Israel Has Its Best Chance for Peace in 25 Years
By Dennis Ross
Dennis Ross is counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and served in senior national security positions for Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. He is the author of "Statecraft 2.0: What America Needs to Lead in a Multipolar World."
""Bill Clinton’s team came close to a deal in 2000 but the Palestinians walked away. The devastation of Iran’s proxies opens a wide but brief window.
Twenty-five years ago this week, I was at Camp David as President Bill Clinton’s lead Middle East negotiator. We sought to resolve the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and to produce peace between two national movements competing for the same space.
In July 2000, we were optimistic about ending the conflict. Over the preceding seven years, since the beginning of the Oslo process — which provided mutual recognition between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization and called for the creation of a Palestinian Authority (PA) to negotiate peace with Israel — we had produced four partial agreements: the Gaza-Jericho Agreement, the Interim Agreement, the Hebron Protocol and the Wye River Memorandum.
Arafat did allow his representatives space to negotiate afterward, and in December he and I met privately. He said he could accept the ideas I laid out for overcoming the gaps on the core issues of Jerusalem, refugees, borders and security. We brought Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams to Washington to try to finalize an agreement, and when they could not, both sides asked us to present a bridging proposal that became known as the “Clinton parameters.” While Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak accepted them, Arafat did not. Instead, he reignited violence and the second intifada, a five-year uprising in which thousands died on both sides.
There has been no political progress between Israelis and Palestinians since then, even though Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza in 2005.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-07-17/israel-has-its-best-chance-for-peace-in-25-years?srnd=homepage-americas
I wonder how many people are even aware of what the Oslo accords were, and how the PLO which had rejected Israel's right to exist since the 1960's, actually tentatively agreed to Israel's right to exist with the OSLO accords.
What did hamas do during that time? They blew up buses in Tel Aviv and elsewhere, along with other acts of killings, and as a result, Shimon Peres, a hawk turned dove, lost the election to Netanyahu and any further serious progress was stopped.
Hamas has been consistent then and now in working to destroy any hope of peace in the region.
What Hamas did on October 7 directly brought death and destruction to the Palestinians and Israelis, but what is usually ignored is their actions helped Netanyahu stay in power, contributed to trump becoming President again, and has probably put on ice any chance for a two-state solution.
Yes there is much to criticize Israel about, but the true nature and goals of Hamas should not be forgotten. Hamas came from the Muslim Brotherhood, who assassinated Sadat, and followed the goals of the Mufti of Jerusulum, Muhammad Amin al-Husayni, who aligned himself with Hitler, and the killing of all Jews.
The history of Hamas has always been to sabotage any efforts of peace with Israel and the region, and too many people seem to wear blinders on that.
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