Longtime Houstonian and former Secretary of both the State and Treasury Departments,
Stability in Iraq and peace between Palestinians and Israelis can be pursued at the same time. In fact, working toward the latter improves the chances of attaining the former. . .
The so-called quartet (the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations), which has been working on a “road map” for peace between the Palestinians and Israelis for several years, supports a two-state solution, as do the vast majority of both Palestinians and Israelis. President Bush certainly favors this goal, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel has publicly supported it as well, . . .
So the real question is how to take advantage of this window of opportunity to achieve that two-state solution. Specifically, what steps should be taken? Who needs to do what?
First, it is critical that negotiations resume. For this to happen, of course, Israel must have a negotiating partner on the Palestinian side. That partner will best emerge from free elections. Elections have been scheduled for Jan. 9, and all who support peace between Israel and the Palestinians have an obligation to do all within their power to see that those elections are successfully held.
Palestinian candidates should clearly and unequivocally renounce terrorism as a means of achieving a political result – and call upon their supporters to do likewise. And those Palestinians should commit themselves to an unequivocal, good-faith effort to crack down on terrorist groups that make a target of Israel.
In exchange, Israel should announce that upon the election of a Palestinian negotiating partner, it is prepared to resume substantive negotiations for peace without requiring that all terrorist activities cease in advance. To require the absence of any terrorist act in advance simply empowers the terrorists themselves to prevent the resumption of peace negotiations.
The United States should itself clearly embrace and articulate the unequivocal, good-faith standard for the resumption of dialogue. The United States should further prevail upon Israel to cease settlement activity in the occupied territories pending Palestinian elections and during the resumption of peace negotiations. Washington should also do everything else that it can to encourage both sides to resume meaningful talks. And it should serve, where necessary, as a direct participant in the talks, offering suggestions, brokering compromises and extending assurances.
We cannot, of course, prejudge the final outcome of any talks. But the plan presented by President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000 – and rejected by Yasir Arafat – surely offers one plausible place to start.
While the United States cannot dictate the terms of peace to either party, it can and should actively promote the resumption of negotiations. The time to start is now.
Read the entire piece. Mr. Baker is certainly correct that conditioning talks on the cessation of terrorist attacks simply empowers the radical Islamic fascists whose only goal is the destruction of Israel.
However, the legacy of failed negotiations with Arafat is the fact that he supported such attacks, on one hand, while negotiating with Israel on the other. The lack of trust that resulted from that duplicity has permeated Israeli-Palestinian relations for the past generation. Whether the new Palestinian leadership is capable of standing up to the forces within its leadership that foment that lack of trust will ultimately be the key element to the success or failure of any new initative.