NurPhoto SIPA USA/PA Images. All rights reserved.On 15 February 2017, Donald Trump ditched decades of USA and international orthodoxy that the only path to peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. At his press conference with Israeli prime minister Netanyahu, he announced that: “I’m looking at two-state and one-state, and I like the one that both parties like. I’m very happy with the one that both parties like. I could live with either one.”
Who would have thought that such a ‘bull-in-a-china-shop deal-maker’ – however inadvertently – might have planted a seed of hope for the future, by breathing some fresh air into a so-called peace process that has been little more than a charade for decades?
The failure of the Oslo peace process
As someone with a deep commitment to nonviolent means of pursuing justice, and a long-term involvement in trying to understand the dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I have found it exceptionally difficult over the last decade trying to sustain any hope for the future of the people occupying the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea.
