The Holy Land: Can Peace be Rescued?

December 13, 2006

Philip Wilcox, Foreign Service Journal


The Foundation's president Phil Wilcox published an article on the prospects of Israeli-Palestinian peace in the December 2006 Foreign Policy Journal.

Overview:

The U.S. could, if it wished, break the impasse and help Israelis and Palestinians make peace. So says a veteran FSO and Middle East hand.

"The Israeli-Palestinian struggle over the Holy Land, which has attracted more obsessive attention and defied a solution longer than any major conflict of the past century, is the story of two victims. The
Jews were the victim of historic Christian anti-Semitism that brought forth Zionism, the quest for a state for the Jews in their ancient homeland. The Nazi era and the Holocaust made the Zionist cause even more urgent, and led to the 1948 war and the birth of Israel. The Palestinians, many of whom were dispossessed and fled the war, were the other victim.

It is not surprising that neither the Jews, given their past suffering and desperation after Hitler’s war, nor the Palestinians, who had no responsibility for Jewish suffering at the hands of Westerners, but nevertheless lost their homeland, felt any empathy for each other. It is tragic, nevertheless, that the passage of time has done so little to heal these historic wounds and that the rest of the world, especially the United States, has allowed this dreadful situation to fester. And it is ironic that today the prospects for peace are still distant, even as the outline of a two-state solution, the only way to meet the core needs of both societies, has become clear."

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