Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks In The Post-Arafat Era

The issue of peace process in the Middle East is one of the most influential, extensive and complicated subjects of regional conflicts and diplomacy in the history, among which the core problem is the contradiction and reconciliation between the Palestinians and Israel. The thesis intends to carry out an investigation into Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in the Post-Arafat Era from a macro and overall perspective (from November2004to November2011), adopts the methods of the combination of microscopy and microscopy, and the combination of history and reality, but it focuses more attention on the macro, overall and realistic aspects. Moreover, this thesis is aimed at answering two questions:How is the progress of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in the age of the Post-Arafat? What are the factors that influence the progress of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks?First of all, conflicts and peace process are the result of its own factors, and then it is the product of external factors. There was great change happening to the internal political situations of both Palestine and Israel after the death of Arafat. Hamas defeated Fatah in the election of Palestine legislative council in2006, and then Hamas had wars with Fatah, the Palestinians cannot form the same internal negotiation of strategy to Israeli; In terms of Israel, Israeli public opinions were increasingly turning right, Israeli Right-wing was rising again and insisted upon having no compromise to Palestinians after the two wars (The Second Lebanon War in2006and the Gaza War in2008). Taking the external forces into account, we can find that the United States is the most powerful force on this event. The affair of Palestinian-Israeli peace process was marginalized by George W. Bush Administration in its overall strategies to Middle East, placed in the scales of resisting terrorism and the plan of reforming the democracy in Middle East. The thesis gives a brief introduction of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in the Post-Arafat Era, and attaches much importance to the internal political change in Palestinian and Israeli, as well as the relevant four international forces (the United States, the United Nations, European Union, Russia), especially the great influences on the peace talks of the United States.The whole thesis is made up of four chapters. Chapter Ⅰ gives a comprehensive review of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in the post-Arafat era. The following three chapters explain the internal and external reasons why there is no substantive progress of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in the post-Arafat era. In order to make the paper coherent, the first part of Chapter I briefly introduces Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in the Arafat era and analyzes the crucial reasons of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in detail. Chapter Ⅱ and Chapter Ⅲ analyze the reasons for no substantive progress in the peace talks from the perspectives of Palestinian--Israeli internal political changes, including the rising of Hamas and Israeli right-wing forces. Chapter Ⅳ analyzes the external forces, which mainly are the influences which the relevant four international forces exerted on the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, especially the influence of US. The last chapter makes some theoretical exploration to the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in the Post-Arafat Era.