One of the best,to date.
How Washington’s Israel–Palestine Peace Process Theology Failed Again and Again
Khaled Elgindy, Foreign Policy
Click here for the original article in FP or click here for text only
Author : Khaled Elgindy is a Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and author of Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians, from Balfour to Trump.
Summary
Khaled Elgindy reviews Robert Malley and Hussein Agha’s Tomorrow Is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine, arguing that the U.S.–led peace process collapsed because it was built on delusion, imbalance, and historical amnesia. The authors show that the Oslo framework was structurally flawed—misdiagnosing the conflict’s roots as the 1967 occupation rather than the 1948 dispossession of Palestinians—and that negotiations reduced moral and historical grievances to sterile territorial formulas. By excluding refugees, Islamists, and settlers, Oslo ignored the realities shaping both societies.
Elgindy highlights the book’s central claim: that U.S. mediation consistently reinforced Israel’s dominance, indulging Israeli priorities while dismissing Palestinian suffering. Successive administrations repeated the same dogmas, treating the “two-state solution” less as policy than as theology. From Clinton to Biden, Washington’s faith in its own formulas substituted for strategy or accountability, ensuring failure after failure. Malley and Agha call for a new model less centered on the United States, greater Arab participation, and mechanisms for truth and reconciliation. Elgindy concludes that what endures in Washington is not diplomacy but belief — a self-sustaining creed detached from evidence, experience, and justice.
Quotes
“The U.S.–led peace process was rooted in dogma and remained largely impervious to change despite its numerous contradictions.”“Proof disproves belief, and still the faith endures.”
“Instead of altering the corrosive and destabilizing dynamics between the two parties, U.S. interventions consistently reinforced them.”
“Tomorrow Is Yesterday seeks to upend Oslo’s ‘articles of faith’ and ‘peace process theology,’ which hold that only U.S.-supervised bilateral talks can lead to peace.”
UNICEF ED actually issued a statement this past 7 october lamenting the death of Israeli kids without ONE WORD about the 20,000 ++ Palestinian kids were killed since then. UNICEF has lost its soul. Here is the statement: “It’s been two years since the horrific attacks on children and communities in Israel by Hamas and other armed groups.
ReplyDeleteThe pain of 7 October endures, for the families of children who lost their lives, children torn from their families, and those living with the trauma of their experience.
Killing, maiming and abducting children are unconscionable acts and grave violations of their rights.
Every child, everywhere, has the right to safety, care and protection.”**
Catherine Russell, UNICEF Executive Director
Not a word about the 20,000 + Palestinian kids killed. WOW. Have we lost our soul and our compass?
the ED statement has been scrubbed from all UNICEF press releases and internal channels - but there has been backlash to it and here is proof: https://ardd-jo.org/news/when-neutrality-feels-uneven-on-unicefs-statement-marking-two-years-since-the-october-7-events/
ReplyDeletecorrection: the ED statement was made on X and remains there - for all the world to view the shame. https://x.com/unicefchief/status/1975313928759787549
ReplyDelete