نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی
نویسندگان
1 دانشیار روابط بینالملل، دانشکده حقوق و علوم سیاسی، دانشگاه علامه طباطبائی، تهران، ایران
2 دانشآموخته کارشناسی ارشد مطالعات منطقهای، دانشکده حقوق و علوم سیاسی، دانشگاه تهران، تهران، ایران
3 دانشجوی کارشناسی ارشد مطالعات منطقهای، دانشکده حقوق و علوم سیاسی، دانشگاه علامه طباطبائی، تهران، ایران
کلیدواژهها
عنوان مقاله English
نویسندگان English
The West Asia region in general, and the Palestinian issue in particular, have been among the focal points of attention for major powers and international institutions over the past 76 years. This issue has shaped the dynamics of events in the region, triggering a domino effect of regional crises — the “War of Independence” (1948), the “Suez Crisis” (1956), the “Six-Day War” (1967), the “Yom Kippur War” (1973), the “Israeli Army’s invasion of southern Lebanon” (1982), the successive wars between Israel and Palestine (especially in the Gaza Strip), the “Intifada in the West Bank,” and “Operation al-Aqsa Flood” (2023) — as well as international crises such as the 1973 oil shock.
The instability created by the establishment of the Israeli regime led its leaders to adopt policies such as the “Periphery Doctrine” to break out of the Arab encirclement; to suppress and ethnically cleanse Palestinians; to attract large numbers of Jewish immigrants from across the globe to alter demographic indicators; and to pursue a gradual normalization process with surrounding Arab countries such as Egypt, Jordan, and Syria under the protective umbrella of successive U.S. administrations. In this context, the Oslo Accord was placed on the agenda more than forty years after the regime’s establishment, under the guidance of the Madrid Peace Conference, in which both global powers — the United States and the Soviet Union — were involved. However, the accord did not succeed.
Despite Israel’s disregard for the “1947 UN Partition Plan” and the continuation of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict as one of the most persistent disputes of the past 76 years in the international system, various solutions have been proposed by national and transnational actors to resolve it. The “Two-State Solution,” the “Israeli–Palestinian Confederation,” the “One Democratic Binational State,” the “Non-Democratic Jewish State,” the “Jordanian Option,” and Donald Trump’s “Peace to Prosperity” plan are among the international initiatives advanced to address the conflict. Among these, the Two-State Solution has enjoyed the broadest support internationally, to the extent that even some alternative proposals have built their conceptual foundations upon it. This plan emerged from the 1991 Madrid Conference and has since been the subject of negotiations between the two sides regarding its scope and content. Nevertheless, the historical trajectory of the past two decades has not been favorable to the Two-State Solution. Moreover, the division of the West Bank into Areas A, B, and C, along with the transfer of administrative and security control of Area C to Israel, has eroded the prospect of reviving this plan. It appears that the Israeli regime is increasingly moving toward a one-state solution.
Existing literature and key studies on this subject indicate that the disagreements between Israel and Palestine—particularly regarding refugees, the status of Jerusalem, the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, and the establishment of a Palestinian state—are so significant that they have led Israel to distance itself from the peace process. This study by collecting the necessary data from library and online sources is qualitative in nature and employs a descriptive–analytical approach within a comparative study framework to have a comparative examination of the consequences of the two-state and one-state solutions. this study seeks to answer the question of what the Israeli regime’s actual strategy toward the Palestinian issue is. Based on ten key indicators — the fate of Jewish identity, democracy, security, ease of implementation, level of domestic support within the regime, acceptability of the plan to the United States, acceptability of the plan within the European Union and international organizations, acceptability among Arab states, and both direct and indirect costs — the findings show that each of these two solutions carries its own security implications for the Israeli regime. These indicators were selected and categorized under three overarching dimensions:
Regime-related issues: including democracy, the status of Jewish identity, security, and the level of domestic support within the Israeli regime.
Technical-executive issues: including the feasibility of implementation and the direct and indirect costs associated with the plan.
International stakeholder acceptance: including the plan’s acceptance among Arab states, the European Union, and the United States.
This framework allows the study to examine how each of these dimensions influences the likelihood of a peace plan being accepted or rejected by the relevant actors.
Accordingly, the rise of the revisionist right under Menachem Begin and the growing political maneuvering power of radical Jewish currents have significantly eroded the feasibility of the Two-State Solution. The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in response to the peace negotiations of the 1990s underscored this reality, confirming that the current ruling power in Israel did not genuinely believe in the establishment of a Palestinian state. With the growth of the religious Zionist movement within the governing framework of the Likud Party, the party’s radical and nationalist tendencies have intensified, leading to the expansion of settlement activity and the marginalization of Palestinians. Extremist groups such as Hilltop Youth and Lehava emerged out of this environment, openly calling for the expulsion or killing of Palestinians from the “Holy Land.” As this trend deepened and the Yesha Council gained influence, the prospect of a two-state solution effectively became a mirage. With the expiration of that option, demands for a one-state solution began to surface. Although the one-state solution reflects the ruling Jewish leadership’s long-standing aspiration, demographic realities and fears of legal repercussions have prevented its formal adoption. The Israeli regime faces two paths for implementing a one-state arrangement:
If it wishes to avoid international legal pressure, it would need to grant citizenship to all Palestinians in the West Bank. Yet demographic trends preclude this option: granting citizenship to the Arab population would make the Jewish and Arab populations numerically comparable, thereby eroding the Jewish identity and its bureaucratic structure. If it officially declares a Jewish state but withholds citizenship and recognition from Arab Palestinians, it will be labeled an apartheid state in international forums.
Under these circumstances, it appears that the Israeli regime is opting for gradual annexation and maintaining the status quo until an opportune moment arises for large-scale ethnic cleansing in the West Bank — continuing settlement construction and extending its influence there while simultaneously preserving the Palestinian Authority as a tool to control the Arab population.
Indeed, following “Operation al-Aqsa Flood,” which many Jews have called it a “second Holocaust,” it seems that the long-awaited green light for the radical right to transform creeping annexation and the status quo into a de facto one-state reality without granting citizenship to West Bank Arabs may have arrived. Prior to the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, both radical right-wing and centrist political factions in Israel openly rejected any engagement with the Israeli–Palestinian peace process and consistently reaffirmed their commitment to maintaining the status quo, particularly in relation to their obligations toward the “Yesha Council.” Following European pressure after the Al-Aqsa Flood operation calling for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, the Knesset convened a session on this issue. In that session, with 68 votes in favor, the Knesset declared the creation of an independent Palestinian state within Israel’s borders to be impossible, framing it as an existential threat to Zionists. Consequently, the Israeli government officially announced that the two-state solution no longer had any place in its agenda following the Al-Aqsa Flood operation. This position was further corroborated by analyses of the rapid settlement expansion in the West Bank.
کلیدواژهها English