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Tal Cohen
Eitan Haber
Tal Cohen

Right kind of silence

Secret talks with Palestinians far away from limelight are the way to go

It will happen on a sunny morning (or on a rainy evening,) during an interview with one of the TV networks. The prime minister will mumble something, and the interviewer will immediately pounce on it. “Yes,” Ehud Olmert will say then, “we are currently in the final stages of negotiations with the Palestinians…”

 

From that moment on, a commotion will develop around the world, and especially in Israel. Journalists who will be insulted that they were not a party to the secret will settle the score with Olmert and his government. Others will mutter a “well done” and go on to look into the details. Is this good for the Jews? Or is it bad?

 

Olmert has learned and now knows what previous prime ministers knew or learned: Such sensitive negotiations cannot be managed under the limelight. Therefore, we should be praising the parties to the talks, who understand the responsibility well and are not “leaking” anything (for the time being.) Leaks have killed previous negotiation attempts.

 

What is interesting in this entire secret tale is that every baby in Israel and every child in Palestine knows today already the Israeli price and the conditions for talks and for their completion. It seems that there will be no surprise in any of the core issues of those talks; perhaps just minor, marginal changes.

 

Olmert can do it 

Everyone has known for a while now that at the end of the day Israel will shrink to the 1967 borders plus the “large settlement blocs,” more or less, that Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods will remain Arab under Arab rule, that we shall have two states for two peoples here (which may propose that Arab Israelis choose between those two states,) that Palestine will be demilitarized of heavy weapons, and that Israel may be allowed to monitor the new state’s aerial and maritime traffic.

 

What else? This is about it. What’s missing? The leader who has matured to the point of uttering a Ben Gurion-style declaration - I don’t know what the people want, but I know what the people need – and do the deed.

 

Ehud Olmert? Yes, he’s capable of it, also because he tends to take big decisions, and also because he would apparently like to enter the annals of history because of a great deed – and what is greater than a final-status peace deal with the Palestinians?

 

Therefore, if it is true that talks with the Palestinians are being held secretly these days, we should prepare for the possibility that one day this will surprise at least some of us. But there’s another possibility: An announcement that the talks have failed. Who is wise enough to know?

 


פרסום ראשון: 02.20.08, 19:30
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