Peace Signs

[Classical_Liberal]

Peace Signs
Will the Geneva Accord move Israelis and Palestinians closer to an agreement?
By Ady Barkan
Web Exclusive: 11.7.03


Three weeks ago, former officials from the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority announced that they had negotiated a detailed framework for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Ever since, Israeli public discourse -- for the first time since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's landslide re-election earlier this year -- has focused on the possibilities for peace rather than simply on the miseries of war. To be sure, there is no guarantee that the Geneva Accord, as the plan is called, will provide the groundwork for an official agreement; nor is the plan certain to revitalize the long-moribund Israeli left. But the agreement has ushered the prospect of a negotiated settlement back onto the political stage -- both inside and outside Israel -- and put pressure on Sharon's government to supplement its military measures with small overtures toward peace. In that sense, the accord is already a success.

The agreement was primarily the work of Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli justice minister (who wrote this article for the Prospect last year), and Yasir Abed Rabbo, the former Palestinian information minister. When negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians broke down in early 2001, Beilin and Rabbo decided to continue their dialogue informally. "We wanted to prove to ourselves that a final agreement was feasible, to prove to the peace camps on both sides that there is a partner and a plan," Beilin wrote last week. Perhaps his most important accomplishment has been to cast doubt on Sharon's longstanding contention that there is no negotiating partner on the Palestinian side.

But the talks were about more than merely proving the existence of potential partners for peace. "As someone who participated in these negotiations since they started, I can tell you that all along, both sides regarded these negotiations as real ones," Uri Zaki, an aide to Beilin, told me during a phone conversation this past weekend. "Our target was to bring a whole package -- a closed one, a model agreement -- that would have the ability to be adopted as is, and that serves the Israeli interest as we see it and the Palestinian interest as they see it." Indeed, the Geneva Accord settles every major contentious issue: It maps out control of Jerusalem down to the last inch of land, it specifies which Israeli settlements would be disbanded and which retained, and it solves -- albeit with some ambiguity -- the Palestinian claim to a right of return.

Just about everyone who believes in a two-state solution recognizes the value of the accord. As Nahum Barnea, Israel's most prominent political columnist, wrote in the daily newspaper Yediot Ahronot last month, "What is written in this document is, more or less, what will be written in the final status arrangement that Israel will sign with any free Palestinian regime." Dan Rothem, research director at the Washington-based Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation, said the accord represents a potentially important juncture in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "It's the first time that a permanent status agreement" has been reached, he told me. "Until now, the entire history of negotiations is just proposals and counterproposals."

http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/11/barkan-a-11-07.html

[bluesoul]

1. These people

are true HEROES! :toast: :bounce:

[Violet_Crumble]

2. I think some in this forum oppose the values of the Geneva Accord...

I think that in itself shows them in their true light about how they really feel about a two-state solution, especially after reading this bit of the article: 'Just about everyone who believes in a two-state solution recognizes the value of the accord.'

Violet...