent settlement? I think not. The sequence should run in the opposite direction.
The 27 years that have elapsed since the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords have been littered with failed attempts to build mutual trust between the parties. These attempts failed even when conditions were significantly better than they are now. Right-wing Israeli governments have been busy undermining the two-state option, and the Palestinian side has been weakened and divided. Unsurprisingly, a recent poll found a significant deterioration of the trust Israelis and Palestinians place in each other’s commitment to peace.
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