A BETTER ROAD MAP

  Artículo de Jackson Diehl en “The Washington Post” del 27.10.2003

 Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that the solution to a problem many outsiders assume to be intractable has, in fact, already been spelled out in considerable detail and accepted by a majority of the public on both sides. For all the rhetoric about irreversible facts on the ground and irreconcilable national agendas, it is not only entirely possible to devise a workable plan for side-by-side Israeli and Palestinian states, but the terms of such a plan have been arrived at and agreed upon repeatedly by experts and negotiators.

History, demography and the landscape actually make the available deal obvious to anyone not blinkered by hatred or ideology. Palestine will be created in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, minus a few small pieces of West Bank land adjacent to Israel where the vast majority of Jewish settlers now live. Jerusalem will be divided according to its already segregated neighborhoods, with Arab areas becoming part of Palestine, and each nation will exercise sovereignty over its holiest site. Palestinians will give up the claim of refugees to settle in Israel, while Israel will take back most or all of the Jewish settlers left in Palestine. The Palestinian state will be demilitarized, and Israel will have special security guarantees, such as the ability to maintain early warning stations and, perhaps, an international force to monitor the borders.

Israeli and Palestinian peaceniks were already talking about this deal 15 years ago, when only half of Israelis and even fewer Palestinians believed in a two-state solution. By three years ago, the terms were mainstream enough to be laid out in public by President Clinton and ratified by a vote of the Israeli cabinet. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators meeting at the Egyptian resort of Taba came tantalizingly close to finalizing the fine print before the negotiations launched by Clinton collapsed in January 2001. Even now, despite three years of bloodshed and more than 3,000 deaths on both sides, numerous polls show that big majorities of Israelis and Palestinians would accept something close to those terms if they brought a final peace settlement.

So why hasn't the deal happened? The largest reason is bad leadership. Palestinian President Yasser Arafat could have clinched the accord before those 3,000 lives were lost; instead he cynically chose to pose for history as a revolutionary who never compromised. Arafat's abdication opened the way for Palestinian extremists to launch a new wave of violence against Israel, which in turn brought to power Ariel Sharon -- like Arafat, a septuagenarian dead-ender who won't settle for the available settlement. With the help of extremist groups such as Hamas and the superhawks who now control the Israeli army, Sharon has managed to convince his primary audience -- President Bush -- that the only option is his unrelenting "war on terrorism" and maybe, someday, an "interim" agreement that would leave Israel in control of most of the West Bank. Bush's "road map" was designed mainly to reach Sharon's settlement, not the one both sides can agree on -- which is one big reason it hasn't worked.

This deadlock explains the latest twist in Israeli-Palestinian politics, which is a series of efforts by both moderate politicians and average people to circumvent the Arafat-Sharon roadblock. Last week a prominent Palestinian activist, Sari Nusseibeh, and a former chief of Israel's domestic security agency, Ami Ayalon, were in Washington to promote the one-page "statement of principles" they have drawn up. The principles restate the consensus deal; the difference is that Nusseibeh and Ayalon have gotten the supporting signatures of 90,000 Israelis and 60,000 Palestinians in just two months. Meanwhile, another group of prominent Israelis and Palestinians, including former ministers on both sides, is preparing to sign a complete model peace treaty in Geneva, with maps of exact borders. This unofficial pact, too, follows the same lines, with variations of detail, laid out by Clinton and the Taba negotiators.

The simple strategy of both groups is to demonstrate that the most critical task of any peace process, finding a formula for coexistence that both sides can live with, is already largely accomplished. "Deep down among Israelis and Palestinians, beneath the hate and the rage and the frustration, there is a recognition that this is the kind of peace that is possible, and a willingness to go for it," said Nusseibeh. "The question is how do you get there with Arafat and Sharon."

The two initiatives have produced storms of outrage from Sharon and his right-wing allies, who have described the Israeli Geneva negotiators as traitors and suggested they be criminally charged. Nusseibeh, too, has taken much heat for publicly conceding that the fantasy of a mass Palestinian return to Israel is just that. It is, as Geneva negotiator Amram Mitzna pointed out in the newspaper Haaretz, the rage of emperors told they are wearing no clothes -- Sharon's government, like Arafat's leadership, rests on the denial of what the majority think they know. The slim hope is that telling the truth, loudly and in public, will prompt a surge on both sides toward the solution that is there to be had. Maybe it won't work; but at least these Israelis and Palestinians are working off the right map.