By Adam Garfinkle

July 21, 2016

"The world of statecraft is so fraught with risk that it is tempting, just to reduce the range of maddening uncertainty a tad or two, to assign either inevitability or impossibility to future propositions that are neither. The Arab-Israeli conflict has garnered its share of both over the years. For every 'always' we have heard, and we have heard many, we have had to listen to a corresponding 'never'-a sure sign of an apoplectic and not entirely useful discourse.

For most political Zionists during the early Mandate period, for example, some kind of suitable accommodation with the Arabs was thought inevitable. Labor Zionists had a theory of common class-based interests and they believed it for a long time, even after its premises became untenable. Then, by the late 1920s, Revisionist Zionists believed that accommodation with the Arabs was impossible, and they argued for war preparation on the earliest and best terms attainable to force the issue. Had they won their way within the Zionist Executive, a private understanding between that Zionist Executive and the Hashemite throne in Jordan, one that effectively limited the scope and stakes of the 1948-49 war, would have been impossible."

Read more:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/21072016-the-next-arab-israeli-peace-process-analysis/

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