Four and a half years have passed since the Camp David talks failed to produce an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. The period that followed was catastrophic for both peoples — thousands were killed, hatred spread and trust collapsed.
We all paid a high price, just to return a few years later to essentially the same principles of peace. The guidelines in terms of territory have always been clear for both sides. This framework entails a two-state solution.
This requires Israel to remove settlements from the midst of the Palestinian population and allow the Palestinian state its territorial contiguity. The Palestinians are expected to acknowledge that Israel will remain predominantly Jewish and that the settlements will not be removed.
Both sides need to make painful concessions to ensure this framework becomes a reality. In the past few months it has seemed that despite the challenges, the will to go forward does exist. Mahmoud Abbas, for example, recently stated that the solution for the Palestinian refugee problem is to be found by settling them in a Palestinian state rather than in Israel. This principle, which preserved the identities of both states, was accepted by us, but — until now — was repeatedly rejected by Palestinian negotiators.
At Camp David, this insistence brought me to fear that the dispute was not about 1967, namely ”occupation”, but 1947, the very right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state. It should be clear that our ”demographic continuity” is no less important than the Palestinian desire for ”territorial contiguity”.
The Israeli leader, on the other hand, is expected to withdraw forces from Gaza, evacuate settlements and, apparently, uproot Jewish settlers by force. If anyone does not realise the extent of his historic compromise, he should examine the right-wing resistance to Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan. His words this week, comparing the atmosphere in Israel to the eve of a civil war, are far from empty rhetoric.
Evidently, the plan promotes the framework developed at Camp David. It removes Jewish settlements from densely populated Palestinian areas, reduces friction in the short term and consolidates the Palestinian areas so that they can control territory without our presence. However, while Israel is actively seeking to achieve these goals, the Palestinians should take measures to implement their obligations to dismantle, not only control, the terror infrastructure.
They should also accept the demographic realities. This is why a partial bureaucratic approval of an old construction plan in the city of Maale ÂÂAdumim, adjacent to Jerusalem, should not be perceived as a danger to the peace process. All the diplomatic pressure on Israel, in this specific case, is not justified, simply because the Palestinians have already agreed this major bloc will stay under Israel’s authority — if not at Camp David, in many other exchanges of ideas. While the construction plan is far from being implemented on the ground, threats by Saeb Erekat (or Abbas) that its authorisation ”closes the door to peace” takes us back to a gloomy period where short-term political gains are put before long-term benefits.
No Israeli government can, should or needs to remove the major settlements. These are where almost 80% of the settlers live in an area of no more than 6% of the total land area of the West Bank. This understanding should ease the recent tension between the sides, especially as the Maale Adumim plan specifically does not interfere with any unsolvable territorial contiguity issues.
One lesson from our attempt to reach an agreement was that the attitude of ”all or nothing” brought both sides to a stalemate. The cost of Yasser Arafat’s insistence on strictly unalterable demands is too high and painful a price to be paid again.
We have a long way to go until trust is renewed. Until we reach this point, long-term realities rather than short-term political gains should dictate not only actions on the ground, but the declarations of leaders on both sides. — Â