New Israeli-Palestinian talks are doomed to failure

Nothing constructive is likely to emerge from the latest talks between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas because both leaders are too weak and the two sides are too far apart. Netanyahu cannot maintain his majority in Israel's parliament without the support of conservative settler parties that oppose further territorial concessions, and Abbas does not even have authority over all the territory he expects to make part of the Palestininan-dominated new country to emerge from a comprehensive peace agreement. The talks, which would not have even been scheduled without diplomatic pressure from the United States, have started just in time to resolve the still widely misunderstood issue of Israeli settlements when Israel's freeze on such construction expires Sept. 26, according to the Reuters international news service. The Abbas-led Palestinian Authority considers a freeze extension to be a necessary condition of its continued participation in the talks; Israel insists on continuing to build housing for its population, and obviously considers such construction to be its prerogative as a conquering power. But these people have been over this same issue for decades. It should be obvious to everyone involved that somebody is going to have to blink first. But whom? It doesn't help, of course, that both sides think they have already blinked numerous times with questionable results. Israel has maintained its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip for more than 40 years, and the Palestinians -- people who did not even exist as a people until they were disowned by their Arab brethren after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war -- have a functioning government and observer status at the United Nations. Complicating matters is the breakaway Hamas government in Gaza, which broke off from the West Bank government in 2007 to protest the PA's moves toward settlement with Israel. In the midst of the pessimism is U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said recently that her view is that the issues could be settled within one year. Good luck with that.

Arab League rhetoric ignores the facts

Thursday's declaration by the Arab League that it favored direct negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel whenever PA President Mahmoud Abbas agrees to participate is the height of arrogance. After all, the intransigence of the very 21 countries that make up the League of Arab States is responsible for the perpetually unsettled political situation in the Middle East and the political and economic isolation of the Palestinian people. Of course, the league is free to continue to blame the situation on Israel, but false rhetoric does not become truthful merely by how often or how vehemently it is repeated. The league issued its declaration after Abbas briefed members of its peace process committee at a meeting in Cairo, according to the Reuters international news service. League members agreed to send a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama outlining Palestinian concerns over the negotiating process with Israel in the face of that country's refusal to extend a 10-month partial ban on settlement construction after Sept. 25, Reuters said. "There is a green light from the Arabs to go to direct negotiations if we receive terms of reference (for the negotiations) in line with the letter," Nabil Abu Rdainah, a senior Abbas aide, told Reuters. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants direct negotiations with Abbas to begin immediately, but his coalition is tied to pro-settler political parties that adamantly oppose extending the partial settlement freeze. The prospects for a breakthrough in such talks is, of course, unclear. But nobody should forget how the situation got to this point. Instead of accepting Palestinians and Jews as brothers and neighbors, which they clearly are, Arab states have chosen to keep Palestinians who fled the three wars they started in refugee camps for decades and to keep maintain a constant state of hostilities against Israel, first as warring enemies and now through radical proxy groups.

Palestinian rhetoric on Israeli settlements is just talk

Anybody can say anything about whatever they want to about anything, and it is with that understanding that Sunday's statement by former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei about Israeli "settlements" in Jerusalem being a "time bomb" should be viewed. Qurei and Israeli opposition leader Tsipi Livni, the former foreign minister, urged moderates on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to work harder to settle their differences. "The Jerusalem situation, I think, is a time bomb if it continues in this way," Qurei said a meeting of academics in Jerusalem, according to the Reuters international news service. "It has an impact on the Palestinian people . . . and on trust on both sides." Qurei was discussing Israel's continuing construction of housing for its citizens in formerly Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem, often after demolishing Palestinian-owned housing. "It is 19 years since Oslo and things remain as is," Qurei said, referring to the historic agreement that recognized Palestinian sovereignty over the West Bank of the Jordan River, which Israel captured, along with East Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war, and led to the return from exile of Yasir Arafat. Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for reaching the Oslo Accords. But the lasting peace that seemed within reach in 1993 no longer appears at hand, not after the years of violence and mistrust that supplanted what turned out to be naive optimism -- on both sides. If the Israelis assumed that their Arab enemies, with whom they had already fought three all-out wars, were now willing to accept their Jewish neighbors as equals, and if Palestinian leaders assumed they were on the fast-track to statehood without having to undo the hatred they had been planting in the hearts of their people and convince them to work for peace, they both were tragically mistaken. The repeated failure of all parties to accept these realities are responsible for the current situation.

Someone's not telling the truth in U.S.-Iran nuclear dispute

Lingering mistrust over the imperial attitude of the United States during the last administration no doubt took at lot of the sting off Monday's trade of hyperbole between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the United Nations in New York. After Ahmadinejad delivered his expected tirade against the United States, which is trying to put together international economic sanctions to penalize Iran for trying to develop nuclear weapons, Clinton accused Tehran of ignoring its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and called for "a strong international response," according to Cable News Network. The two leaders spoke at the opening of a monthlong conference on nuclear nonproliferation, which has taken on additional urgency of late due to Iran's apparent progress toward developing nuclear weaponry and North Korea's detonations of two nuclear warheads since 2006. Diplomats from the United States, Britain and France walked out of Ahmadinejad's speech a few minutes after he began speaking, CNN said. But the diplomats no doubt heard Ahmadinejad denounce the United States for accusing Iran of nuclear activities without "even a single credible proof," and for permitting Israel to compile an arsenal of several hundred nuclear weapons. "Regrettably," Ahmadinejad told the conference, "the government of the United States has not only used nuclear weapons, but also continues to threaten to use such weapons against other countries, including Iran." Of course, Ahmadinejad speaks as if the world hadn't repeatedly heard him threaten Israel with annihilation. And, as if Israel hadn't already proved itself capable of maintaining a nuclear stockpile in a peaceful manner -- something no one wants to see unstable Iran try to do. Clinton, for her part, accused Iran of placing the future of the nonproliferation treaty in jeopardy with its actions and disingenuous remarks. Iran "will do whatever it can to divert attention from its own record and to attempt to evade accountability," she said. "I hope that we can reach agreement in the Security Council on tough new sanctions because I believe that is the only way to catch Iran's attention," Clinton told reporters after her speech. Ahmadinejad also called for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, a concept endorsed by the United States. Clinton said such a zone would be possible only after successful peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Clinton also called for creation of a $50 million Peaceful Uses Initiative by the International Atomic Energy Agency to bring the benefits of nuclear energy to more countries, no doubt a reaction to Ahmadinejad's oft-repeated complaint that the United States and Western nations were trying to monopolize nuclear technology.

Arab League can't decide whether to endorse talks with Iran or between Palestinians and Israelis

News from Libya that the Arab League was unable to agree whether to endorse indirect peace talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel should be no surprise to anyone after the PA expressed outrage over Israeli plans to build 1,600 homes near east Jerusalem. The league's two-day summit in Sirte ended abruptly after the 22 nations were unable to agree on either a new endorsement of the peace talks or on formulating a new approach to Iran, according to the Reuters international news service. The Arab League did endorse U.S.-mediated proximity talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority earlier this month. "Within the next few weeks, we have to decide what to do: whether to continue with the negotiations or to completely shift course," Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said at a news conference after the summit closed down. Moussa said Arab states were frustrated by the slow pace of negotiations between Jerusalem and Ramallah and would propose alternatives if there was no progress soon, Reuters said. "We cannot enter into a vicious circle to be added to the hundreds of previous vicious circles that will end in another zero result," Moussa said. "We are fed up with this." The stalemate is bad news for the stalled peace process, since Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas probably will be reluctant to conduct substantive talks without the Arab League endorsement due to the threat from hardliners in his own community. Of course, there is no reason to expect anything from the Arab League if the Palestinians themselves are unwilling to pursue an actual peace agreement with Israel. And, of course, nothing is what came of the proposal before the Arab League to start talks with Tehran about Iran's nuclear program, Reuters said. Foreign ministers were unable to agree on their next step, even though Persian Gulf states near Iran had expressed concerns about problems if Tehran develops weapons or is prevented from doing so by Western states. "I do not believe the time has come where we can see that Iran has changed its behavior toward Arab countries," said Prince Saud Al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister. Iran has insisted that its nuclear development is intended solely for peaceful purposes, even though it doesn't make sense for the country with the world's third-largest oil reserves to pursue nuclear power to generate electricity.

Israelis get an earful from Biden

If Tuesday's announcement of new East Jerusalem housing sparked such outrage from U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, imagine what he's going to say when he finds out the eastern half of the city is already part of Israel and has been for more than 40 years. Biden was sharply critical of Israel following the announcement on Wednesday, saying the move would "inflame tensions" with the Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future West Bank state, according to the Reuters international news service. It may be news to all of them, but Israel has been in control of East Jerusalem since 1967, when its soldiers drove Jordan from the West Bank in yet another war started by Israel's Arab neighbors. Jews had been prevented from entering the historic old city after Israel's founding in 1948, even though East Jerusalem contains sites sacred to Jews and Muslims since before the birth of Christ. But Israel agreed to negotiate the future of Jerusalem with the Palestinian Authority in 1993, and considered the possibility of East Jerusalem becoming the Palestinian's capital in 2001. A lot has changed since then, including the election of a conservative government in Israel that opposes territorial concessions. Tuesday's announcement of 1,600 new units in East Jerusalem sparked the expected outrage from Arab nations but the United States' criticism apparently surprised Israeli leaders. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had ordered a partial freeze of West Bank settlement construction last year in an effort to encourage the Palestinian Authority to return to negotiations over a future Palestinian state in the area, but specifically excluded East Jerusalem. "It is incumbent on both parties to build an atmosphere of support for negotiations and not to complicate them," Biden said Wednesday in a meeting with PA President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. "Yesterday, the decision by the Israeli government to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem undermines that very trust, the trust that we need right now in order to begin ... profitable negotiations." Abbas urged Israel to cancel its housing plans, Reuters said. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband also condemned Israel's decision after giving a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., Reuters said.

Indirect peace talks between Israel and Palestinian Authority are pointless

Word from Ramallah yesterday that Palestinian leaders had agreed to take part in indirect peace talks with Israel is at once good news and bad. It's good news, of course, because the Palestinians and Israelis are going to have to be in constant and constructive contact with each other if there is any hope of the two societies living together in peace. But it's bad news, too, because the Palestinian Authority agreed only to hold indirect talks with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem, with the United States acting as mediator, and that's a huge step in the wrong direction. Nothing can come from indirect talks that will be better than what the Israelis and Palestinians can achieve together, and whatever comes of them is likely to be a lot less useful for both. Sunday's agreement to hold indirect talks for four months was arranged after the Arab League endorsed the talks at a meeting in Cairo on Wednesday, according to the New York Times. The PA had refused to resume negotiations until Israel agreed to freeze settlement activity in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, which it wants for the capital of a future state. The new agreement comes one day before U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is expected to arrive in the region for the highest-level talks since the election of Biden and President Barack Obama. Israel accepted the indirect talks offer last week; the talks will be the first between the two sides in 14 months. But all the maneuverings and nuances cannot hide the real problem that keeps the PA from reaching a comprehensive peace deal. The Palestinian leadership doesn't want one, even though it promises tremendous benefits for the Palestinian people. Have Palestinian Authority-run schools stopped teaching children to hate Jews? Are Palestinian children still taught to mistrust their Israeli neighbors? It will take at least two generations to fix the years of hatred deliberately sowed by the PA, and Hamas-run schools in Gaza are undoubtedly worse. It will take generations to fix this, but the PA hasn't even started yet. This is the work that any real peace will require, and it's not getting done. Palestinian leaders prefer to dither over boundary lines and eschew any real compromises, because they know -- and the radical elements that dominate regional political discourse know, too -- that they are simply unwilling to accept Israel.

Democracy takes a holiday in West Bank political mess

Maybe the biggest casualty in the relentlessly intractable Palestinian-Israeli conflict is democracy in the new country planned for the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The latest from the West Bank is that the Palestinian Liberation Organization has extended the term of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas because it is expiring and the rebellious Hamas group that controls Gaza refuses to participate in elections scheduled for Jan. 24, 2010, according to the New York Times. That means, assuming Abbas agrees to stay in office -- not an entirely assured prospect, given recent public statements -- that the Palestinian people will no longer have elected representatives in a matter of weeks. Not that this would be the first time -- the PA deactivated its parliament after Hamas candidates won a clear majority in the 2007 elections and Western nations threatened to withdraw financial support if Hamas refused to change a charter provision calling for the destruction of Israel. But, then again, it's probably not entirely Hamas' fault; Middle East nations are well known for their lack of enthusiasm for democracy except westernized Israel, their avowed enemy. That is probably not a mere coincidence. The PLO Central Council reached its decision to extend Abbas' term at its meeting yesterday and today in Ramallah, the West Bank city where the PA has its headquarters. Hamas, which was unable to resolve its differences with the PA despite high-profile mediation by Egypt earlier this year, has rejected the PLO plan as "illegal," the Times said. Abbas has indicated he will not be a candidate for re-election no matter when the elections are held out of frustration with the peace process with Israel, which has stalled, but officials from the Palestinian, Israeli and United States governments have been trying to convince him to reconsider.

Israel rejects Palestinian rejection of peace moves

Maybe Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was only kidding Thursday when he said Israel was more interested in winning international support for its efforts toward peace with Palestinians living in the West Bank than what the Palestinians themselves think. Or, maybe, just maybe, his remarks reflected Israel's frustration with the Palestinian Authority's blanket refusal to begin talks on a peace settlement until Israel stops building homes on land the Palestinians want for their own country. "The last thing that should interest us is the Palestinians' concern," Lieberman said on Israel Radio, according to the Reuters international news service. "Before the Palestinian issue, what should interest us is our friends in the world. We spoke to them and most said, 'help us to help you.'" Lieberman's statement was in reaction to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' outright rejection of Israel's announcement of a 10-month partial freeze of settlement activity in the West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered the partial freeze in an effort to get the PA to agree to restart peace negotiations. But Abbas, who is threatening to leave government if and when his current term ends, demands a total freeze on building on lands claimed by his stateless people including East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in 1967. Israel has annexed East Jerusalem and made it part of its capital, but most of the world's nations have not accepted it. Yet Western nations lined up behind Netanyahu's proposal despite Palestinian objections, Reuters said. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner called Israel's move "a positive contribution to peace, and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband urged that Israel's proposal "become a step toward resuming meaningful negotiations." Israel's chief backer, the United States, has called for the resumption of negotiations without preconditions. But Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Israel's Army Radio that Israel's proposal was merely a bid to deflect pressure from the United States, Reuters said. "At the end of the day, Netanyahu needs to make peace with us, the Palestinians, he doesn't need to make peace with Americans," Erekat said. "If that's what he wants, that is his business. The last I know, Washington is 6,000 miles from Jerusalem, while Jericho is 67." More than 500,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem alongside 2.7 million Palestinians, Reuters said.

Israeli settlements are not the problem in Middle East

Maybe if most Arab nations were democracies that acted only with the approval of their citizens, they would more-easily be able to understand what has happened to the Middle East peace process. It's fairly obvious that U.S. President Barack Obama, who perhaps unwisely raised expectations in the Arab world about changing this country's policies toward Israel, has acquired a greater appreciation of what Jerusalem has been telling him about peacemaking with the Palestinian Authority. Israel's willingness to compromise, which has varied over time, has never produced a lasting agreement because Palestinian leaders have been unwilling to prepare their people for the possibility of peace -- probably out of fear for their own safety -- after years of agitating for war. Israeli intransigence is not the chief cause of the decades-long deadlock; rather, it's the refusal of the Palestinians and of most of the countries in the region to plan for a future that includes their Jewish cousins. That's why it was kind of sad to see U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton go traipsing around the Arab world this week trying to convince those countries to accept Israel's partial settlement freeze proposal and return to peace talks, as the Reuters international news service reported. The Palestinian Authority still thinks its warlike posture toward Israel, a posture supported by its Arab backers, is the best way to achieve its goal -- a Middle East without Israel. That's why previous overly generous Israeli peace offers that included the sharing of Jerusalem were rejected by Palestinian authorities. Now, with the election of a conservative government in Israel, such offers are almost certainly off the table. But a readers of this blog know, Israeli settlement-building in the West Bank is not an obstacle to true peace in the region. What it does complicate, however, is the kind of peace that is merely the absence of war. If Palestinians and Israelis are going to live side-by-side in the long term, it won't matter what country they live in assuming their rights are respected and protected. The fact that this has yet not occurred to anyone in the region strongly suggests that none of the parties is prepared to come to anything more than an interim agreement, if at all.

Abbas puts gap between Israel and Palestinians on display at United Nations

Friday's speech to the United Nations by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was a clear demonstration of the gap between Palestinian and Israeli political leaders -- following, as it did, Thursday's address by Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Abbas said Israel was blocking progress toward peace by refusing to comply with Palestinian conditions for reopening peace talks, by refusing to fulfill its obligations under negotiated agreements and by refusing to comply with "hundreds" of U.N. resolutions. "All of these active efforts and initiatives, which have been welcomed and supported by us and by the Arab states, are, however, confronted with Israeli intransigence, which refuses to adhere to the requirements for relaunching the peace process," Abbas said. But Netanyahu said a day earlier that the PA was unwilling even to take the most "elementary" step toward peace of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state. "We asked the Palestinians to finally do what they refused to do for 62 years, say 'yes' to a Jewish state," Netanyahu said. "As simple, as clear, as elementary as that, just as we are asked to recognize a nation-state for the Palestinian people, the Palestinians must be asked to recognize the nation-state of the Jewish people. The Jewish people are not foreign conquerors in the land of Israel. It is the land of our forefathers." The two sides are not even listening to each other -- maybe they do when they're face-to-face at the negotiating table. And, maybe, that explains their reluctance to meet. Any agreement they do reach will likely be of historical proportions and result in region-changing upheaval. Israel will have to give up sovereignty over the homes of 100,000 Israelis on land the Palestinians expect for a state; the Palestinian people will have to give up claims to land they left in 1948 and to Jerusalem. The PA has not even begun to educate its citizens on the realities and responsibilities of peace -- it may not understand them itself. For one thing, the PA does not appear capable of controlling all of the territory that has already been ceded to it. There is a very long way to go -- the current leaders may have to think of the future, not the present, if they truly want to make peace happen. But, remember, Israel, Egypt and Jordan -- formerly bitter enemies -- have reached peace deals that have held together for years.

U.S. effort in Middle East appears doomed for now

The United States certainly may want it to happen, but the likelihood is extremely small that U.S. envoy George Mitchell will be successful in convincing negotiators for Israel and the Palestinian Authority to agree to resume peace talks. Mitchell said today that he hoped to wrap up an agreement in the next few days, according to the Reuters international news service. But that hope, if he really has it, seems unrealistic or, worse, dangerously naive. While Israel would love to be able to continue to relax its oppressive -- and expensive -- and oppressive military presence around territory it captured in 1967, and the PA needs statehood to fulfill the Palestinian people's desire for independence and to bolster its standing with its people, the two sides have rarely seemed further apart. The Palestinian Authority, of course, is insisting on a complete freeze of construction of housing for Israelis on land it wants for its state, including East Jerusalem. Israel, now led by a conservative prime minister, has offered to temporarily suspend future construction but refuses to stop building homes that are already planned or to give up any part of Jerusalem. "While we have not yet reached agreement on many outstanding issues, we are working hard to do so, and indeed the purpose of my visits here this week is to attempt to do so," Mitchell said Sunday with Israeli President Shimon Peres at his side, Reuters reported. Mitchell is scheduled to meet tomorrow with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyau and Tuesday with PA President Mahmoud Abbas in his effort to put together a deal that would freeze settlements and require Arab nations to move towards diplomatic recognition of Israel. But a look at the issues here underscores the impossibility of Mitchell's assignment. Israel is talking about where to put the border between the two countries, the PA and most of the rest of the Arab world is still pretending that Israel doesn't exist. That's a very long road to travel in three days. It's going to take a diplomat on the same level as, say, the late Anwar Sadat, to achieve a breakthrough, and it appears, sadly, the Netanyahu and Abbas are simply not up to the task. As for Mitchell, he might have had an distinguished career as a politician but he will more easily be remembered for botching the Major League Baseball steroids investigation than anything else he accomplished as a public figure.

Israeli leader Netanyahu flies into week of contentious talks with U.S., Europe

Maybe the leaders of England and Germany will be able to understand what U.S. leaders seem to be unable to grasp during talks this week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Europe. A freeze on Israeli settlements in the West Bank is reportedly the top of the agenda for Netanyahu's meetings with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell in London on Tuesday and Wednesday, and with German Prime Minister Angela Merkel in Berlin on Thursday, according to the Reuters international news service. The Palestinian Authority insists on such a freeze before it will agree to negotiate with Israel on a peace deal, and Israel actually is committed to a freeze under the George W. Bush-era road map peace framework. But as readers of this blog realize, the settlement issue is merely a distraction from the real issue -- do Israel's neighbors, particularly the Palestinian Authority, want to live in peace and cooperation with Israel. The louder Palestinian leaders insist on making a freeze a condition of talks, the louder they are answering that question with "no." New towns with homes for hundreds of thousands of people are a material asset to a poor country -- why wouldn't any country want that? The issue for Palestinian leaders is that they don't think their people will accept Jewish people being their neighbors and will vote them out of office if peace happens. The failure to prepare their people for peace with Israel is is an utter dereliction of their duty as leaders. They are still funding school curricula that teach Palestinian children to distrust and hate Jewish people -- people who will be their neighbors whenever peace finally comes to the region. There is no reason why settlements built by Israel on land destined to be part of a Palestinian state can't be part of that state -- unless the Palestinian government is planning a country with no Jewish people allowed. If that's the case, then Palestinian leaders have no desire to live in peace with Israel, because peace necessarily involves people living side-by-side in understood cooperation. If the leaders do not want peace with Israel, then all they are doing is buying time until they can resume warfare against the Jewish state. And that is what Netanyahu needs to explain to England, Germany and the U.S. envoy during his trip to Europe.

Palestinians back away from peace deal

Are there still many among us who are surprised to hear that the Palestinian Authority is backing away from reaching any kind of peace deal with Israel? Word from Ramallah today that the PA would refuse to make any kind of deal with Israel that allowed the expansion of settlements in the West Bank is yet another indication of how far from seriousness the talks have strayed. Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Voice of Palestine radio on Sunday that "there are no middle-ground solutions for the settlement issue" and that all settlement activity must stop, according to the Reuters international news service. Erekat said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told U.S. President Barack Obama the same thing in a letter yesterday, Reuters reported. But readers of this blog understand by now that the settlement issue actually is a non-issue designed to enrage the populace and delay any comprehensive peace between Israel and the PA. If the PA is planning to establish a free state that protects its citizens' rights, the only way settlement can be an obstacle to peace is if peace is not really being contemplated and the proposed two-state solution is not being seriously considered. Two countries at peace would allow the free movement of citizens between their borders -- it would not matter where the homes were located. If Israel wants to continue to build and expand settlements in territory promised to the Palestinians, it should go ahead -- but with the assumption that it is not guaranteed sovereignty over them in a final peace deal. Sovereignty is, after all, the only issue that can only be resolved with direct negotiations between the aggrieved parties. But reaching such a deal necessarily means that the Palestinian people give up their preposterous 'right of return' claims and the pretense of shared sovereignty over Jerusalem and its holy sites. It also means that the Palestinians must stop teaching their children to hate Jewish people. The Palestinian leadership is afraid to do this because it is afraid of angering radicals in its community who have shown no hesitation to resort to violence. But peace is a long-range proposition that can only be accomplished with a long-term commitment to pluralism. That will involve suppressing violent groups and changing the community dialogue from hatred to hopefulness, from demonization to democracy. Sadly, nobody who pays attention to the Middle East can image the PA being ready to commit to that.

Palestinian leader agrees his people are not ready for statehood

Sure, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's speech Monday was full of the usual unproductive rhetoric that has long characterized the decadeslong dispute over the territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. But the speech at Al Quds university near Jerusalem, billed as the Palestinian answer to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's June 14 address accepting an independent state on the West Bank of the Jordan River, also included a major concession that his people are not ready for statehood despite years of self-governance. According to the Reuters international news service, Fayyad said the Palestinians would need at least one year, and possibly two, to set up their new country. "I call on all our people to unite around the project of establishing a state and to strengthen its institutions ... so that the Palestinian state becomes, by the end of next year or within two years at most, a reality," he said. "Achieving this goal within two years is possible." Of course, bureaucrats always give the most optimistic estimate of anything they have to do, so a more likely estimate is three-four years, even though the 15-year-old Palestinian Authority essentially operates like a government already with ambassadors in many world capitals. But since the PA doesn't even control its own territory, having lost power over the Gaza Strip and its 1.5 million residents to the radical Hamas organization after a short war in 2007, a more-realistic view is that two years will be needed just to reunite the Palestinian people under the same government. Then, the PA might be able to get ready within two years, assuming it is government that prevails. Israel may indeed be responsible for a lot of what ails the Palestinians -- the PA certainly thinks to -- but if the goal at the end is statehood, there's a lot more work to do. And that is the Palestinians' responsibility, not Israel's, regardless of the rhetoric.

Negotiating with Netanyahu may be tough but when did talking become the problem?

What's most curious about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's endorsement of a Palestinian state Sunday was not the most surprising thing, that the right-wing leader offered a state at all -- but that officials of the West Bank and Gaza government reacted with such vehement opposition. Netanyahu's statement about accepting a Palestinian state -- albeit with conditions the Palestinian leaders obvious found unacceptable -- marked a reversal of his repeatedly stated rejection of statehood for the residents of the Israeli-occupied territories. Netanyahu's conservative approach to the Palestinians was why he was able to form a coalition to become prime minister after the February election. But pressure from the new U.S. government apparently convinced him to change his stance, presented in a speech at Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv, according to the Reuters international news service. "If we receive this guarantee regarding demilitarization and Israel's security needs, and if the Palestinians recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people, then we will be ready in a future peace agreement to reach a solution where a demilitarized Palestinian state exists alongside the Jewish state," Netanyahu said in Sunday's speech. Yet instead of seeing the new Israeli position as a potential breakthrough that could lead to statehood as early as this year or 2010, the Palestinian leadership blithely rejected Netanyahu's initiative as "sabotaged," Reuters said. "Netanyahu's remarks have sabotaged all initiatives, paralyzed all efforts being made and challenges the Palestinian, Arab and American positions," said Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. "The peace process has been moving at the speed of a tortoise," said Saeb Erekat, a PA official who has negotiated interim peace accords with the Israelis. "Tonight, Netanyahu has flipped it over on its back." Netanyahu's speech was widely seen as Israel's answer to U.S. President Barack Obama's speech 10 days ago in Egypt, in which Obama called for "a new beginning" in relations with the Moslem world. Obama advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel and for a halt to Israel's settlement building in the West Bank. The timing has never seemed better for an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, yet the parties have rarely seemed further apart. In fact, the Palestinians are seriously divided amongst themselves, even to the point of setting up separate, diametrically opposed governments in the territories. They actually are in no position to negotiate with Israel, even though negotiations are precisely the way to proceed from this point. That may be the key to understanding where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at this point. The demands being made by the Palestinian leadership -- to set up a state without acknowledging Israel's right to exist, to have its capital inside the capital of an already existing country and to negotiate on behalf of people they are warring with, are so untenable as to be preposterous. There really must be a secure peace for the Palestinian people, even at the price of discomfort for Israel, but the current PA leadership does not want even that. The very existence of the current leadership is dependent upon maintaining conflict, not on reaching an agreement with Israel that will bring peace and prosperity to its people. Complaints about Israeli settlements are a distraction that exposes this unfortunate situation. Settlements are a problem only if the new Palestinian country intends to refuse to allow Jewish people to live in it. Otherwise, the borders of the new state could be drawn without regard to the settlements -- the ones that are in Israel would be part of Israel and the ones that are not would be part of the new country. That this possibility is not even being considered reveals that real peace between Israel and the new Palestinian country is not part of this equation. And the fact that an obviously astute political thinker like Obama does not seem to understand this is highly troubling.