You aren't and we know it, as well as you . The rest of the jokers coming here meddling in our affairs are pretending not to know it. If Obama wants to leave a "legacy" he can rest assured by now, he's already done that: USA & World in shambles will be his Epitaph.

Hi Dan!! Absolutely fantastic article. Full of truth!! It is refreshing to see an article such as this. You have great insight and a solid understanding of what is going on and the ludicrous position of the PA. I am constantly amazed at their abject stupidity. No other country on the face of the earth would ever put up with this nonsense. Especially all of the countries that criticize Israel all the time. If I am ever in Israel I will look you up and take you for an icy cold beer, a shot of single malt or just a nice good cup on java. It would be so enjoyable to sit with someone extremely intelligent and chat......many blessings...Gregg Bowman

We sit 20 years ago without preconditions, and reached nothing, as you 'as Israelis' want the time not a solution and you know why.

to demand that ALL areas demanded by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to be their future state be cleansed of all illicit weapons. This includes of course Gaza where all light arms, explosives, mortars, rockets and missiles must be decommissioned, all of them.

When did you sit, let alone “without preconditions”? First you stuck to your three “no’s” and insisted the ’48 lines were only armistice lines, no politics involved. Now you sit with preconditions. You convince people you are normal as your telling of history, ad interminum, is false. But it doesn’t work with Israel. Your entire post is garbage. Sorry, but your lies are too transparent for people who pay attention.

Educate your left to begin with.. Meretz, Labor and Tnouah and Yesh atid are the ones who are living in a dream world.

Before any of these are even thought about, the most important thing to do is to have a new Palestinian election. I would like to see an open Palestinian election in the west bank with no restriction on who is running and for what party. If we are negotiating for peace, I would really like to see the representation of who we are negotiating with. Oh and just to make things equally ridiculous, the elected palestinian leader has to do the chicken dance and post it on youtube.

Peace for Peace!! Come to the table and directly, without preconditions and based on UN Security Council Resolution, 242, 1967, begin to talk peace. We have made concessions and gestures. Enough!! It is time you, who have not made a single gesture, one concession or has not been asked for preconditions, simply sit down and talk peace.

What is Israel's bottom line? If Israelis want to stall until there is a massive war that Israel loses, then by all means set many "preconditions." Or get your egos out of your rear holes and wake up to reality! It is COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE for Israel to survive long term, on raw military power and the longer time goes on with no agreement with the neighbors, the less likely Israel will survive or even get a reasonable deal. "Might makes right" ALWAYS FAILS and ALL empires disintegrate. Just look at the last 10,000 years of human history - Israel will NOT be the exception! In fact just look at the history of the Jewish people, every time they showed the extreme hubris Israelis currently demonstrate, Jews have been punished. This time will be no different unless Israelis get their egos out of their rear holes and negotiate. This isn't some kids game, but for the life of a nation. For supposedly "smart" people you sure act dumb.

Stop referring to the WB only as historical Palestine and claiming Israel wants it all. Historical Palestine (such as it was) includes the East Bank too. Jews were not permitted to settle there. You are negotiating to get an additional share of Palestine from the land allocated to the Jewish people and STOP claiming otherwise.

Name the only people, the only language and the only nation in history to be utterly destroyed and dispersed only to reappear in its original location? Herbrew language, Jewish people and the nation of Israel. Throughout history, every single nation/empire that has come against Israel has disappeared, yet Israel lives again.

The Arabs honor ALL their previous agreements and fulfill their obligations. Very simple and workable. They have a lot to chose from considering the have violated every single provision of all treaties they have ever signed and never fulfilled a single obligation for even one day.

israel should claim jordan valley, most of west bank and reuben's land on east bank. Not long term presence on jordan valley, but sovereignty. israel should also encourage arab emigration, and run education campaigns on tv educating arabs that they are the occupiers.

And we know roughly speaking what the final deal will be: a border more or less in keeping with the security fence, no palestinian right of return west of the new border, a non militarized Palestine with security arrangements for Israel in the Jordan valley and a special status for the old city. There are details and timing issues, issues of air space and water to be worked out but if the will exists a deal can be agreed upon.

You might also look up the "Taba Summit" of less than 20 years ago. The talks, which both sides claimed brought us close to an agreement, were interrupted by an election. Following the election Israel's new government renounced those talks and ended the negotiation process. That's a matter of public historical record. In any case, from both a logical and practical perspective, negotiations without preconditions is absurd. Dan Calic demonstrates this admirably with his following proposed statement to the PA from Israel: "The first and most important precondition is for you to drop all your preconditions." Think about it.

The land east of the Jordan was never intended to be a part of the Jewish Homeland nor was the Jewish Homeland envisioned by the Balfour Declaration supposed to be an independent Jewish State. These are founding myths. Read the Churchilll White Paper which informed the League of Nation's vote approving the mandate as well as the League's subsequent vote separating Jordan from the rest of the Mandate. Read the mandate itself which clearly envisioned a bi-national, not a Jewish state. And lastly read the partition plan which Israel accepted. The Palestinians in the occupied territories are there as of right, not sufferance. It is their land. End of story.

Just as Israel chose it's own name, the Palestinian people (defined for convenience as those people who were living west of the Jordan under the British Mandate) can call themselves whatever they want Who are you to suggest otherwise?

...Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)'s Palestinian Authority. The second, permitting their armed men to come from Tunis and elsewhere while equipping them with guns. The third, committing to the idea that this autonomous region of the Arabs in Samaria, Judea, the Jordan Valley and Gaza will set up a state. One is awaiting, after nearly 20 years of concessions, to see a single gesture of good will made by the PLO's leadership, one.

The two ketchup queens Theresa Heinz and Kerry have been very effective in using Tides Foundation moneys in destroying western civilisation.

I commend Mr. Dan Calic for his excellent editorial. Preconditions can never have a place in peace negotiations. When time is no more, and history has ended, Jerusalem will be the central city of the Jews.

Israel never began implementing a phased withdrawall from Area C nor removed settlements it promised to remove or prevented a hundred more from being been built. There is enough blame to go around on both sides. Bottom line is that the Palestinians are legally and morally entitled to their own state on the occupied territories west of the Jordan River while Israel it entitled to secure borders. Acceptance of these principles are implicit preconditions for any negotiations.

Simple. Because almost every one of our politicians is corrupt to the bone. When Kerry sits down with them behind closed doors, he doesn't say "we're here to talk peace". Instead he says "If you don't play by our rules, those nasty pictures, bank account details, taped recordings, or whatever the skeleton in the closet is, might become tomorrow's front page news. Now do I have your attention". To which they ALL reply: "Yes Sir".

As a friend of Israel, and as a Brazilian Christian from Lebanese ascendence, I greet Dan Calic for his excellent article. That's all. While Arab Palestines don't recognize in fact, and respect their Jewish neighbor, peace will be impossible. About Jerusalem, it is Israeli eternal capital, but I Arab quarters could have administrative autonomy. And bad terrorism must be defeated forever.

"Palestinians" are malevolent poseurs whose goal is to mass murder Israeli Jews and steal our sole tiny Homeland. This is not a matter of opinion. They say so every single day on PA TV, in their covenants and everywhere else. They don't even try to hide their genocidal intent. There is nothing for Israel to negotiate with "Palestinian" poseurs about. This tiny land belongs to Jews. They must go.

As for the genocidal "Palestinian" poseurs: Israel should no more negotiate with them than Churchill should have negotiated with the Nazis.

And 1967 is just a starting point.....show the Palestine people's history.....or you get nada.

This is a poorly written article, more of a nationalistic rant against the Palestinian leadership for their approach to the peace process rather than any intelligent critique of it. This is to be expected though because for Dan Calic to be writing about the peace process is strange considering he is a supporter of the messianic Settlers, and along with Hagai Seagal writes the most nauseatingly simplistic, rant-like and poorly written articles on Ynet. Regardless of your opinion about whose to blame for the stalled peace process we all agree that negations need to begin soon and fast, the negotiations for the negotiations should cease and a genuine two-state solution should be negotiated and implemented to fulfil the dreams of Zionists and Palestinian nationalists alike before a bi-national state comes into being an nobody has what they want.

It's a two way street. Israel could play the same game with us if they wanted to. For example they could point out that Obama really was born in Kenya. The downside is that the mainstream news media is controlled. They already know and won't print it. Corruption among politicains is pretty much universal.

There will be no binational state. "Paletinians" are a declining minority in Israel. Many highly credible American and Israeli studies prove this. Israel need merely stop ALL obscene aid to Fictional Palestine, in the form of food, materials, money and electricity. In a short while, "Palestinians" would flee in droves.