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Trust is Built on Realities

(Guardian-UK) Ehud Barak - A partial bureaucratic approval of an old construction plan in the city of Ma'ale Adumim, adjacent to Jerusalem, should not be perceived as a danger to the peace process. All the diplomatic pressure on Israel, in this specific case, is not justified, simply because the Palestinians have already agreed this major bloc will stay under Israel's authority - if not at Camp David, in many other exchanges of ideas. While the construction plan is far from being implemented on the ground, threats by Saeb Erekat (or Abbas) that its authorization "closes the door to peace" takes us back to a gloomy period where short-term political gains are put before long-term benefits. No Israeli government can, should, or needs to remove the major settlement blocs. These are where almost 80% of the settlers live in an area of no more than 6% of the total land area of the West Bank. This understanding should ease the recent tension between the sides, especially as the Ma'ale Adumim plan specifically does not interfere with any unsolvable territorial contiguity issues. But the story of Ma'ale Adumim is only an example that serves to illustrate a broader challenge in future negotiations with the Palestinians. One lesson from our attempt to reach an agreement was that the attitude of "all or nothing" brought both sides to a stalemate. The cost of Yasser Arafat's insistence on strictly unalterable demands is too high and painful a price to be paid again. Repeating the same scenario is a historic mistake that none of us can afford to make.
2005-04-13 00:00:00
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