While I appreciate Naomi Chazan's concern over the fate of the two-state solution in her article "Promote negotiations or abandon the two-state solution", something, somehow, somewhere in the classical political approach she exposes sounds to me like déjà-vu jargon. I would have expected a more creative approach and a deeper philosophical understanding of the whole situation from such a highly reputed and distinguished professor of political science.
The Palestinian people in their continued plight badly need the enlightened advice of highbrow Israeli intellectuals capable of reaching new audiences, opening new doors and keeping "windows" open.
What they don't need are ringing alarm bells about "fleeting moments", often starting from false premises, which it is assumed that all Palestinians will gullibly endorse. Among these is the assumption that there was in fact a real "opportunity that emerged after the death of Yasser Arafat, the election of Mahmoud Abbas as the new president of the Palestinian Authority [PA] and the approval of the Sharon disengagement plan".
Moreover, this premise is used to launch another one that holds that the assumed " new opportunity" is "dissipating quickly", and that "unless a concerted effort is made in the next few months to resume negotiations on a permanent settlement to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, it is likely that the door will close firmly on a workable two-state option".
Naomi Chazan has offered us a new term, that of the appearance of a "period of substantial fluidity" after "four years of a deadly stalemate".
While she thankfully uses the word "end of occupation" as being the aim of all declared initiatives, the concept of "asymmetrical" violence seems to be somehow absent in her paradigm, since she uses the old argument of "both communities" as though the occupier and occupied are equal in their plight and symmetrical in their violence:
" ... large majorities in Israel and Palestine are weary of the senseless violence that has yielded little security and no prosperity; even greater numbers are converging around the two-state solution on which has fueled all attempts to resolve the conflict to date".
Her proposed solution to the whole problem is noteworthy and in line with Palestinian aspirations - "the consolidation of a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel". The mechanism to achieve this goal according to Chazan is "full-fledged negotiations leading to a final status agreement, which will formally terminate the conflict".
After accusing Sharon and his doctrine for being the main obstacles to peace (notwithstanding the fact that he has always been the obstacle, an argument that should have logically refuted her first premise that considered the election of Abbas as the golden opportunity after Arafat's disappearance!), Chazan then calls for a coordinated carefully calibrated strategy based on a return to the negotiating table.
The first element of such a strategy is according to Chazan "preventive": it calls for an immediate effort by the international community to freeze Israeli initiatives in order not to prejudice future talks. The second component is "proactive": it envisions the fixing of a firm date for an Israeli-Palestinian conference under international auspices in the fall of this year with a view to agreeing on a timetable for the commencement of negotiations on all outstanding issues.
The "third ingredient" that Naomi Chazan proposes sounds perhaps the most naïve. She calls it "ameliorative" and it involves "the encouragement of multiple encounters between Israelis and Palestinians to begin to break down the layers of enmity and distrust", followed by a "final portion" of the strategy that she calls "innovative". This involves the launching of a series of preliminary meetings to establish the agenda for final status talks.
Finally Naomi Chazan rings the emergency alarm: "Time, indeed, is running out - not only on the two-state option but also on the hopes and expectations of most Palestinians and Israelis". One cannot help but remember such emergency calls and alarms about time running out, which served to pressure the Palestinian leaders into accepting false promises.
Chazan adds: "Only a collaborative salvage operation based on a multi-faceted strategy and a 'multi-layered' group of actors can reverse a trend that threatens to thoroughly destabilize the region and compromise the future of all those involved."
In all honesty, I do not see anything "innovative" in Chazan's proposition to "expand the players" and include a "multi layered group of actors" in the game, unless we go back to square one: back to the 'confidence building' circus that led to Oslo 12 years ago, when the same jargon was used about "windows of opportunity" that were offered to the Palestinian leadership at the time.
The road to real peace should be a less twisted one: the end of occupation. This needs Israelis who can take real risks, drop their privileges, shout to the world and change their leadership. The Palestinians have paid already a very high price, losing lives, land and livelihood. They abound in prison cells and their families are dispersed and they have no time for games, for their whole existence is in "substantial continuous fluidity".
Israelis should first apologize for all that, before returning to the tortuous negotiating table where the same farce is reproduced again and where the occupier imposes his will on the occupied.
Yes, the situation is dangerous, and time is running out, but please let us not again play the same time-consuming and nerve-wrecking old games, with the same old people.
Safia Al Issa is a Palestinian researcher in exile. Acknowledgement to Arab Media Internet Network (AMIN)
Opinion: Of lost 'windows' and 'closed doors': An answer to Naomi Chazan
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