Term Paper on "Hamas and Fatah: Palestinian Territories"

Term Paper 3 pages (1294 words) Sources: 0 Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Politics [Foreign Policy Questions and Answers

Both Hamas and Fatah continue in their struggle for political control of the Palestinian Territories and economic control of the support that comes from outside. This has led to open fighting along factional lines. What impact do you think this will have on the region and on the efforts to find peace with Israel?

The present Hamas vs. Fatah political and other factionalism in Palestine clearly will not and cannot help the peace process. Palestinians must be united and sincere in a desire for peace; and (at least in my own opinion) this has not ever happened and is clearly not happening now. There has been much more (albeit always-evaporated, at least so far) hope for peace in the area in the past. During the Oslo peace process of about 1993 through 2000, it seemed that peace among Israel and the Palestinian factions, with whom Israel has been at war six decades and counting, might actually finally occur. It did not.

After that in 2006, before Israel's then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had a massive stroke leaving him comatose and his political heir Ehud Olmert succeeded him, it seemed Sharon's peace plan might work. Recently due to horrendous military decisions of Olmert's government during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict that again infuriated the Arab world and much of the rest of the world, the peace process is stalled again (and this is very, very far from being the first time). With Hamas and Fatah literally at each other's own throats and both hating Israel equally; and with so much international attention, especially but not exclusively among Arab states again focused on Israeli military ruthlessness; and with Hamas having won the 2006 Palestinian election but Mahoud Abbas of Fatah remaining President, it is difficult to portend future progress toward peace in the region. Moreover, for peace to ever truly happen, the Palestinian leadership must truly want peace. Before his death in 2004, then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat had written a groundbreaking letter stating the PLO's recognition of Israel's right to exist. This was an enormously encouraging sign; since 1948, when the then-new state of Israel declared its independence, Palestinian Arabs have felt their territory to have been encroached upon by Israel, and have therefore vowed since then to destroy Israel. But Arafat did not ever truly want peace; and it seems even more unlikely that either Fatah or Hamas, or most unfathomably, both together, would work earnestly for peace in the future.

2)This week's topic requires you to examine the origins of conflict between Israel and Palestine. Who and what is the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and what is its primary role today compared to its early years of operation?

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in Egypt (originally it was controlled by Egypt's government) in 1964 with the goal of destroying Israel with arms. The PLO's first Charter included the goals of destroying Israel and returning original Palestinian territories (before Israeli statehood), e.g., West Bank; Gaza, to the Arabs of Palestine. Later on, the PLO also set the goal of statehood for Palestine but that was not in the first PLO Charter. In the 1990's especially, as I recall, then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat spoke diplomatically very often about Palestinian "liberation," an unclear term but perhaps a euphemism for statehood (this is just a guess).

Arafat, writing for the PLO, recognized Israel in a 1993 letter, and in that same year Israel (Yitzhak Rabin was prime Minister at the time) recognized the PLO. That was probably the high point of Palestine-Israel relations so far.

Before that, though, the PLO was also considered to have been responsible for planning and carrying out the 1987 Achille Lauro (a cruise ship) terrorist attack. It was then and is still today considered a terrorist organization. The PLO (along with Israel's Yitzhak Rabin) signed the Oslo Accords… READ MORE

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