William Pfaff: An unofficial peace plan worthy of support

The unofficial Middle East peace plan unveiled in Geneva on Oct. 12 by former Israeli and Palestinian officials is the first hopeful initiative since the collapse of the Taba peace negotiations in 2001.

It could be even more. This Geneva initiative is a detailed draft settlement, not just another plan of how to get from here to there. It bears no comparison to the road map, a sham from the start. The Israeli government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon never intended to accept the road map, and the Bush administration never intended to enforce it.
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  thanks to Badattitudes Journal

With Whom, About What?
The Beilin Agreement
by Uri Avnery

Throughout the world, the document was well received by all who wish for an end to the conflict. The great hope is that this initiative, like the "revolt of the pilots", represents the end of the era of despair.

The first task of Beilin and his colleagues is to raise the Labor and Meretz parties from their ruins (the Labor party chairman, the birthday darling, has not joined the initiative!) and to set up a strong and combative opposition in the spirit of the document.

To quote Churchill again: This is not the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
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Knesset member urges death for Israeli authors of "Geneva" peace plan

A right-wing Knesset member Tuesday accused high-profile Israeli leftists who drafted an unofficial peace plan with the Palestinians of "treason" and demanded they be sentenced to death or life imprisonment.
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  thanks to Information Clearing House

Background/ Arafat: Dying for peace?

With some Israeli officials privately suggesting that Yasser Arafat must be dead and buried before any real progress toward peace can be made, senior defense, intelligence and operational officers are reportedly gearing up for the aftermath of the chairman's funeral.

But if Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has drawn a cautiously optimistic link between the "removal" of Arafat and fresh chances for peace in the region, the dramatic changes forecast by army planners are anything but hopeful.

In fact, if any one of a range of nightmare scenarios turns out to be true, post-Arafat Israel could be in for a surge of violence dwarfing anything it has seen in three years of relentless bloodletting.
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The swallows are on their way

One swallow does not a summer make, but something is definitely happening in Israel's political swamp. In this season of continuous discontent, there are signs that Israeli society is gradually realizing that things cannot, or at least must not, continue along the path of political barricading, futile military vengefulness, incompetent leadership; in other words, that we cannot go on circumventing every chance for change. Take next week's mayoral elections, for example. It seems this will be the first time in years that the public will be expressing its objections against the administration at the polls, albeit indirectly.
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The One-State Solution

Is Zionism a failed ideology? This question will strike many people as absurd on its face. Israel, after all, is a nation with an advanced standard of living, a high-tech economy and one of the most formidable militaries on earth. In a little over half a century, it has taken in millions of people from far-flung corners of the globe, taught them a new language and incorporated them into a political culture that is nothing if not vigorous. If this is failure, there are a lot of countries wishing for their share of it.

But consider the things Israel has not accomplished. In his 1896 manifesto The Jewish State, Zionism's founding document, the Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl predicted that such a country would be at peace with its neighbors and would require no more than a small professional army. In fact, Zionist settlers have clashed repeatedly with the Arabs from nearly the moment they began arriving in significant numbers in the early twentieth century, a Hundred Years' War that grows more dangerous by the month. Herzl envisioned a normal state no different from France or Germany. Yet with its peculiar ethno-religious policies elevating one group above all others, Israel is increasingly abnormal at a time when almost all other political democracies have been putting such distinctions behind them. Herzl envisioned a state that would draw Jews like a magnet, yet more than half a century after Israel's birth, most Jews continue to vote with their feet to remain in the Diaspora, and an increasing number of Israelis prefer to live abroad. Israel was supposed to serve as a safe haven, yet it is in fact one of the more dangerous places on earth in which to be Jewish.
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