III. The Israeli–Palestinian conflict and peace process

Chapter:

6. Armed conflict and peace processes in the Middle East and North Africa

Source:

SIPRI Yearbook 2022

Author(s):

Ian Davis

The history of Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and West Bank—territories it captured in the 1967 Arab–Israeli War—is well known and much commented upon.¹ Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied territories has added to recent instability, especially in the West Bank. Developments in 2020—the new US ‘peace plan’, the threatened annexation of parts of the West Bank, and Israeli normalization agreements (the Abraham accords) with Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates—had suggested a potentially significant shift in the regional Arab–Israeli conflict.² However, despite further marginalization of the Palestinians, the underlying reality in the local Israeli–Palestinian conflict remained largely unchanged. There appeared little prospect of resolving the principal Israeli–Palestinian territorial dispute, including Israel’s occupation in its various forms, or of ending Palestinian political divisions. These underlying conflict dynamics continued in 2021, with a new US presidency and a new Israeli coalition government adding additional layers of uncertainty. In May 2021 the conflict escalated again, with Israel and Hamas fighting an 11-day war, their fourth in 14 years. The economic and humanitarian costs of the Israeli occupation to the Palestinian people also continued to be severe, with 2.1 million Palestinians projected to need humanitarian assistance in the occupied territories in 2022.³