Richard Haass
More than a half century after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 242—which established the principle by which Israel would give up territory it gained in the war in exchange for peace and security—the Israelis and the Palestinians have made no meaningful, much less lasting, progress on their core differences.
It is time for this to change. What little opportunity still exists for realizing progress toward a durable agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians—one that would serve both parties’ interests—is fast fading. Political and physical barriers to compromise will soon pass a tipping point.
Israel, mostly owing to its own efforts, now finds itself in a favorable security environment, in which threats along its borders and in the region have been seriously weakened, if not eliminated. The country has never been in a better position to address the strategic challenge posed by Palestinian nationalism, which will require a response with political as well as military dimensions.
But such an environment cannot last forever. Although Israel has a friend in the White House who is prepared to back it in important ways, long-term U.S. and European support for Israel is not guaranteed, especially if even more Americans and Europeans come to view it as a pariah state denying rights to others.
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