The Right Side of the Looking Glass

By JERROLD KESSEL, PIERRE KLOCHENDLER
An article in Issue 11, September 15, 2008 of The Jerusalem Report. To subscribe to The Jerusalem Report click here. "Curiouser and curiouser," says Alice in Wonderland. On a visit to the Mideast Wonderland in July, Barack Obama found Israel's failure to take up the challenge of the 2002 Arab peace initiative more than curious: In fact in a conversation with Palestinians in Ramallah, he reportedly called it "crazy." With new leaders soon to be installed in both the U.S. and Israel, will things get curiouser or crazier, or will the new administrations learn enough from what has not been done to get us back on the right side of the looking glass? The 2002 Arab League plan is still on the table. The former Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher, among the architects of the plan, said in a mid-August article in Haaretz that effectively the whole Arab world remains lined up behind this "historic document," which offers "a formula for ending not only the Palestinian-Israel conflict, but also the wider Arab-Israeli conflict and to achieve a collective peace, security for all and normal relations with Israel." What, then, if Israel had indeed tackled the Arab initiative, instead of ignoring it? Would Israel have finally come to understand that peace is a key component of its security? Would the peace rejectionists in the Arab world like Hamas in Gaza and Hizballah in Lebanon still be gaining momentum at the expense of moderates? Would Iran have been able to maintain its threat to Israel's existence and to Arab moderates? But Israel has studiously steered clear of the Arab initiative. There has not been a single serious leadership discussion on a plan, which would once - before the Wonderland era that began with the conquests of 1967 - have constituted an Israeli dream-come-true. "Curious" and "crazy" are mild judgments: Something stronger seems in order - neglect of national interests, perhaps. At the heart of the plan is the two-state solution, a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Since the first serious peace initiative at Oslo in the early 1990s, all Israeli leaders have come round to appreciating just how essential a two-state solution is to Israel's fundamental security and demographic interests. Could neglect of the Arab overtures be attributed to Israel's reluctance to accept a full-fledged Palestinian state? What Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said appears to suggest that is not the case. Between the launching of the Arab initiative and Israel's 2005 unilateral withdrawal from Gaza (the last time Israel threw out a real peace challenge to the Arab world), Olmert, then Ariel Sharon's deputy, delivered the most important domestic political declaration in 40 years: The time has come, declared Olmert, for Israel's borders to be permanently drawn; even if no partner emerges to define the borders, we Israelis should ourselves determine what constitutes the state for which we live and for which we are prepared, if necessary, to fight and to die. Now, two years after the war in Lebanon (unsuccessful, even though it did underline the sacrosanct nature of one of those borders), Olmert is being forced from office because of corruption allegations. His greater, political "crime," however, is having reneged on the policy on which he was elected in the first place - to bring about a withdrawal from the West Bank and to promote the creation of the Palestinian state alongside Israel. Olmert is paying the price for his alleged misdoings, but the entire nation stands to pay a historical penalty because of his having failed to grasp a genuine opportunity for acceptance by the entire Arab world. In the dying days of the Olmert government, there seems to be a belated realization that the way to put the extremists out of business is not to take them on militarily or to try to sideline them through boycotts, but to bolster those within the Palestinian camp who are sincere about a two-state solution. The late-August decision to free 200 prisoners linked to the PLO movement of President Mahmoud Abbas is a step in the right direction, but very much on the micro level. Whoever inherits Olmert's mantle should advance to the macro and rise to the challenge of the Arab League initiative. What's more, it should be turned into an Israeli initiative. Until now, the mistake of all Israeli peace initiatives has been to project a withdrawal from the West Bank as a concession to the Palestinians rather than as something that is in Israel's fundamental interest. Israel desperately needs a courageous leadership that is ready to peer deeply into the looking glass of its policies towards the Arab world: And without breaking the glass, to make sure that Israel does not itself repeat the error for which the Palestinians have perennially been blamed - of never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity. • Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler are independent filmmakers and writers based in Jerusalem. An article in Issue 11, September 15, 2008 of The Jerusalem Report. To subscribe to The Jerusalem Report click here.