We are now getting ready for the opening of the new round of talks that are supposed to be peace negotistions between Israel and the administrative body (long-due for elections) that represents a portion of the Arabs who reside in the former areas of the Mandate for Palestine not under full Israel sovereignty.
I refer to the Palestinian Authority which is basically a Fatah institution headed by Mahmoud Abbas.
In Gaza there is another Prime Minister who represents Hamas.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel''s Prime Minister, despite declaring that there should be no preconditions for the renewal of these talks, gave it and is releasing long-time serving murderers.
I would suggest to Israel''s political leadership to adopt preconditions as well.
First and foremost, I''ll allow this poster to illustrate a major precondition:
I think that is a fairly obvious request. Also quite logical. After all, if Arabs who insist they are special as "Palestinians" (and not, for example, Southern Syrians, or the traditional Yammani/Qaysi division) cannot make peace among themselves, how can we expect them to pacify their relationships with we Jews?
And talking about pacification, the lack of any real consistent and rigorous peace preparation educational programs in the PA school system is worrying. Think: a 25-year old man/woman today has received all his education from kindergarten to university during the Oslo Process (yikes! the 20th anniversary of this diplomatic disaster is coming up) not only in the most mind-poisoning of atmospheres but he/she has been taught not that peace is good but that they must reagain parts of the pre-1967 Israel and flood it with "refugees". No peace sensitivity training at all.
There are no coexistence workshops for how-to-get-along together on the Temple Mount and how-to-share the Cave of the Patriarchs.
Incitement still is rampant, as this paper reported.
The "Palestine" that the western democracies are promoting, out of their liberalism and progressivism, will be, at this stage, no better than Syria, Egypt of Yemen. A precondition should be elections and a period of internal reconciliation (unity is too much to ask as this paper informed us).
Mr. Netanyahu and his government, I suggest, could do much better, and improve Israel''s chances for peace and security, if some of these ideas were put into play.
^