The most important thing any government can provide for its people is peace.
Peace is the precondition for everything else. Economic growth, welfare for
those in need, good education for all, culture, infrastructure, opportunity and
hope are all attainable, if there is peace.
Israel is the land of
promise, the land of great potential. Amazing things have been achieved here
over the past 65 years under very difficult circumstances. The major promise
that has not been fulfilled is peace.
Of course it takes two to make
peace and Israel is not solely responsible for the lack of peace. Each side of
the conflict blames the other for the absence of peace (and both sides are
correct). But despite that truth, we must also recognize that Israel is the much
stronger party in the conflict. There is no symmetry between the
sides.
Israel has achieved statehood and worldwide recognition. United
Nations membership was granted one year after our birth and Israel is an active
member of the international community. Israel has one of the most powerful
armies in the world and one of the most advanced economies. Illiteracy is almost
completely absent and our universities and research centers continue to grow and
excel.
Israel, the start-up nation, produces more patents per capita than
almost any other nation and our inventions are found in hi-tech products in
almost every home in the world.
Confronting the Palestinians, Israel
completely controls the borders, the air space and the coastal waters of the
entire territory known as Israel and Palestine. If Israel wills it, the
Palestinian side can quickly expand its economic growth and if Israel wills
otherwise, overnight it can cripple their economy.
If Israel allows it,
Palestinians are free to travel the world over and if Israel does not, Israel
can trap them in a cage to which it holds the key. Even the Palestinian leaders
can travel outside of Palestine, or from one part of Palestine to another, for
that matter, only if Israel allows it.
If Israel opens the faucets, water
can flow into almost every Palestinian home and if not, water can be stopped
from flowing in the cities and the villages throughout the West Bank and Gaza.
The same for electricity.
Israel’s power is overwhelming vis-à-vis the
Palestinians. The one thing Israel cannot force them to do, however, is to make
peace on our terms.
Israel cannot force them to accept
occupation.
Israel cannot make them accept settlements.
Israel
does not have the power to impose a solution on them. Palestinians will continue
to struggle for dignity and liberation on terms that will be acceptable to them.
Israel’s force has its limitations.
That is certainly the message of one
of Israel’s entries to the Academy Awards this year – The Gatekeepers. Six
former heads of the Israel Security Agency, the Shin Bet, agree that Israel’s
power cannot force peace.
Israel’s power can, though, enable it to be a
lot more generous when offering peace to our Palestinian neighbors.
The
requirements for peace, meaning the ability to continue to guarantee the
personal security of its citizens and the strategic security of its borders are
achievable because the Palestinians are not an existential threat to Israel and
because they have proven their ability and will to combat terrorism.
In
fact, with the exception of a potential Iranian nuclear bomb, there are no
existential threats to Israel anymore. The territorial dimension of security
that was a factor in the past century has become essentially irrelevant now. The
terms for peace with the Palestinians that have been accepted by them include a
non-militarized Palestinian state with security mechanisms in place, including
Israeli involvement on its external borders that would prevent the turning of
the West Bank into a launching pad for terrorism against Israel.
Previous
negotiations have reached agreements on security arrangements. Great progress
was made in those negotiations on the central issues of Jerusalem and even
refugees. The major gaps between the parties were primarily in the delineation
of borders. Palestinians accepted the annexation of the settlement blocks into
Israel in exchange for uninhabited land inside of Israel. The main argument is
on the size of the annexation.
The people of Israel voted for a moderate
government, not for a government that will refuse to negotiate with the
Palestinians for another four years. The most extreme right-wing party did not
cross the threshold and Netanyahu’s Likud party lost seats apparently because of
its extreme right-wing representatives.
The Israeli public is not as
right-wing as many thought before the elections.
The main task of the next
government will be to address the peace issue and not equal service for all –
which is important but not nearly as important as peace. Those who will make up
the coalition would be wise to begin to accept that once negotiations are
renewed, they will begin at the point where they ended four years
ago.
The veteran and the newly elected MKs would be wise to take a crash
course on the issues; very few of them have any real idea of their details, of
the ins and outs of previous negotiations. Almost none of them have given any
thought to the positive lessons that we should have learned from the failure of
the process until now.
Israel could so easily take the spotlight of
positive attention on the world stage. The next government of Israel could so
quickly find itself the most respected and admired among the nations. But that
is not the reason to advance peace – that will be one of the many benefits. The
reason to advance peace is because that is what good governments do for their
people.
The writer is the co-chairman of IPCRI, the Israel Palestine
Center for Research and Information, a columnist for The Jerusalem Post and the
initiator and negotiator of the secret back channel for the release of Gilad
Schalit.
|