Conflict or Peace

"I believe we are closer than we have been for years to bringing about the peace and prosperity and the security that all people in this region deserve and yearn for."
Secretary of State John Kerry

"I found no partner in Israel in the talks and the Israelis are not serious. They came to talk just to avoid the international pressure and isolation."
Mohammed Ishtayeh, former Palestinian Authority negotiator

"We need an agreement now, before we reach a point of no return from which the two-state solution is not an option any longer."
Yuval Diskin, former director, Israel's Shin Bet

Time has a habit of flying by. Time is an issue of great moment in the negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis in an effort to find a mutually acceptable, if not wholly agreeable, solution to the impasse between the two in the issue of living together side by side, two separate and sovereign entities. The issue is almost terminally fraught with impossibilities.

The evacuation of the Jewish settler and Israeli military presence from Gaza presents as a case in point. That unilateral action as an experiment, removing a far smaller number of settlers from the Gaza Strip, than are present in the West Bank, to leave the geography there to the sole possession of the Gazan Palestinians led not to an aura of satisfaction and the Palestinians taking up the opportunity to thrive, under the momentum of their drive to become a functional civil state.

It led to an increase of violent attacks by Palestinians against their Israeli neighbours. It led to a breakdown of law and order within Gaza itself. It led to an Islamist group whose mandate heralds the destruction of the State of Israel and the reoccupation of the entire geography by Palestinians, taking political, social and military administration of the Gaza Strip, with rockets being fired constantly from Gaza into Israel.

It led to the necessity of Israel building a restraining wall to prevent Palestinian terrorists, bombers and suicidist-murderers from constant deadly incursions into Israel in their dedicated mission to mount atrocities against civilians. Israeli cooperation with Palestinians in the West Bank under Yasser Arafat after the rejection of one peace offer after another by the PLO led to the original Intifada with Palestinian police trained and armed by their Israeli counterparts turning against their trainers.

More currently, as the threat of a third Intifada looms with the possible and likely failure of the latest US-brokered peace talks, the Palestinian Authority whose negotiators once turned down all the offers for accommodation to their demands to achieve a lasting peace agreement, has upped their ante on demands. Entitled and emboldened by the general support from the international community viewing the Palestinians 'suffering', as unconscionable at the hands of a government attempting to protect its own from further bloody encounters with Palestinian 'protesters'.

The 'right of return', to flood Israel with the demands of citizenship of all the generations of Palestinians who originally fled when Israel declared itself a nation in 1948; no consideration by Arab states in welcoming back or restoring properties to the more numerous Jews who were ordered to leave their ancient places of residence, with their properties confiscated. They were absorbed by Israel; the Arab states have never granted citizenship to Palestinians with the exception of Jordan.

The right to sovereignty over East Jerusalem, where the most treasured, cherished and sacred symbols of ancient heritage and religious devotion for Judaism will once again be off limits for Jews and Israelis, as it was when it fell under the aegis of the administering Jordanians before Israel fought back successfully against one of many Arab assaults to remove it from the geography.

The Palestinian Authority steadfastly refuses to acknowledge the ancient Jewish heritage entitling Jews to a presence in the geography, much less acknowledge the State of Israel is a Jewish nation-state, whereas there is no hesitation in viewing Arab states as such. And while Israel has absorbed Arab Palestinians as citizens with all the rights of citizens in the country, the PA has made it clear that no Jewish presence will be permitted to blemish the nascent Palestinian state.

The issue of West Bank settlements remains a detrimental sticking point. But this is also an issue of boundaries and state lines to be eventually established after the negotiators have considered all options; an initial agreement had been reached whereby a trade of land commensurate with what each side in the land dispute wants for its future could yet be the basis for settling the expanding West Bank settlements, carving out similar areas now in Israel to form part of the Palestinian state.

"It is clear that Israel is trying to define its strategic security interests first, and then to draw the political borders in accordance with these security needs. This is dangerous", commented Yasser Abed Rabbo, senior Palestinian official. Dangerous, given Israel's past and ongoing needs to defend itself from the rancour and violence of its neighbours?

An absolute necessity in actual fact.