Strategic Assessment

While failing and weak states are not new to the Middle East, the problem assumed a new dimension with the outbreak of the Arab Spring. During the years of the Oslo process, extensive efforts and resources were invested in promoting the political process so as to encourage the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. However, too little effort was put into ensuring the foundation for the establishment of a functional Palestinian state in the post-peace agreement period. Now, at this point, the Palestinian case requires an unflinching, honest look at 22 years of a political process in which the Palestinians failed to build a functioning state entity. The two semi-state Palestinian entities in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are experiencing a dangerous process of state failure, and the international community is helpless in stopping it. It seems that without an organized, persistent, painstaking, and responsible state building process in which Israel plays an important part, there is no real hope for the development of these entities into functioning states, whether each on its own or together as one Palestinian state.