Smokescreen Diplomacy: Excluding the Palestinians by Self-Rule

For the United States and the Palestinians, 1977 was a diplomatic opportunity due to the election of President Jimmy Carter and changes within the Palestine Liberation Organization. While Carter aimed for a comprehensive peace to solve the entire Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel balked. Instead of blocking the process entirely, however, Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin proposed Palestinian “self-rule.” While it enabled a separate Egyptian-Israeli peace process, the self-rule proposal was an obfuscation intended to continue Palestinian political exclusion and prevent Palestinian statehood.