Despite the Violence in Gaza There is a Possible Path to Peace Between Israel and Palestine

Tough Compromises and Creating Two Sovereign States are Key to Lasting Peace

NEW YORK, Jan. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- With Gaza in flames and Israeli ground forces moving in, it seems unlikely that a Middle East peace deal will come about, but there is a way to accomplish it. In an essay opening the January 12 Newsweek cover package, "Will It Ever End?" (on newsstands Monday, January 5), Managing Editor Daniel Klaidman writes, "There are no options other than a comprehensive agreement that creates two sovereign states, Israel and Palestine, warily coexisting side by side."

An Israeli source intimate with Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's thinking, who spoke anonymously to Newsweek, says the prime minister went into Gaza with a two-tiered set of objectives. The first was simply to stop the missiles Hamas was sending into Israel and to force a renewal of the ceasefire that existed until Dec. 19. Olmert's second goal, the source says, is far more ambitious -- and risky: the prime minister wants to crush Hamas altogether, first by aerial attacks and then with a grinding artillery and infantry assault. The hope, however faint, is eventually to allow Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah government to reassert control in Gaza, clearing the way in the future for a return to serious peace negotiations. With Hamas out of the way, Olmert believes there is a chance that Israel and the Palestinians can put flesh on the outlines of a comprehensive peace plan he negotiated with Abbas over the past year. The fact that Olmert and Abbas want to negotiate, underscores the stubborn, maddening fact about the Israeli-Palestinian relationship: there is only one path to peace, and both sides know what it is -- and yet neither side has been willing to take it. The broad contours of a peace, however, were laid out eight years ago when President Bill Clinton brought the two sides together at Camp David and tried to broker a historic deal. The current Olmert "shelf plan" is remarkably similar to the Clinton parameters: a two-state solution in which Israelis and Palestinians make painful compromises on the core issues of territory, security, Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees.

Klaidman's essay outlining a lasting agreement for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, includes compromises such as making adjustments to the pre-1967 borders. "Israel and the Palestinians should swap equal amounts of land, allowing a majority of the roughly 270,000 Israeli settlers now residing in the largest of the West Bank settlement blocks to stay where they are while remaining under Israeli sovereignty," Klaidman writes. "Israel in turn would give up a land corridor connecting Gaza to the West Bank and allowing for the free flow of people and commerce between the two."

The outline also suggests a plan to divide the rights to Jerusalem, as well as a call for a NATO-based international force to be put in the West Bank that would later transfer control to the Palestinians. As far as Israeli forces are concerned, they would be able to withdraw from the strategically important Jordan Valley over a longer period of time, perhaps three years. "Israel would be allowed to maintain a number of warning stations on Palestinian territory. Finally, Israel would allow the Palestinians to have sovereignty over their borders and international crossing points. But these borders and crossing points should be monitored by an international presence," Klaidman writes.

There are many difficult details to be worked out: the exact borders of a two-state compromise; the fate of Palestinian refugees; the future of Jerusalem. President Barack Obama and his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, will now inherit these challenges. They cannot simply pick up where Bill Clinton left off. The strategic context in the region has changed profoundly -- for the worse. George W. Bush's war on terror has diminished American credibility in the Arab world. Moreover, the leaders of those Arab states that are closest to the United States have lost legitimacy, challenged by popular opposition at home.

The cover package also includes:

-- Jerusalem Bureau Chief Kevin Peraino writes, "Fighting in the Holy Land has been raging for thousands of years, the familiar reasoning goes; it would be hubris to think America could end it. Yet three excellent recent books suggest that such logic is seriously flawed." The three books Peraino refers to are Daniel Kurtzer and Scott Lasensky's "Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace"; Patrick Tyler's "A World of Trouble: The White House and the Middle East -- From the Cold War to the War on Terror", and Martin Indyk's new memoir of his tenure as a Clinton-era peace negotiator, "Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East."

-- Guest columnist Daniel Gavron, author of "Holy Land Mosaic," writes that "last week's massive Israeli reprisals against Hamas in Gaza, which followed the breakdown of a five-month truce, have made peace between Israel and the Palestinians seem more remote than ever." In a month, Israel will hold an election, and unless the Gaza fighting changes things dramatically, the winner will likely be a right-wing government, which will be unwilling to ever make the compromises necessary to achieve a two-state settlement. "In the age of Obama, the time has come to repudiate our old phobias and prejudices and move forward to a better future for our children and grandchildren."

-- Guest columnist Aaron David Miller, an adviser for Democratic and Republican administrations and author of "The Much Too Promised Land," suggests that President-elect Barack Obama must become tougher on Israel if he is serious about peacemaking. "Despite efforts to sound reassuring during the campaign, the new administration will have to be tough, much tougher than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush were," Miller writes. "If the new president adjusts his thinking when it comes to Israel, and is prepared to be tough with the Arabs as well, the next several years could be fascinating and productive ones ... The process of American mediation will be excruciatingly painful for Arabs, Israelis and Americans. But if done right, with toughness and fairness, it could produce the first real opportunity for a peace deal in many years."

(Read cover package at www.Newsweek.com)

http://www.newsweek.com/id/177840 SOURCE Newsweek

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