Not An Exciting Peace Prospect

BEIRUT -- It is hard to be excited or optimistic about the prospects for resumed direct Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations next week. All the important factors comprising the diplomatic process are either politically anemic or totally absent. Nevertheless, there are also some intriguing elements that could come into play once the discussions start, so there is not much to lose in seeing if this new round of talks will go anywhere.

"Nothing to lose" is not a very compelling foundation for serious and fateful negotiations -- but this is where we are. The five key pillars of the current diplomacy are all politically depressing, offering little beyond pessimism. The five are the badly split and politically inept Palestinians, the colonial-minded and settlement-addicted Israelis, the serial failure US mediators, the Quartet, and the supporting casts all around, especially the Arab world and Europe.

The weak statement issued last week by the Quartet (United Nations, European Union, United States, and Russia) that oversees the diplomatic process aiming to lead to a permanent negotiated peace, captures the reasons why so many people are pessimistic. It called for "direct negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians to resolve all final status issues," reaffirmed its full commitment to "its previous statements which provide that direct, bilateral negotiations that resolve all final status issues should ‘lead to a settlement, negotiated between the parties, that ends the occupation which began in 1967 and results in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbors'."

Why does this not excite? Because it seems mainly to repeat the same old failed approaches of the last three decades, after serious peace talks kicked off with the Egyptian-Israeli Camp David peace agreement in 1979. Tip-toeing around the core of the conflict and speaking in generalities will not resolve the conflict. Achieving a permanent, comprehensive and fair peace will require grabbing the essence of the problem with both hands and solving it with a heretofore absent combination of historical honesty and political courage. Any attempt to resolve this conflict must stop pussyfooting around the real issues that must be resolved, and instead make a negotiating process morally compelling and politically palatable to both sides by stating up front what the essential problem is and how the negotiations will resolve it.

Here is the statement that the Quartet and the US mediators should make if they really want to leave their enduring universe of diplomatic skepticism and actually try to solve this conflict:

"We invite the Palestinians and Israelis to start direct negotiations based on their mutual commitment to ending their conflict by admitting how it started and what has kept it going for nearly a century of strife. Achieving two adjacent states living in peace and security is the practical aim of the negotiations. This will occur only when both sides embrace and decide to resolve the political and emotional core of their conflict, and accept the national legitimacy and rights of both people in the historic land of Israel/Palestine.

"They must agree that both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to live in statehood, sovereignty and security in this land that is their common patrimony and historic homeland, and that this right can only be implemented simultaneously for both people, with fully equal rights for both. They aim to resolve the historical reality that the creation of the state of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people shattered the integrity and rights of the majority indigenous Palestinian community and led in large part to its forced exile and refugeehood, which has been the main reason for the Palestinians and other Arabs to resist Zionism and wage war against Israel.

"Both sides commit to acknowledging their share of responsibility for this past history, and to taking appropriate measures to remove as much as possible the injustices and traumas of the past. The negotiations will result in a Jewish-majority Israeli state and a Palestinian-Arab state whose establishment will end all claims by both sides, because the agreement to be reached will comprise the full implementation of UN General Assembly Resolution 194 and UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.

"The Jews of Israel will be able to live in peace, security and acceptance in their state. The Palestinians will see the causes and consequences of their refugeehood acknowledged and removed, and will live in a Palestinian sovereign state in the West Bank, Gaza and Arab East Jerusalem. Israelis and Palestinians will be whole again, free, sovereign, and safe, in their respective recognized, independent states in their ancestral homeland. This will allow the full and permanent resolution of political and territorial conflicts between Israel and other Arab states.

"On this basis -- aiming simultaneously to end Palestinian refugeehood and statelessness, and Israeli rejection in the region -- the parties are invited to start direct negotiations."

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.