As we hear the almost daily reports of killings by Israelis and Palestinians,
the President's "road map" to peace is going nowhere. There
are, however, courageous Israelis and Palestinians determined to make
peace, regardless of the roadblocks Prime Minister Sharon's occupation
troops, violent Palestinian resistance, and the Bush administration's
anti-Palestinian bias create.
Delegations led by Yossi Beilin, Israel's chief planner of the Oslo
Agreement, and Yasser Abed Rabbo, former Palestinian cabinet minister,
recently agreed on a concrete plan that can be enacted any time Israel's
government and the Palestinian Authority are willing to sign it. Since
the Swiss government provided the funding for the meetings that led
to this proposal, the negotiators named it "Geneva Accords."
A similar plan, called "The People's Voice: Statement of Intentions,"
was put forward by Ami Ayalon, former chief of Shin Bet, the Israeli
security service, and Sari Nusseibeh, a former Palestinian cabinet minister.
These two proposals list the specific outcomes that the President's
road map fails to state. To end the violence, both parties, particularly
the Palestinian resistance groups, need to know what they will gain
if they stop fighting.
Sharon and Bush refuse to recognize that, to achieve a workable peace,
not only Palestinian violence but also the destructive Israeli occupation
must end, not just some time in the future but now.
Both the Geneva Accords and the Statement of Intentions consist of essentially
four crucial substantive provisions.
(1) The Statement of Intentions calls for the restoration of the borderlines
of June 4, 1967, between Israel and Palestine. Border modifications
must provide equal territorial exchanges. The West Bank and the Gaza
Strip must be connected. No Israeli settlers will remain on Palestinian
land. The Geneva Accords allow Israel to keep about 20 of the 140 Israeli
settlements in the West Bank but compensate the Palestinians with land
in southern Israel.
(2) Jerusalem will be an open city and the capital for each state. Israeli
and Arab neighborhoods will be under each government's sovereignty.
Israel will be designated guardian of the Western Wall, Palestine guardian
of the Temple Mount. The status quo will remain for the Christian holy
sites.
(3) Palestinian refugees may return only to Palestine, Jews only to
Israel. To alleviate the deprivation of the Palestinian refugees since
1948, both parties and the international community would contribute
to an international compensation fund.
(4) In the Agreement of Intentions, the Palestinian state agrees to
be demilitarized and have its security guaranteed by the United Nations.
As could be expected, Prime Minister Sharon angrily rejected these symbolic
peace agreements as unauthorized. While he reluctantly pays lip service
to the President's road map, most people who know him are convinced
that he ultimately wants the Palestinians to be driven out of the West
Bank, perhaps even the Gaza Strip.
Nobody has criticized the Likudniki's intransigence more articulately
than Avram Burg, formerly speaker of the Knesset and chairman of the
Jewish Agency:
"Do you want the greater Land of Israel? No problem. Abandon democracy.
Let's institute an efficient system of racial separation here, with
prison camps and detention villages. Qalqilya and Gulag Jenin."
"Do you want a Jewish majority? No problem. Either put the Arabs
on railway cars, buses, camels, and donkeys, and expel them en masse--or
separate us from them absolutely, without tricks and gimmicks."
"There is no middle path. We must remove all the settlements-all
of them-and draw an internationally recognized border between the Jewish
national home and the Palestinian national home."
"Do you want democracy? No problem. Either abandon the greater
Land of Israel, to the last settlement and outpost, or give full citizenship
and voting rights to everyone, including Arabs."
Yossi Beilin, Ami Ayalon, and Avram Burg have devoted their lives' work
to the welfare of the state of Israel. They dread the bloody road to
nowhere. Do Congress and the White House listen?