Israel-Palestine Peace Process: Role of Quartet as a Multi-Party Mediator

Abstract

One of the biggest challenges faced by today’s global world order is the enduring conflict of Israel-Palestine. The Israel-Palestine conflict is more than half a century old and endangers the stability and peace of the whole world. As a consequence of this conflict, the western world and Muslim states have been separated from one another on the basis of religion and ideology. Furthermore, the complexity of this prolonged issue is evident by the occurrence of polarization at the local level in the Middle East. While one group of countries in the region remains inclined towards Palestine, another group has built alliances with western countries and Israel. Thus, the Israel-Palestine dispute has even created a rift within the Middle East. The core issues of conflict between the two parties are Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories, right of return of refugees, the status of Jerusalem and borders of the future Palestinian state. This lingering conflict has resulted in damage to the infrastructure of both the sides and a large number of causalities. The complexity of the issue further increased because both the parties wanted to solve the issue while seeking self-interests; thus none of the parties were ready to compromise so that they could come up with a solution. In order to force their respective decisions both the parties have not realized that in this whole process the damage done to the infrastructure, human relations and loss of number of their people increased. During this time, three wars, two intifadas, numerous skirmishes have taken place and many peace efforts have been made to resolve the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Despite all these, Israel and Palestine are both stuck at the same point from where the conflict started and there has not yet been any major success in terms of international mediation.