Fatally Flawed Peace Proposal
JERUSALEM — Now that the worldwide fanfare accompanying the so-called Geneva Accord has died down a bit, perhaps it's time to look at why most Israelis have failed to rally behind the unofficial plan's outline for how to achieve peace with the Palestinians. The biggest problem for Israelis is that what the document's authors claim it says and what it actually says are very different. Moreover, there are serious matters of credibility with the way the initiative was presented.
Take the identities of the initiative's authors. They presented themselves as independent Israeli and Palestinian public figures, intellectuals and writers. Not so. On the Israeli side this was true -- the initiating group included some prominent opposition politicians, intellectuals and writers. On the Palestinian side, however, the picture is very different: The chief Palestinian initiator, Yasser Abed-Rabbo, is a former Palestinian Authority minister of information and culture. Moreover, at the Geneva unveiling of the proposal last month, a letter from Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, generally supporting the initiative, was read, and a number of Palestinian ministers also attended the ceremony. In truth, the Geneva Accord is a document endorsed by part of the Israeli opposition and most of the Palestinian governing establishment. This is not a document originating in both "civil societies."
The initiators present the document as signaling an explicit Palestinian acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state. There is nothing of the sort in the document. There is a vague reference in the preamble to the Jewish right to a state, but nowhere does it say that this state will be in Israel; it could be in Uganda. Since the root cause of the conflict lies in the unwillingness of Arabs to accept Israel as a Jewish state, many Israelis feel that the initiators were far from candid.
This applies also to the issue of the right of return of 1948 Palestinian refugees and their descendants, -- a cornerstone of Palestinian nationalist dogma. The initiators claim that in their document Palestinians explicitly give up the right to return to the property in Israel from which they fled or were expelled during the 1948 war. But this is not the case. It is true that in the document the right of return does not appear explicitly, but it does state that the refugee problem will be addressed according to United Nations Resolution 194. This 1948 resolution, while not mentioning a right of return specifically, does say simply and explicitly that the refugees "shall return." Every Palestinian child is taught that 194 is the international legitimization of the Palestinian right of return. Again, many Israelis felt the initiators were far from truthful.
