Q&A With Robert M. Danin on Palestinian Statehood
Next week, Robert M. Danin will answer readers' questions Palestinian statehood. Submit a question.
For better or worse, this week’s unity agreement between Fatah and Hamas would never have occurred had the ongoing Arab uprisings not changed both parties’ political fortunes.
In "A Third Way to Palestine," an article in the new issue of Foreign Affairs, CFR Senior Fellow Robert M. Danin argues that Palestinan nationalism has gone through two stages: armed struggle and negotiations. Now Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has initiated a third, pragmatic stage of Palestinian nationalism by building institutions and counting down to statehood. Danin writes that Fayyad's vision is a promising one, and Israel should help him achieve it.
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Since winning elections in 2006, Hamas has demonstrated that it cannot be part of an Israeli-Palestinian peace process, nor part of a Palestinian body politic based on democracy and free elections. But can policymakers deny the group the ability to play the spoiler?
The Oslo accord has failed. Battered by a wave of fundamentalist terrorism, Israelis are ready to elect a hard-line Likud government, while many frustrated Palestinians are spurning the PLO in favor of the Islamic extremists of Hamas. Locked in a political embrace, PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin are dragging each other down. The process may stagger on, but it will never yield peace.
Palestinian leaders first embraced armed struggle and then turned to negotiations. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has now initiated a third, pragmatic stage of Palestinian nationalism by building institutions and counting down to statehood. Fayyad's vision is a promising one, and Israel should help him achieve it.
