Understandings and Misunderstandings

Anguished Israels who have lost beloved family members cry out in despair at the anticipation that those who murdered their loved ones will now go free under an Israeli offer to render a 'goodwill' gesture to the Palestinian Authority to entice them to re-enter negotiations for a peace settlement. In the past, when Palestinians have been released from prison, some who have been guilty of multiple murders or who were implicated in their planning and recruitment of suicide bombers were released from incarceration to the welcome-home celebrations regarding them as 'heroes'.

Some have been released and immediately upon release have stated their intention to resume the activities their incarceration impeded the continuation of. The initial 26 Palestinians scheduled for quick release just before the initiation of peace talks, murdered Jewish farmers working their fields and young hikers alike; some were watched beforehand to track their schedules, and others were spontaneously attacked; all were alone and vulnerable, and all were mercilessly slaughtered.

The issue that the Palestinian Authority and its peace negotiators have focused on, however, is the cessation of building on Israeli settlements in the West Bank. As far as the PA and its negotiators are concerned, the release of all Palestinian prisoners from Israeli imprisonment irrespective of their crimes should be a given. This accords with the Palestinian expectations; their view that the imprisoned represent those who are commissioned by the PA to honourable "struggle" against the "occupation".

In publicly announcing on the eve of the new talks, the intention to forge ahead with hundreds of new dwellings to be constructed in East Jerusalem and the West Bank on the site of existing settlements, Israel has been accused of deliberately setting up roadblocks to peace. Inciting the Palestinians to rage over the State of Israel's cavalier attitude toward the Palestinians' intention to use the entire geography they have marked out for their future state, by trampling on their plans.

On the other hand, even while the international community has leaped enthusiastically as is their committed wont to the defence of the Palestinian position, heaping scorn on Israel for its negligent attitude toward peace-making and diplomacy, building "illegally", the simple fact of the matter is that renewed building activity has nothing whatever to do with the Palestinians' future geography.

It has been established and well received that each side will be prepared to carve out areas to deliver to the other; where majority Arab Palestinians live within Israel's borders, they will be moved to the purview of the new sovereign Palestinian state and where the major Israeli settlements exist -- considered to represent roughly 2% of the Palestinian-designated territory -- that area will be carved out to remain within new Israeli borders.

The new construction, emphasized Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev was approved for areas that Israel expects to retain in any peace agreement. "There is no way it changes the final map of peace. It changes nothing."