Dr. Ron Pundak
Photo: Tzipi Menashe
Third party needed
Intermediary needed in order to get Mideast peace wagon back on track
Eleven years ago to the day, Mahmoud Abbas and Yossi Beilin met in a small office in Tel Aviv. They were presented with the final draft of what would come to be known as the "Beilin Abbas Agreement."
The significance of the second option was that Israel was dictating a basic assumption that the territories occupied in 1967 were not automatically assured to the Palestinian State, but rather they were a disputed issue.
Since 2001, it has been difficult for the two parties to embark on a new path. As time goes by, particularly vis-à-vis the Hamas government and the Israeli government who in return is punishing the entire Palestinian population, the rift between the sides is deepening.
Three days prior to Yitzhak Rabin's murder we had a working draft in hand, which could have served as a basis for a peace settlement. Rabin was assassinated and he never got to see the draft formulated according to his worldview.
When we convened in Stockholm in the summer of 1994 for the first meeting, we debated how to begin. Should we first jointly define the talks' final objectives and then fill in the agreement with content, or should we draft agreements on each point from scratch.
In His Memory
Rabbi Yuval Sherlo
'Peace' policy killed us, but corruption at top more dangerous
This was the option taken by Ehud Barak at Camp David. According to Barak, the Palestinians didn't have a basis for demanding 100 percent of the West Bank, and therefore the negotiations went round in circles without determining the principle that the Palestinian state would be founded upon implementation of resolution 242 according to the Egyptian precedent, land for peace.
Our conclusions differed somewhat. Namely, if we wished to reach an agreement, we should assume that the Palestinian State would be established on all the land. This would be a basic incentive for the Palestinian people.
Doomed to failure
We conferred that such negotiations should also be based on the understanding that the agreement would assure Israel's security; that the borders would be delineated according to various Israeli demographic interests; and that Israel would not be able to make concessions regarding its Jewish character.
All that remained was to negotiate the fine details. And it worked. Five years later the Israeli delegation at Camp David did the exact opposite: Barak refused to use the existing draft, and some say this is what led the negotiations to failure.
Seven Questions
By Ines Ehrlich
Pundak says Barak should stay away from Labor, Sharon no 'leftist' but a realist
Therefore, it appears that it would be easier for the two peoples, particularly the Israelis, to accept a proposal made by the international community that would naturally include strategic assurances.
In the current state of affairs, it is difficult to enter negotiations based on the Stockholm concept. It is far more reasonable for Israel and the Palestinians to attempt to lead an intermediary settlement that would not finalize territorial issues.
Implementation of the Oslo Agreement, during which both sides exploited the settlement because it lacked clarity and had no clearly defined objectives, ultimately led to violent clashes, which proves that in order to reach a solution, a clear image of the current situation is required.
Today, the situation relating to an agreement that would be accepted by both sides is almost crystal clear.
Therefore a Security Council resolution with strong American backing, which would replace Resolution 242, determining that a peace settlement would lead to the founding of a Palestinian State based on the 1967 borders, and with exchange of agreed land at a ratio of 1:1, over an area that would not exceed, say, three percent, would significantly accelerate a peace agreement.
Such a proposal does not have to include an accurate border definition that ought to be ascertained through professional and technical negotiations.
Israeli-Palestinian consent to such delineation would constitute a first step in implementing the Saudi initiative adopted by the Arab league in 2002, and could ultimately lead to real peace to the Middle East.
Ron Pundak is the director general of the Peres Peace Center
