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U.S. Peace Plan Is Fair and Just
(Fox News) Eugene Kontorovich - The Israeli-Palestinian peace plan unveiled Tuesday is an important and well-crafted effort that would benefit both sides. Critics are already indicting the plan for not meeting all Palestinian demands. But the plan also does not meet all Israeli demands. It is a compromise, requiring concessions from both sides. The Palestinians are perhaps the only national independence movement in the modern era that has ever rejected a genuine offer of internationally recognized statehood, even if it falls short of all the territory they had sought. Hundreds of groups seek statehood, and some - like the Kurds - seem to deserve it. But almost none get it. For Palestinian leaders to reject such an offer of statehood from a U.S. administration best poised to deliver it - along with $50 billion in promised international investment in a new Palestinian state - shows that the Palestinians and their allies still see undermining Israel as their primary goal. In 1947, as Britain was preparing to end its colonial rule, Jewish leaders were willing to accept a discontinuous, vulnerable state with no part of Jerusalem. This is evidence that those who truly need a state jump on even the most imperfect opportunities. The U.S. plan also crucially inverts the paradigm in which the Palestinians keep getting offered more for saying "no." In the new plan, if the Palestinians do not agree to the peace deal - and do not meet minimal conditions - Israel can proceed to secure its interests without them. The writer, a professor and director of the Center for International Law in the Middle East at George Mason University Law School, is also a scholar at the Kohelet Policy Forum in Jerusalem.