Viewpoint: Israel’s Stymied hopes for peace

Israel’s stymied hopes for peace Israel’s senior statesman, former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, asked what possible advantage the Palestinians could gain from initiating a new intifada, adding that it was “totally unnecessary”. Speaking in London when completing a diplomatic mission to Rome, Paris and Berlin, he visited Downing Street the day that the brutal murder of two Israeli soldiers, by a mob while in the custody of the Palestine-controlled Ramallah police station, had shocked Israeli public opinion to the core. Prime Minister Ehud Barak had offered the “most generous proposals to the Palestinians” at Camp David, strongly supported by President Clinton, said Shimon Peres, including concessions on the main issue of Jerusalem, but Arafat had made an outright rejection. Jerusalem had never been an Arab capital city and neither the Jordanians nor the Egyptians had conceded territorial sovereignty to the Palestinians; only Israel recognised the Palestinians and had conceded them territory. The Israeli government’s “moral conviction” not to dominate the lives of another people had underlain the Oslo agreement, but would the Palestinian people miss an opportunity for peace a third time? In 1948 the Arabs waged war rather than accept the lion’s share of partition; in 1996, after the assassination of Yizhak Rabin, a government headed by Peres handed 500 villages to the Palestinians, but the terrorist response prior to the elections had probably cost another three years. Assuming that Arafat was negotiating in good faith, Peres failed to comprehend why he had rejected a settlement. Israel had decidedly not rejected his demand for a fact-finding commission as it had nothing to hide, but PM Barak needed to negotiate its composition. In a conflict fought increasingly on television and radio (and Palestinian media were continually fermenting violence) it was unclear just when the Palestinians were attacking outside their own territories. “There was no need for anybody to get killed or injured,” said Peres. Though Israel abhorred violence, she was strong enough to defend lives and to seek peace. With the end of the Cold War, war in the Middle East was not an option. In Peres’ view, terror could also prove extremely costly to the Palestinians. A leader of a state in formation – with three million people, 120,000 administrators, trading with many countries – could not act like a terrorist leader. The Palestinian leadership had “no right to sacrifice a generation of young people”, he said. Israel would “defend our land and our peace”, he added.