On July 19, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged his cabinet members to vote in favor of freeing 104 Palestinian prisoners, some of whom had been imprisoned for decades. The measure passed 14-6 with two abstentions, according to CNN.
Hours later, Secretary of State John Kerry officially announced that, after a three-year stalemate, an agreement had been reached on a basis for resuming peace talks between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators.
“We have reached an agreement that establishes the basis for resuming direct final status negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis,” Kerry said.
He later described the agreement as “a significant and welcome step forward.”
The State Department announced on July 28 that direct negotiations would resume the following day.
“Our objective will be to achieve a final status agreement over the course of the next nine months,” Kerry said. “We all understand the goal that we’re working toward: two states living side by side in peace and security.”
The Oslo I Accord, signed in 1993, was the first face-to-face agreement between the government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Dr. Yossi Paz, lecturer at the Open University in Tel Aviv and chief guide of the Pilgrimage Studies program of Israeli Ministry of Tourism, has lived in Ramat HaSahron, nearly 10 miles outside of Tel Aviv, for the past 20 years.
“Most of the Israelis do not believe in a near- coming solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a conflict that began at the end of the Ottoman period,” Paz said. “The Palestinian leadership is too weak to make concessions, a direct influence of the Arab Civil War, and the Israeli right-wing Likud party tends to take advantage of this weakness.”
Phillip Spivey is a lecturer of philosophy and religion at the University of Central Arkansas and said there is much more to the conflict than religion.
“Many people perceive the disagreements as being a centuries-old religious conflict between Judaism and Islam,” Spivey said. “However, this is really not the case. Historically, in most cases, Jews and Muslims have been at peace with one another. It is not until the early-20th century that the political disagreements over land and country began between Israelis and Palestinians.”
Evertt Huffard, vice president and dean of the Harding School of Theology in Memphis attended high school in the West Bank.
“In theory, a two state solution would be nice but the possibility of that being a reality passed decades ago,” Huffard said. “The extent of Jewish settlements, the infrastructure, and exodus of Palestinians from the area will support the status quo for many decades.”
Paz points to the comparison of the successful Israeli economy versus the poor and underdeveloped Palestinian economy as an additional source of tension.
According to Spivey, the U.S. should try to be a peacemaker that values the national aspirations of both peoples without favoring one side against the other.
