The independence of Trans-Jordan, which was formerly a part of the Britishruled Palestine Mandate, paved the way for the League of Nations resolution on the division of Palestinian land, which, by a United Nations resolution, gave birth to the State of Israel. The Arabs rejected the resolution pointing to the contradictions behind the Palestine Mandate. The Palestinian War then became inevitable. The breakthrough in the battle became evident when the Arab Legion of Trans-Jordan moved into the West Bank. “The Unity” between the East and West Banks of the Jordan river was instigated by this, following the Palestine Conference and Jerrico Conference on November 1 and December 1, 1948 under King Abdullah's leadership. “The Unity” in turn put an end to the hegemony that traditional Mufti Amin al-Husaini had enjoyed in the West Bank. The negotiations over the mutual non-aggression pact between Israel and Jordan broke down. Nonetheless, the de facto occupation of the West Bank by Jordan occurred. With the West Bank in the hands of Jordanians, Palestinian Arabs came to pledge political loyality to the Amman regime under the civilian order of Jordan, a loyality which reflects no less than the ambivalent sentiments of Palestinans. The Palestinian leaders in the West Bank, however, found themselves subjugated to the Nashashibis of Abdullah while maintaning support for the cause of Palestinians within and without Jordan. Palestinian refugees, on the other hand, pledged loyality to Abudullah in November 1948 at the Palestine National Conference. Their pledge was betrayed, however, as their, political came to be suppressed from 1959 onward.
“Palestinian identity” as a slogan for political action emerged in 1962, but the cause never flourished. In fact, the dominance of the Amman regime, with the execption of the period of Sulayman an-Nabulsi's regime between 1956-57, has prevailed throughout the country. Furthemore, the PLO itself has failed to gain public support for its status as the unifying voice of the Palestinians, having suffered from internal feuds between the moderates and the radicals. All these combined events precipitated the conditional legitimacy of the royal regime of Jordan and the Palestinian Right.
With Israeli's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, the issue of the status and the prospect of the above regimes came to the attention of international public opinion. The status of Israel, on the one hand, was ‘Lawful belligerent Occupant’ responsible for occupation and on the other hand, the legal status of Jordan was that of ‘Trust Occupant’. Jordan was also in a position to promote the political development of Palestinians. Moreover, under UN resolution 242 (1967) Jordan was entitled to ‘the right of return’ of the West Bank to her, although Palestinians in the West Bank did not always desire to see this happen. Alternative solutions to the Palestinian problem lay either in holding a direct referendum, which would clarify the political will of the locals, or in accepting the PLO as their negotiator against Israel. Israel on her part has rejected negotiations with the PLO, which Israel considers a terrorist organisation. In addition, the Palestinians have not desired to continue to support ‘the return to Jordan’ proposal, for it implies denying their rights of self-determination.
At present discussions with respect to the so-called “Jordan Option” over the West Bank are under way. The PLO claims to be the legitimate position governing body in the West Bank. The Arabs in Israel appear to endorse this position. To be sure, following the formation of the PLF (the Palestine Liberation Front) in August 1973, the PLO came to be confirmed as the legitimate body of the Palestinians at the National Congress which took place in Jerusalem, October 1978.

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The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) has gained much support from its sponsor states including Iran and Syria, which has been a cause of deep concern for Israel. The biggest problem for Israel is that Hamas has been launching missiles from the Gaza Strip, which it has controlled since June 2007. Some of these missiles are said to have been supplied by Iran. In response, Israel imposed a land and air blockade on Gaza and attacked Hamas military base in Gaza three times between December 2008 and August 2014. However, in October 2011, Hamas and Israel held a prisoner exchange deal, mediated by Egypt. Why did Hamas climb down to a prisoner exchange deal with hostile Israel? What was Hamas’s logic behind managing its foreign relations in this manner?

Previous studies on Hamas’s foreign relations indicate that the organization behaves according to political expediency rather than ideology and religious solidarity. This means that Hamas acts flexibly in response to the context it finds itself situated in. These foreign strategies need to be verified further, with a focus on a case that changed the relations between Hamas and the involved countries. Therefore, this paper examines the background of prisoner exchange deal between Hamas and Israel in the context of deteriorating relations between Hamas and its sponsor states.

The results of this study are summarized as follows. First, Hamas agreed to a prisoner exchange with Israel to minimize the damage resulting from Iran’s suspension of financial support. When civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, Hamas did not accept Iran’s request to support the Syrian regime and thus weakened its relations with Iran. Harking back to Hamas’s historical background would bear out that they were inclined to support the Syrian people’s aspiration. Thus, Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip who were most effected by the waning financial assistance from Iran needed Egypt to ease the blockade imposed on the area. For them, an indirect negotiation with Israel on a prisoner exchange presented a good opportunity to reach out to Egypt, which played a mediator role in the negotiation.

Second, Hamas’s rational for entering a prisoner exchange deal with Israel indicates that Hamas exercises flexibility in fostering relations with foreign countries. It is inevitable for a non-state actor such as Hamas to need the support of other countries as much as possible. Factors such as ideology and religious solidarity would not go well with this aim because they limit the number of countries to which Hamas can appeal for support.

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On May 1, 2017, Ḥamās published “A Document of General Principles and Policies” (the new Charter). This article compares this document with “The Charter of Ḥamās” (the old Charter), issued in August 1988, to reveal the shift in logic from the old Charter to the new one and to elucidate their “flexibility.” While an earlier study found the old Charter to be ideologically “flexible,” it was in fact indirect and a kind of a “loophole.” This article addresses six issues in its analysis of the new Charter: (i) the reliance on logic other than the traditional Islamic legal system, such as “international law” and “human rights”; (ii) the decline of Islamic elements, as exemplified by the dramatic decline in the number of times the word “Allāh” appears, the complete absence of quotations from the Qur’ān, and the absence of mention of the Muslim Brotherhood; (iii) the place of Islam in logic (in particular, no longer employing causality to assign blame to the absence of Islam); (iv) the change of the meaning of jihād and the emphasis on its legitimacy; (v) the distinction between “Jews” and “Zionists”; and (vi) the disappearance of the “waqf” and the possibility of recognizing the State of Israel. To conclude the analysis of this article, there has been a shift in logic from the old Charter to the new one and the new one brings out Ḥamās’s “direct flexibility.”

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In the history of international conflicts, some have been perceived as “intractable.” These conflicts have some characteristics such as durability, destructivity, and resistance to political settlement. Also, many of them are identity-charged, like ethno-national conflicts over territory. The examples range from Northern Ireland to Kashmir. The Palestine Question is a typical example of this conflict, and the contestation over Jerusalem would be one of the most difficult to solve in that conflict.

In the research field of conflict resolution, many academic and practical attempts have been initiated to make the intractable conflict tractable. Most of the concern was drawn toward the ideal style of effective political negotiation, or the ways of conflict transformation leading to fruitful negotiation. These kinds of research yielded results, however these studies miss an important point. They do not consider the influence or implication of the negotiation on the contested issue itself and the political dynamics of the parties to the conflict, particularly in terms of substance there. Although research about the spoiler problem in the peace process has a similar sort of interest, these mostly pay close attention to the way to control the spoiler and the political rivalry over the negotiation itself. Most of the analyses does not extend into the internal details of some specific political issue. This point might have much importance on the Palestine Question after the Oslo Accords (1993), which started the peace process over 20 years ago but has not borne fruit. In this case, the negotiation is just a short-lived moment in the protracted conflict, so an analysis on the relationship between negotiation and the internal political dynamics is required for the future resumption of negotiation.

This article tries to fill the gap in previous research by taking the example of Jerusalem and by examining the political implication of negotiation by dividing the peace process into the Oslo period (1993–2000) and the Post-Oslo period (2000–). Concerning the Oslo period, the article deals with Palestinian strategic formation and diverse understanding about the meaning of negotiation for Jerusalem, by Jerusalem-based leaders and pivotal leaders in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), or the Palestinian Authority (PA). As regards the Post-Oslo period, the article discusses the transformation of the Jerusalem Problem, caused mainly by the failure of negotiation and the shift of the stakeholders in Palestinian politics over Jerusalem. The separation of the Oslo framework into two periods will clarify how negotiation affects Palestinian politics and how it functions in the conflict.

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Since 1903, the year when Wright brothers made a success of building the world’s first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight, airpower has developed astoundingly as an essential component in modern warfare. Up until today, it has been demonstrated by several modern wars. At the same time, however, this was not always the case. In unconventional warfare (or asymmetric warfare, “Non-Trinitarian Warfare,” “Fourth Generation Warfare,”or “War amongst the People”), airpower was not able to play a significant role, and sometimes it even caused a negative impact. In these wars, since the opponents usually disappear among “people,” it is always very challenging to find and attack them without causing any collateral damage. Taking up the Israel’s airpower in the Second Lebanon War (July/August 2006) and the Gaza War (December 2008/January 2009)—these are the two most recent wars in which airpower was employed on the non-state armed group—as the case studies, this article discusses the following questions: Is airpower really incompetent for unconventional warfare? If not so, what would be the essential role for airpower? What airpower actually can and cannot do?
Based on the rigorous analysis of the wars in Lebanon and Gaza, the article leads the following three conclusions: Firstly, the impact which airpower could cause to warfare is limited. As in conventional wisdom, while airpower is an important and powerful arm of military force, airpower alone does not lead victory for modern wars. This is true for at least unconventional warfare, in which the enemy has no specific “center of gravity” and blends into the urban, mountainous or forested terrain, as in cases of Lebanon and Gaza. In addition, if they did not have enough information for the opponents, airpower could rarely give significant damage. Although it is the case, the collateral damage will be ineluctable if the opponent disappears in the crowd. Secondly, however, airpower is not always incompetent in conventional warfare under certain conditions. There are two key factors: (1) interoperability between the air force and the ground force, and (2) intelligence about the enemy. As in case of Gaza, when these two factors were fully established in pre-war period, it is possible to cause heavy damage to the enemy. Ensuring the qualitative military edge over the enemy is also important as well. Thirdly, it is essential to minimize the collateral damage. No matter how the cutting-edge military technology is overwhelming or the joint training exercise and the intelligence about the enemy are adequate, however, it is almost equivalent with losing the game if there was significant collateral damage. In case of Gaza, IDF was successfully bearing down the enemy physically, but too much collateral damage turns such a “victory” into “defeat.” In any of these wars, Israel’s security environment never been improved in the history.
It is certain that airpower will keep playing one of the important roles in war given the technological progress in recent years. At the same time, they will face with a dilemma about the cost effectiveness between “rising war expenditure” and “acceptable level of cost.” Just by looking at the current situation in Syria (as of June in 2014), it is clear that unconventional warfare is still happening and will happen in the future. This leads the importance of further research for both direct and indirect role by airpower going forward.

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