For this to happen, the government must circumvent several obstacles. For religious reasons, it is difficult for Hamas to recognize Israel officially. This has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, as alleged, but with the fact that according to Islam, Palestine is a "Waqf" (religious endowment) belonging to Allah (similar to the Jewish fundamentalists' belief that God has promised us the country, so that giving away any part of it is a mortal sin.) But the Muslim religion opens a back door here by allowing for a long-term "hudnah" (truce) that can last for decades or even centuries.
The way to solve this problem is to get the Unity Government, headed by Hamas, to declare that it is committed to the "prisoners' document", the UN resolutions, the agreements signed between Israel and the PLO and the Arab peace plan - all of which are based on the recognition of Israel. That should suffice for anybody who really wants to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace.
As far as our government is concerned, there precisely is the rub.
This plan was originally devised by Abdallah, then the Crown Prince and now the King of Saudi Arabia. It was adopted by the summit meeting of the Arab heads of state in Beirut in March 2002.
This plan says, roughly: the entire Arab world will recognize Israel and make peace with it, if it withdraws to the 1967 borders and makes it possible to establish the State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
The government of Israel has rejected the initiative, as the Hebrew expression goes, "on the threshold" (every peace initiative is rejected "on the threshold", so as not to allow it, God forbid, to put a foot in the door.) The plan was consigned to a pigeon hole and has been collecting dust ever since. Now the evil Arabs have decided to dust it off and slap it back on the table.
AGAINST THIS danger of the Arab peacemongers, the Olmert government is calling up all its forces. In spite of the fact the entire political and military leadership is now busy fighting for its survival after the Lebanon fiasco, it is uniting in the face of this frightening menace.
Tzipi Livni was sent head over heels to the United States, in order to avert the danger. She went to convince President Bush (who happened to "pass" the room when she was talking with Condoleezza Rice and who calls her "Tsiffi") to use the deadly American veto against any Security Council resolution that might support peace. She is going to meet with some 20 heads of governments and foreign ministers to enlist their support against this menace.
For this, she took down from the Foreign Office attic a diplomatic rag called "the Road Map". It has never even entered the mind of the Israeli government to carry out this agreement, whose sole purpose was, right from the beginning, to create the impression that President Bush has achieved something in the Middle East. From its inception, all the parties knew that this was a document that cannot be implemented.
Israel and the US will, therefore, declare that the Arab peace plan is damaging peace, because it contradicts the Road Map. The Palestinian unity government, when it is set up, must be boycotted, because it does not explicitly state that all its members recognize the State of Israel (as if all the members of the Israeli government were prepared to recognize the State of Palestine and its government, not to mention foreswearing violence and accepting all the existing agreements.) Therefore, the blockade of the Palestinian population must go on, until it sinks to its knees.
WHY DOES the peace offensive frighten the Israeli government?
If somebody had come to us on June 4, 1967, and told us that the entire Arab world was ready to make peace with us within the borders existing on that day, and that the Palestinian leadership, too, was prepared to declare an end to the historic conflict, we would have felt that the Messiah had come.
But on June 5, 1967, we started a war that changed everything. We were soon in control of the whole of Palestine and huge additional territories. We declared that we were holding them temporarily in order to trade them in, but, as is well known, appetite comes with eating. We started to annex territories (East Jerusalem with its surroundings and the Golan Heights), and to cover the West Bank with settlements.
In the eyes of the Israeli leadership, the peace initiative - any peace initiative - is nothing but an evil conspiracy of the peacemongers to rob us of these territories. It would compel us to put an end to the settlement enterprise - which has not stopped for a moment since 1968, and which is even now in full swing - and to dismantle the existing settlements.
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