Peace can't be bought on the layaway plan

"I hope Sharon doesn't evacuate a single outpost. I hope another quarter million Jews settle in the territories." Those aren't the words of a Yesha council member. It was Michael Tarazi, an adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team, who said them. He doesn't believe it's possible to reach an agreement any longer on dividing the country along the 1967 lines. If it were up to him, the intifada would have long since been over - and possibly never taken place.

Tarazi proposes to let Israel sow as many settlements as it wants, and wait patiently until the Palestinians and Jews become one entity. He is convinced that in another 10 to 20 years, the world will impose a one person-one vote system on Israel. Then, what happened to the apartheid regime in South Africa will happen to Zionism; a Palestinian will be elected to head the new entity in the 1947 borders.
[more]

Sharon plans to drive down another road
Israel must make the peace of the brave, not the bully, writes Middle East expert Avi Shlaim

As a soldier and politician, Sharon has always championed violent solutions. He has yet to learn you cannot have a winner and a loser in a peace process; that resolution of a conflict requires two winners. Nor does he understand Israel ought to end the occupation, not as a concession to the Palestinians, but as a favour to itself if it wishes to preserve its democratic and Jewish character. As Marx observed, a nation that oppresses another cannot itself remain free.

Sadly, the handshakes in Aqaba that gave rise to so much hope have but a slim chance of leading to a real breakthrough. What Sharon is prepared to concede falls short even of the most minimal Palestinian expectations of independence and statehood. It is the peace of the bully, rather than the peace of the brave. The irony is that Sharon is one of the moderates in an ultra-nationalist government.

With him and his party representing Israel, the quartet's road map is likely to lead nowhere slowly.
[more]

The settlers - a dated phenomenon

The settlers' large demonstration in Jerusalem last week, like the statements made and written by their leaders over the weekend, are evidence of severe ideological distress: They have no argument with which to convince Israeli society to continue to pay the cost stemming from their insistence on living in the heart of the Palestinian population, aside from their faith in divine promise, coupled with the premise that Arab undertakings must not be trusted.

Gone are the claims in all seriousness that the settlement establishment deep in the West Bank and Gaza Strip add to Israel's security. The assumption that the settlement enterprise has the power to realize the aspiration for a Greater Israel has also faded into thin air. Israeli society, for the most part, yearns for peace and accepts the expected establishment of a Palestinian state and a withdrawal (at least in part) from the territories. The way of the left is winning, though the left isn't reaping the credit for the success.
[more]

Settlers ready to give up homes
In the shadow of Jenin, some Jews are defying Israel's militant mood and asking to be evacuated

Nazeeh and the Olive Grove

On Israel's separation fence