Israel and the Palestinian Authority need to renew negotiations immediately to achieve permanent peace between our peoples. Considering the fundamental points of agreement between us, it is frustrating that for the better part of a year we have not managed to sit down and move forward toward peace:
-- We both believe that Israel and a Palestinian state should live alongside each other in peace, security and economic well-being.
-- We both understand that the best future for our children requires that we make painful concessions to accommodate each other's essential national aims.
-- Israel and the Palestinian Authority both face the emergence of radical regimes in our region - Hamas, Hezbollah and a nuclear-ascendant Iran - none of whom wish either of us well.
Our mutual interest requires that we be deeply engaged in achieving peace, and yet instead we are deeply disengaged. What can we do?
The Palestinian Authority has made a precondition for talks that Israel freeze all settlement building. Never in the past has such a precondition been demanded of Israel, but we are eager to move forward, and hence the Israeli government has undertaken the following formal commitments:
-- We will not build new settlements.
-- We will not expand existing ones, or expropriate Palestinian land.
-- We will enforce a 10-month moratorium on new private building inside Israeli settlements beyond the 1967 lines.
Israel has undertaken the above because we believe that the peace process must be restarted. This decision is causing political disarray at home, sure proof of the seriousness of our intentions. It is true that we have not met the Palestinian demand in its entirety, but neither have they accepted our demand that negotiations be renewed without preconditions. We do not agree to restrict urban growth in our capital city of Jerusalem, but we have met the Palestinian leadership far more than halfway, and it is now time for them to return to the peace table.
We find ourselves in the very odd position of pleading with our Palestinian partners to sit down with us, so they may achieve that which they seek and need: a viable and thriving Palestinian state.
We have been in this place too many times before, and there is a painful sense of deja vu. In the past 10 years, Israeli Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert reached out to the Palestinian leadership with far-reaching peace proposals, only to be rejected or ignored. In 2005, Israel removed 21 settlements from the Gaza Strip and handed the area entirely to the Palestinian Authority as a first step toward the establishment of a larger Palestinian state. Once again, the Palestinian leadership did not answer the opportunity knocking at its door.
We can create a better destiny. Israel is working hard to be the first country to achieve a national electric car grid. We would like to cooperate with the Palestinians in this venture, and can well imagine a modernizing Palestinian state in which electric vehicles connect between Ramallah, Nablus and Gaza City. This is the kind of future we need to envision for our peoples.
Once again, we are at a moment of historic decision. The Palestinians must determine if they wish to be victims of history or actors upon it. Israel wants to be their partners in a better future and renew peace negotiations immediately - but they have to meet our outstretched hand.
Front Page Features