In recent years, after so many failed efforts, the Israeli centre-left has struggled against a tide of public apathy with respect to resolving the Palestinian issue.[1]A majority of the Israeli public (57 per cent according to the Israel Democracy Institute’s December 2015 ‘Peace Index’ survey) remains in favour of a two-state solution since they value having a Jewish majority over holding onto all the historic Land of Israel (with its large Palestinian population). However, they assume that no viable agreement is possible since there is no credible Palestinian partner, and associate previous territorial concessions to the Palestinians – whether under Oslo or through the 2005 disengagement – with increased violence against Israelis. This has made centre-left parties wary of making ‘peace’ a centrepiece of their manifestos, since in Israel it has the ring of naïve idealism out of touch with reality.

However, breaking the status quo with the Palestinians may be creeping back up the Israeli political agenda. For one thing the P5+1 deal with Iran has reduced the salience of the Iranian nuclear threat. For another, Israel is suffering a rising death toll from deadly Palestinian violence since September 2015, with Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon offering no clear path to end the violence. This is a blow to their argument that the best option for the West Bank is to ‘manage the conflict’ and maintain the status quo.

In a recent high profile speech, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot pointedly spoke of the difficulty for the IDF in coping with a new type of threat, characterised lone wolf attackers who have no organisational affiliation and strike without warning. He spoke of the need to create hope for the Palestinian civilian population as part of the effort to contain the violence.

Can a fresh Israeli approach, or an old idea whose time has come, offer a viable Israeli policy alternative? For most Israelis it seems there is nothing which has not been tried. John Kerry’s big push to secure a framework agreement collapsed in April 2014. It was the third official attempt to broker a negotiated, bilateral final status agreement to fail, after the Barak-Arafat talks in 2000-2001 and the Olmert-Abbas talks of 2007-2008. Meanwhile, the unilateral route to separation pursued by Ariel Sharon in 2005 led to Hamas controlling the Gaza Strip and rockets fired at every city in Israel.

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