The United States and Palestine: Reagan's Legacy to Bush

Abstract

Since the end of the 1967 Middle East war, two approaches have emerged for settling the Arab-Israeli conflict: a comprehensive settlement under international auspices and a peace process conducted under United States supervision. The first approach envisions an intemational framework with authority to shape a settlement in accordance with recognized legal principles and accepted practices. The intemational consensus associated with this approach embodies an historic compromise, based on the exchange of territory for peace: the Arab states and the Palestinians would recognize the permanence of Israel within its 1967 borders in return for the recognition of the right of the Palestinians to self-determination. This approach is based on UN resolutions 242 and 338 which have been universally accepted as the comerstone of a proper settlement. This approach is championed by the Soviet Union and promoted by the great majority of third world countries, including the Arab states. It was endorsed by Arab summit conferences from Algiers and Rabat in 1973 and 1974, to Fez and Amman in 1982 and 1987. It received an implicit sanction from the 1977 Palestine National Council (PNC) session in Cairo and an explicit acknowledgment from the 1988 PNC session in Algiers, which was made even more explicit by Yasir Arafat's statements to the UN General