Israeli-Palestinian conflict…quote.
Israel tends to take risks for peace when it believes the chance for peace is credible and when it senses a fair international climate. Israel withdrew from the Sinai desert — which is three times the size of Israel and which provided it with strategic protection — because Egyptian President Anwar Sadat convinced the Israeli public he was serious about peace. And when Eastern European and many Third World countries established diplomatic relations with Israel following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Israel responded with an overture to the Palestine Liberation Organization that became the Oslo process.
But when the international community treats the Jewish state with contempt, Israelis tend to reciprocate. The result is a stiffening of hard-line attitudes.
In large measure, then, the future of a Palestinian state will be determined by whether Israelis perceive it more as existential necessity or as existential threat, and whether they feel the international community is receptive to their security concerns.
