Destination Geneva
After the signs on the roadmap pointed to failure, the Swiss-sponsored accord has a real fighting chance, writes John Whitbeck*
The "Geneva Accord" formally signed on 1 December deserves the active and whole-hearted support of everyone who genuinely cares about Israelis, Palestinians and peace.
This "virtual" permanent-status peace agreement -- a prodigious, detailed document -- contains all the fundamental substantive compromises and trade-offs which have long been recognised to be necessary in any negotiated peace agreement conceivably acceptable both to most Israelis and to most Palestinians, as well as carefully considered procedures and timelines for implementation.
Naturally, neither side would realise all of its dreams under the Geneva Accord. It would not implement all of the Palestinians' rights under international law. However, Palestinians should recognise that if they were to reject peace on this basis it would be vastly more likely that the Zionist project would be carried through to its logical conclusion -- the total ethnic cleansing of the entire indigenous population of Palestine -- than that they would ever achieve all of their rights under international law.
Israelis would have to settle for 78 per cent of historic Palestine, relinquish the dream of carrying the Zionist project through to its logical conclusion and accept Palestinians as human beings entitled to basic human rights as their permanent neighbours, but they would not have to relinquish any of their rights under international law. Israelis should recognise that if they were to reject peace on this basis they would be opting for an open-ended fight to the finish between a few million Israeli Jews and over a billion Muslims. Any true friends of Israel, Israelis and the Jewish people should shout out loudly and clearly that, in any long-term perspective, this would be a catastrophically bad choice.
Efforts to achieve peace through bilateral negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian governments have failed, and there is no reason to hope that they will ever succeed. Appeals to the United States or the United Nations to impose a solution on the parties will, for reasons of American domestic politics, remain unanswered.
The Geneva Accord offers another, more promising way forward. First, prominent peace-oriented Israeli and Palestinian politicians, while out of government, negotiate and sign a comprehensive and implementable peace agreement. Then they appeal to the Israeli and Palestinian peoples to bring to power governments that will implement the peace agreement already reached.
The hope, verging on a likelihood, is that, if a potential coalition of Israeli political parties were, in an election campaign, to offer the Israeli electorate a completed, pre-agreed peace agreement with terms close to the best that Israelis could rationally hope for and a clear choice between a prompt and permanent peace on those terms or more of the same (or worse), a majority of Israelis would choose peace.
Israel is not legally obligated to hold new elections for several years. However, early elections have been the rule rather than the exception in Israel. Ariel Sharon is currently being investigated for financial crimes. The next Israeli elections may not, in fact, be years away, and the Geneva Accord, if widely supported, might bring them closer.
Even those who believe that the "roadmap" was conceived with good intentions should by now recognise that it was misconceived, leads nowhere and should be set aside. The Geneva Accord must become "the only game in town". Delay in implementing it will not improve the choices but only add to the toll of death and destruction -- and not only in Israel and Palestine. The world cannot afford to miss this opportunity. The actual achievement of a decent and honourable Israeli- Palestinian peace would do more than any other imaginable international development to reverse the current trends towards increased violence and terrorism and spiralling anti- American and anti-Israeli sentiment throughout the world.
* The writer is an international lawyer who publishes frequently on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
