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Who Said There Are No Alternatives to Oslo?

(Jerusalem Post) Raphael Israeli - A new set of principles must be formulated for future negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. The first recommendation is to desist from the current view which cuts the Palestinian people into six slices: Palestinians in Israel are called Israelis; those in Jordan are Jordanians; Palestinians in Gaza are known as Gazans; those in the West Bank are Palestinian Authority "subjects"; Palestinians in refugee camp are known as refugees; and finally, Palestinians dispersed in various Arab and Western countries are Diaspora Palestinians. Palestinians should not only be considered as one people which cries for a solution, but the Land of Palestine (or the Land of Israel in Biblical parlance) - including the State of Israel, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza - should be considered one unit of territory upon which the statehood aspirations of both peoples must be played out. It should be made clear from the outset that Palestinians and Israelis recognize each state's right to self-determination. While the Palestinian right to self-determination has been recognized by Israel, the reverse has not been the case. Back in 1993 at Oslo, Israel should have stipulated that recognition of the PLO was conditional on the parallel recognition of Zionism by the Palestinians. Negotiations, as protracted and difficult as they may be, must end in an agreement between the parties to divide this vast territory in order to accommodate the majority of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs (including refugees). The writer is a professor of Islamic, Middle Eastern and Chinese history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
2011-06-10 00:00:00
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