PARIS - The most sensible and realistic solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was presented last week in Geneva, Switzerland.
Moderate Arab and Israeli politicians hammered out the Geneva Accord, a symbolic peace plan with no official status, but important moral standing, that would finally create a Palestinian state and end the bitter, six decade-old dispute between Arabs and Jews.
The plan called for an end to all violence and a demilitarized Palestinian state. Israel would withdraw to its pre-1967 War borders, except for a few territorial adjustments. Three-quarters of the 400,000 Jewish settlers on the West Bank and Gaza would remain, under Israeli protection.
Most dramatically, 3.6 million Palestinian refugees would have to give up their right of return to Israel. Jerusalem would be shared; its holiest sites put under international protection.
This deal, if adopted, would be a bitter pill for Palestinians. They would relinquish all claim to their ancestral lands seized by Israel. This historic injustice would be enshrined. Palestinian refugees could only find a home in a tiny, economically feeble state on the West Bank and Gaza. The 300,000 Jewish settlers slated to remain have expropriated the best land and most of the water resources of the Occupied Territories. Their presence violates international law.
Militant Palestinian groups Islamic Jihad and Hamas vowed to wreck the accords. Other Arab militants blasted the deal as a betrayal.
Though unappetizing and unjust, this is the best deal Palestinians may ever get. Israel cannot be militarily defeated: its has a nuclear, chemical and biological arsenal and one of the world's best military forces. Equally important, Israel has the backing of the United States.
For Israel, the agreement would mean plans for Greater Israel are finished, and Jerusalem must be shared. The fate of the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights, would be decided later.
The Geneva Accords were backed by PLO leader Yasser Arafat (somewhat tepidly), along with Nelson Mandela, Pope John Paul II, former president Jimmy Carter, concentration camp survivor Simon Veil, and a host of other respected figures. Actor Richard Dryfuss put it right when he said this peace plan was too important to be left to governments.
At Geneva, President Carter charged George Bush's wrongheaded Mideast policies for igniting global anti-Americanism and inciting terrorism.
Israel's leader, PM Ariel Sharon, immediately denounced the accords as `subversive' and rejected them out of hand. Sharon and his fellow rightists are determined to hold on to the Occupied Territories and Golan, and to never share Jerusalem. Israel's militant far right is now talking about a war with Syria that will open an Israeli corridor through that nation to Iraq's northern oil fields, from where oil will flow by pipeline to Israel's port of Haifa.
US reaction to the Geneva Accords was pathetic. A few platitudes, then a scurry for cover. The US response to Israel's building of a massive, East German-style wall to separate Israel proper from Palestinian population enclaves was similarly tepid.
Even though the wall makes an illegal expropriation of Palestinian lands, and undermines efforts to bring peace, hardly a peep was heard from the White House. There was no President George Bush emulating his idol, Ronald Reagan, by telling Israel, `Mr Sharon, tear down this wall!'
The US is in an election year. Bush has made major efforts to court the Jewish vote, which, thanks to the Iraq war, has now swung solidly behind the Republicans. Congress, as its recent vote to sanction Syria shows, is far more responsive to PM Sharon's desires than Israel's own parliament, the Knesset. No pressure will be brought on Israel. Bush's talk of a `roadmap' to Mideast peace is empty rhetoric.
One of the sadder aspects of this grim situation is that the many Jewish supporters of peace in Israel and the US have been drowned out by advocates of expansion and confrontation.
President Bill Clinton's administration was filled with allies of Israel's pro-peace center-left political spectrum. By contrast, in the Bush Administration, almost every key position dealing with the Mideast is filled with ardent neo-conservative advocates of Gen. Sharon's expansionist Likud Party.
President George Bush's policies are almost identical to those of PM Sharon. The view here in European diplomatic circles is that Sharon and his Likud Party now steer US Mideast policy, and are bent on turning the US against Europe, which is seen on Israel's right and among its US supporters as pro-Arab.
Recently, senior members of Israel's defense and security establishment took the unprecedented step of publicly accusing Sharon of sabotaging peace efforts and leading Israel into unending strife. They are correct.
So are demographers who report that today, in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, Jews and Arabs are nearing equality in numbers.
Given the high Arab birth rate, some Likudniks urge Israel either conduct ethnic cleansing, or impose apartheid whereby Arabs have no real voting power, and are confined to reservations.
Finally, to retain the Occupied Territories, and still remain a democracy, Israel will have to accept a secular state with equal rights for Jews and Arabs.
Foreign Correspondent
Foreign Correspondent
