Truth over 'narrative'

The Education Ministry has banned Learning Each Other's Historical Narrative, a high school history textbook designed for both Israelis and Palestinians which aspires to present both peoples' "narratives."

Though we normally oppose book banning and back the free exchange of ideas, including openness to alternative opinions and views, we nonetheless support the Education Ministry's decision. Learning Each Other's Historical Narrative is based on the dangerous post-modernist premise employed by "new historians" and post-Zionists that there are no such things as objective historical truths. This is not the educational message we should be giving to our high school students.

The textbook is the brainchild of late psychologist Dan Bar-On of Ben-Gurion University, who developed therapy that involved meetings between Holocaust victims and children of Nazi criminals, and Sami Adwan, an American-educated Palestinian historian from Bethlehem University who had spent time in an Israeli prison as a Fatah terror suspect before embracing the idea of peace through dialogue.

The two founded the Peace Research Institute in the Middle East and began working on the project nearly a decade ago with six Palestinian and six Israeli history teachers.

Starting with Zionism's inception and ending with the contemporary era, the textbook presents the Israeli narrative on the left side of each page while the identical event is presented from a Palestinian perspective on the right side. In the middle a blank space is left for students' own thoughts. Schools in Jericho and Ramallah have reportedly agreed to use the textbook.

The Sha'ar Hanegev High School began using the textbook this year with a select group of students who opted for an enriched history course. However, the chairman of the Pedagogical Secretariat in the Education Ministry, Zvi Zameret, intervened and barred the school from using it.

Students at Sha'ar Hanegev protested the move. "It is difficult for us to understand the Education Ministry's terrible fear of the textbook, which simply presents positions - Israeli and Palestinian - regarding the conflict," one student said.

However, Learning Each Other's Historical Narrative does not simply present different, equally legitimate positions. The textbook presents falsehood as fact.

For instance, in the "Palestinian narrative," Zionism is defined as "an imperialist political movement" and Israel is blamed for intentionally expelling Palestinians during the 1948 War of Independence.

Zionists may have underestimated the extent of Arab opposition to the creation of a Jewish homeland, but they did not come to Israel with the objective of subjugating and exploiting the Palestinian people. And there never was a concerted Zionist effort to expel Palestinians during the War of Independence. In fact, as historians Benny Morris and Efraim Karsh have shown through painstaking research, the only party systematically interested in "transfer" or "expulsion" in this period was the Arabs.

Teaching such claims as a legitimate "narrative" might tempt us to present blood libels or Holocaust denial as just another "narrative."



AS NEW information becomes available, and new themes and nuances become plain, Israel has a vital imperative to continually re-examine its own history and teach it honestly to its children. A critical reading of the "Palestinian narrative" is also important - in good part because it helps us to understand the extent the Palestinian distortion of reality and thus contextualize Palestinians' sometimes violent refusal to recognize the Jewish people's right to self-determination alongside a Palestinian state, as advocated and provided for by the UN's November 29, 1947 partition plan.

But we must be careful to ensure that our high school students do not confuse fiction with fact, distortion with reality. Learning Each Other's Historical Narrative blurs the line between the two.

Truths and absolute objectivity are commodities in short supply in this fraught context. But the complexities of the issues must not negate the goal.

The epitome of historical scholarship is not "the presentation of a variety of views to show there is no single historical truth," as Rachel Zamir, a history teacher who used Learning Each Other's Historical Narrative at Rogozin High School in Tel Aviv, put it.

Rather, the objective of history should be the striving for the attainment of historical truth through sincere scholarship and intellectual honesty. That is the message we should be giving our youngsters.

The pope must speak up

In the name of radical Islamic-inspired nationalism, Mideast Christians of all denominations, including Catholics, have faced devastating persecution for their religious convictions. From the Gaza Strip and Egypt to Iraq to Turkey, Christians have been murdered, had their churches burned to the ground and their holy books destroyed, and have been demoted to second-class citizens exposed to libels and exploitation by Muslim neighbors.

Ostensibly with the purpose of addressing these injustices and stemming the tide of a dwindling Christian population in the Mideast, Pope Benedict XVI convened a special Vatican Synod in Rome, composed of about 200 bishops mostly from Muslim countries. Yet these bishops hijacked the synod and issued a statement Saturday that all but ignored the plight of Catholics living in Muslim lands while singling out Israel's "occupation" for special castigation.

One of the synod's leaders, Greek Melkite Archbishop Cyril Salim Bustros, even reiterated anti-Semitic theological positions that contradicted official Catholic positions as stated in Nostra Aetate, a groundbreaking interfaith document drafted in October 1965 during the Second Vatican Council that radically revamped the Church's previous negative views of the Jewish people.

Rabbi David Rosen, the American Jewish Committee's International Director of Interreligious Affairs, has now called on the Vatican to issue a clear repudiation of Bustros's "outrageous and regressive comments." We firmly join him in that call.



IT IS an undeniable fact that the bulk of Christian persecution in the Mideast is perpetrated in the name of radical Islam.

Open Doors, an organization that tracks attacks on Christians, regularly compiles a global "persecution index." North Korea has topped the list for many years.

However, of the top 10 countries on the list, eight are Islamic and three - Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen - are in the Middle East. Egypt and Iraq are also listed in the top 20. The "Palestinian Territories" is ranked 47, cited primarily as a conflict zone and also in part due to the strife suffered by all Gazans, Christians included, as a result of the destruction caused by Operation Cast Lead.

Open Doors takes pains to note, however, that even before the offensive, which was directed at Hamas terrorists, not Christians, "Many [Christian] believers had already left, pressured by the growing influence of radical Islam..."



SO, IF radical Islam is the principal persecutor of Christians in the Mideast, why was Israel singled out? Apparently, by bashing Israel, Arab Catholic bishops as a persecuted minority in the Mideast are attempting to go out of their way to prove their loyalty to their Muslim brethren.

This is a common socio-psychological phenomenon among Jews in response to anti-Semitism. Some British Jews, for instance, have been known to become more British than the Brits. Some of the most adamant communist ideologues in anti-Semitic Bolshevik Russia were Jews.

So, too, Arab Christians have attempted to emphasize their ethnic and cultural loyalties above their religious affiliation, not only out of strongly heartfelt emotional ties to the Arab people, but also as a way of neutralizing religious tensions.

When secular Pan-Arabism was still in vogue, this tactic was much easier to pull off. Christians such as Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine founder George Habash, who was of Greek Orthodox background, could join forces with Muslim terrorists under the banner of Palestinian nationalism.

However, with the rise of Wahhabism, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaida, radical Shi'ism and other extremist Islamic movements, Arab Christians have had an increasingly harder time integrating into their respective societies. In a push to garner favor among Muslim extremists, the temptation among the bishops to revert to pre-Nostra Aetate anti-Semitic Catholic theology is evidently irresistible.

We can muster some understanding, if not empathy, for Mideast bishops' disingenuous and ultimately self-defeating behavior, which will only perpetuate the persecution of Christians by kowtowing to Muslim extremism. We cannot, however, excuse the Vatican for allowing itself to be hijacked.

Bishops from this region have distorted both church teachings and the facts to sully Israel, while the Vatican has remained silent, in the process turning a blind eye to Christian suffering.

Pope Benedict XVI still has a chance to distance himself from the synod's declarations and make it clear that Bustros's comments deviate from Church teaching. That is the right and necessary thing for the pope to do - not just for Jewish-Catholic relations, but also for the sake of the Middle East's persecuted Christian minority.

Shameful 'honor' killings

Police suspect that "honor" is the motive behind a spate of killings in Lod that have left two men and two women dead.

None of the victims had a criminal record; police believe that the four might have been two couples whose relationships shamed their respective families.

Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch has said that "preventing murders, especially 'family honor killings,' will not be achieved through increased enforcement, but through a change in culture, education, legal deterrence... Police cannot replace health workers, courts, social workers, teachers and parents."

Indeed. We might add, following the lead of Kwameh Anthony Appiah, a philosopher from Princeton University, that some residents of Lod evidently need to revamp conceptions of what constitutes honor and disgrace. As Appiah pointed out in his recently released book The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen, the desire to earn the respect of those we care about motivates us more than any rational argument or religious belief. The best way to prevent men from killing their wives and daughters, and brothers from killing their sisters, is by convincing these murderers and their collaborators and supporters that such acts are despicable and a source of shame. Anything but honor.

The Lod slayings have targeted men as well as women (which might be one of the reasons that police are still not completely sure that they were "honor killings"). But in most such cases, woman alone are punished for besmirching the honor of the family. It is, after all, much easier to bully women.

Misogynistic murders have taken place in Southern Italy, Eastern Europe, and among Hindu and Sikh communities in India. But the infamous practice apparently has its source in pre-Islamic Beduin tribes and is a blight particularly for Muslim countries influenced by this culture. This is true despite the fact that it is utterly forbidden by Shari'a, which underlines how concepts of honor trump religious belief.



IN PAKISTAN, even the Western-educated elites share this warped concept of honor, which shows that education alone is not enough to eradicate it. Until just a few years ago, about 1,000 reported cases were reported there every year. Thankfully, opposition to honor killings in Pakistan has grown in recent years, principally because the practice is beginning to be seen shameful; it hurts Pakistan's standing in the world.

Closer to home, in Jordan and Egypt, dozens of cases are reported each year, according to a November 2006 report by Human Rights Watch. In both countries, the practice is illegal. However, culprits, if punished at all, end up serving no more than six months in prison.

"Extenuating" circumstances include perpetrating the murder when in a state of rage, or in response to even a baseless suspicion of an illicit sexual act. Jordan's and Egypt's penal codes constitute law in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, respectively, and reflect identical societal norms. Palestinian women who report abuse to the Palestinian Authority confront a system that prioritizes family reputations over females' well-being and lives. PA police and clan leaders "resolve" these cases by letting victims suffer and criminals free.

Is this mindset true to the state that Palestinians dream one day of creating? What is the sense in establishing yet another blinkered Muslim state that permits its own mothers and daughters to live in fear?



ARAB ISRAELIS, meanwhile, also continue to maintain a warped conception of honor, as the Lod slayings and numerous other honor killings make clear. Fear of punishment by Israeli law has not eradicated the practice. Perhaps police are partially to blame for tending to view the phenomenon as an internal Arab matter that does not require police intervention.

Only a radical moral relativist can see honor killings as a legitimate cultural, expression. This strain of moral relativism in Europe has made it easier for Turks, Afghans, Moroccans and other immigrant groups to import honor killings, sparking a debate over what some call the transformation of Europe into "Eurabia." Just this week, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that multiculturalism had "utterly failed."

But as Appiah has pointed out, punishment, rational arguments, better police enforcement and education alone will not stop honor killings.

Promoters of this despicable practice must be defamed, and even ridiculed if need be, by peers and others whose respect they seek, until they come to the realization that by performing honor killings they are bringing upon themselves and upon others associated with them nothing but shame.

No contradiction between 'Jewish' and 'democratic'

Last week's cabinet decision to require non-Jews seeking Israeli citizenship via naturalization to take an oath of loyalty to a "Jewish and democratic" state has aroused a great deal of controversy. In response to some constructive criticism, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has now called to amend the law so that those eligible for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return would also have to take the oath.

Netanyahu's move was designed in part to reassure those ineligible for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return, particularly Arabs, that they will not be expected to take on any extraordinary burdens of conscience.

In truth, it is unclear what precisely is so burdensome about acknowledging a principle already anchored in the Balfour Declaration, the UN partition plan, Israel's Declaration of Independence, as well as the 1992 Basic Law: Human Freedom and Dignity and Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation. Nevertheless, it is only fair that all who request Israeli citizenship, whether eligible under the Law of Return or not, be obligated to undergo an identical acceptance process.

Some critics, such as MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List - Ta'al), have said that demanding an oath of loyalty to a Jewish and democratic state is not only burdensome but is also downright racist. Thousands gathered on Saturday in Tel Aviv with a similar sentiment, and chanted "no to fascism, yes to democracy."

Adopting such an extreme position prevents constructive dialogue.



THERE IS no inherent contradiction between the terms "Jewish" and "democratic." Israel's "Jewishness" is by virtue of the fact that the majority of people living here are Jews who share a common religion, culture, history and national identity, including nearly two millennia of Jewish yearning to return to their land. They also share the lesson of the Holocaust, the tragic consequence, in part, of Jews' lack of sovereignty.

Like other peoples, including the Palestinians, Jews have the right to self-determination in their own sovereign state, where they can formulate their own policies, produce their own unique culture and protect themselves.

But Israel is also democratic in the sense that minorities' rights, such as freedom of speech and press, freedom of religion and even the right to political representation in the Knesset, are carefully protected. Admittedly, more must be done to provide Arab Israelis with equal opportunities and access to state resources. Doing so would strengthen, not detract from, Israel's Jewish character. Pursuing peaceful relations with non-Jews is a central Jewish value.



MORE PERTINENT criticism of the loyalty oath bill has focused on its timing and the way it has been presented. The proposal comes against the backdrop of legislation such as the Nakba Law, which denies state funding to organizations that mark Israel's Independence Day as a nakba (catastrophe) and a failed bill by Yisrael Beitenu that would have forced every citizen of Israel to take an oath of loyalty and perform military or national service.

Though it is an amendment to immigration policy, the loyalty oath is perceived by many in the Arab Israeli population as an attempt, as Hebrew University law professor Ruth Gavison put it, "to exclude all Arabs from symbolic membership in Israeli's political community."

Nonetheless, as Gavison also pointed out, avoiding the use of the term "Jewish and democratic" when it is relevant, such as when an individual applies for Israeli citizenship, might create the false impression that the State of Israel's leaders do not view these fundamental characteristics as important.

What is plainly mandated here, as the presumably protracted process of legislating the oath plays out, is an intensified dialogue with Arab Israeli leaders, to endeavor - through both words and deeds - to assure the Arab population that a Jewish and democratic state will protect their individual rights.

Arab Israelis, meanwhile, should be encouraged to make more efforts to integrate into Israeli society. Performing national service is one central way. Citizenship, after all, entails not only benefits but a willingness to undertake obligations and responsibilities.

No to unilateralism

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas raised the possibility, during an Arab League meeting in Libya on Friday, of abandoning peace talks with Israel and turning to the UN Security Council and to the US to receive recognition for an independent Palestinian state delineated by the pre-1967 borders.

Israeli government officials ruled out this possibility as "unrealistic" and a "mirage."

Notwithstanding the Israeli officials' dismissive response to Abbas's threat - issued after Israel refused to extend a 10-month moratorium on new construction on the settlements in Judea and Samaria - the gambit of a unilateral declaration on the creation of a Palestinian state on territory presently under Israeli control is, unfortunately, looking increasingly possible. Supreme efforts should be made to prevent this from happening.

In February, PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, speaking at the Herzliya Conference, outlined a plan, first made public in August 2009, to establish unilaterally a de facto Palestinian state by August 2011. By that time, according to Fayyad, whom President Shimon Peres has compared to David Ben-Gurion, "the reality of [a Palestinian] state will impose itself on the world."

The Quartet (the US, EU, UN and Russia) has supported aspects of Fayyad's plan, as have international donors.

The concept of a "facts on the ground" approach to the creation of a Palestinian state is a radical departure from Palestinian nationalism's advocacy of a windfall success through violence or international diplomacy. Rather than seeking an impossible military victory over Israel or waiting for the sudden achievement of a major peace treaty, the state-building program seeks to create Palestine step by step.

Pro-Zionists such as Elliott Abrams, former deputy national security adviser for global democratic strategy in the Bush administration, have praised this "bottom up" approach to realizing Palestinian national self-determination. It is seen as a way to achieve a breakthrough in Middle East peace where two decades of Palestinian- Israeli negotiations have failed and unilateral Israeli withdrawals have led to the creation of terrorist enclaves in south Lebanon and Gaza.

Once a Palestinian state is created that is capable of self-government, maintaining law and order and preventing terrorism against Israel, proponents argue, a final-status agreement with Israel will be easy to attain.



THE PROBLEM with this approach is that it carries with it the danger that, at some point, the Palestinians will be tempted to make a unilateral declaration of independence without first reaching a final-status agreement with Israel.

Fayyad has said that his state-building plan "is intended to generate pressure" on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. This apparently means that if Israel does not acquiesce to its demands on issues such as borders, security arrangements and Jerusalem during peace negotiations, the PA can always force Israel's hand through a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state along the pre-1967 lines.

Such a move would strike a terrible blow to what little confidence Israel has in the PA's leadership. No Israeli government would withdraw from the West Bank or parts of Jerusalem as a result of a unilateral Palestinian declaration or a UN resolution. Instead, Israel would be forced to tighten security around Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria. In parallel, the failure of Fayyad's bid would inevitably lead to the rise in the West Bank of Hamas, which would persuasively argue that violence and terrorism are the only means of achieving national liberation.

Though the PA should continue to institute reforms, build government institutions and plan new towns such as Rawabi, there is no substitute for negotiations - for dialogue, compromise and a commitment to long-term reconciliation. The US should make it absolutely clear to the Palestinians that it opposes any unilateral moves.

Such a US commitment, moreover, should not merely be a carrot used to entice Israel into extending the building moratorium, as reported in recent days, but as a fundamental principle guiding the process of achieving a two-state solution.

The Palestinians, too, must realize that only through negotiations can a lasting peace be achieved. Perhaps internalizing this fact will encourage the PA to devote more energies to convincing the Palestinian people of the need for a negotiated peace agreement with Israel.

For better or for worse, Israelis and Palestinians must learn to live peacefully, side by side in their own autonomous states. UN resolutions or unilateral declarations won't achieve this end. Only face-to-face talks and dialogue will do so.

A legitimate pledge

 




If all goes as expected, the cabinet on Sunday will approve an amendment to the Citizenship and Entry Law that emphasizes Israel's status as both "Jewish" and "democratic." If passed into law, naturalizing citizens who are not Jewish, such as West Bank Palestinians who marry Arab Israelis and apply for Israeli citizenship, will be obligated to pledge allegiance to the State of Israel as a "Jewish and democratic state." Presently one need only pledge an oath of loyalty to "the State of Israel."

There are those who would claim that there is an inherent contradiction between "Jewish" and "democratic." MK Ahmad Tibi (Ra'am-Ta'al), for instance, says the amendment would anchor in law Arab citizens' subordinate status in Israel.

A state cannot be both Jewish and democratic at the same time, he claims. Democratic values, Tibi and other post or anti-Zionists argue, dictate the creation of a state "for all its citizens" without any special treatment for one particular group. The Jewish Agency, the Law of Return and national symbols such as Hatikva must be scrapped to make room for a truly democratic state that gives equal expression to all disparate cultures, religions and national identities.

We believe, however, that there is no inherent contradiction between the two.

Israel was created by Jews for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust - which was the concrete example of the terrible consequences of Jews' lack of sovereignty. The modern sovereign state is the culmination of millennia of Jewish yearning and exile. The Jewish people are connected by a common religion, culture, history and national identity.

Like other peoples, including the Palestinians and the nearly two dozen Arab countries, Jews have the right to self-determination in their own sovereign state that protects its unique national attributes. That's why Palestinians, who one day, with Israeli support, will have their own sovereign state, will have to drop their demand for the "right of return" for Arab refugees who chose or were forced to leave Israel during the 1948 War of Independence. If this right of return were implemented, it would mean the demise of Israel as a Jewish state by destroying the present Jewish majority.



The role of democracy, meanwhile, is to ensure that while the Jewish people's political sovereignty is actualized, non-Jewish or non-Zionist minorities' rights, such as freedom of speech and press, freedom of religion and even the right to political representation, which MK Tibi and other Arab MKs enjoy, are carefully protected.

While Jews' multiple identities as a religious group, a nation, an ethnic group, and their connection of nationhood with a particular territory set them apart from other peoples, their demand for political autonomy is not exceptional. Greece, Armenia and Ireland all have repatriation laws that provide their respective peoples with special rights. In Germany, thanks to Article 116 of the Basic Law, hundreds of thousands of refugees of ethnic German origin or who simply belong to the German culture have been granted the right to automatic citizenship.

The goal of these laws is to maintain these states' unique national identities. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a nation-state without a single dominant culture. What else unifies human beings, provides them with identity and purpose, gives them a sense of belonging? How else can they better give expression to universalistic values such as the fight against world poverty if not through the particularistic framework of the nation-state?

The US comes close to being a nation without a single dominant culture. But even there, prospective citizens are expected to make a pledge of allegiance. As part of the naturalization process they are requested to "renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign" entity and "support and defend the Constitution and laws of the US against all enemies."

Demanding from naturalizing citizens a loyalty oath to a "Jewish and democratic state" is a modest step that is part of a larger campaign to secure recognition for Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people. It is not so much for the prospective citizen - sincerity cannot be coerced - as it is a declaration of purpose by Jews who have returned to their historic homeland.

Ethics in the war zone

Two infantry sergeants from the IDF's Givati infantry brigade face up to a three-year prison sentence for using a Palestinian boy as a human shield.

On January 15, 2009, in the middle of Operation Cast Lead, the two soldiers were searching a building in the Gaza City suburb of Tel al-Hawa while facing gunfire from Hamas militants, when they came across bags and suitcases suspected of being booby-trapped. The two soldiers ordered a boy, who had gathered with family and neighbors in a bomb shelter, to open the bags. Apparently the two soldiers were motivated by the desire to protect themselves from a possible explosion.

"The boy, who feared for his fate and was under duress, wet his pants," wrote the three-judge military court that convicted the two IDF soldiers. "The option of using a civilian, especially a child, was not among the legitimate options at the defendants' disposal," the judges wrote. "Combat is no excuse for applying improper force."



THE JUDGES' ruling is commendable. IDF soldiers are and should be held to the highest moral standards even when Hamas and other enemies of Israel are not. The IDF's scrupulous adherence to war ethics gives Israel the incalculable advantage of justness of purpose. This is true even when terrorists cynically exploit Israeli morality to gain the upper hand on the battlefield. Hamas systematically uses Gaza's civilian population as human shields and purposefully blurs distinctions between militants and non-combatants. The bags discovered by the soldiers could very well have been booby-trapped. Hamas has no qualms about killing its own people along with IDF soldiers.

Within this context the two soldiers' behavior, forbidden by both international war conventions and the IDF's own rules of engagement, can at least be understood, if not condoned, as a failed attempt to meet the nearly insurmountable challenges of fighting asymmetric, unconventional warfare in densely populated residential areas.

Judging from recent reports of purported "boredom killings" carried out by US forces in Afghanistan and documented revenge killings by allied troops in Iraq, other western armies fare no better, and sometimes much worse, than the IDF in such combat settings.

And if we are brutally honest with ourselves - especially those of us with children, relatives or loved ones serving in IDF combat units - we would have a hard time blaming a soldier, faced with a life threatening situation, who chooses to endanger the civilian population of the enemy rather than himself.

In the specific case of the two Givati soldiers, there were other options besides endangering themselves or Palestinians - options such as evacuating the entire building or blowing up the suspicious bags from a distance.

While the two soldiers should be disciplined, they should not be used as an example "so that others will see and be instilled with fear" as the IDF prosecutor's office argued after the conviction was handed down. Education, not scare tactics, should be used with soldiers who are courageous and selfless enough to risk their lives in combat to protect their country. Nor should the soldiers be obligated to serve a prison sentence. A suspended sentence that could be enacted in the case of future infractions is ample enough.



THE CASE of the two Givati soldiers should be used as an opportunity to restate the IDF's high ethical level and its capacity for self-criticism.

In recent years the IDF has augmented the ranks of the Military Police Investigative Department and has drafted more civilian attorneys into reserve duty to serve as military prosecutors. Judicial officers are consulted before and during the planning stage of counter-insurgency strikes. More emphasis has been placed on war ethics education, including the inculcation of the Spirit of the IDF [ruah tzahal] among troops, which includes an injunction not "to employ their weapons and power in order to harm non-combatants."

There is always room for improvement. And the handling of the case of the two Givati soldiers underlines that the IDF is committed to precisely that improvement.    

Keep talking

The indefatigable special US envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell continues to foster hope, but peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians seem to be falling apart.

Disingenuously, the Palestinians are blaming the breakdown on Israel's refusal to extend its unprecedented 10-month building moratorium in West Bank settlements. This, after the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas deliberately wasted the first nine months of the freeze resisting a resumption of direct talks.

The collapse of peace negotiations would be highly unfortunate; it is in both sides' best interests to reach a negotiated two-state solution - a just, viable and genuine peace.

Since July 2007, when Hamas violently took control of the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has increased cooperation with Israel, especially on security matters. The PA's new willingness to work with Israel was motivated primarily by the real danger posed by Hamas to PA control over the West Bank. But economic and political stability have been an important side effect.

As noted in an International Crisis Group report released on September 7, a sense of order and personal safety, long elusive on the West Bank, have been restored there thanks to this cooperation and thanks to Palestinian forces trained by US security coordinator in the West Bank Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton.

"Militias no longer roam streets, uniformed security forces are back... Initial steps, long overdue, have been taken to reorganize an unwieldy security sector, where overlapping, unaccountable branches had become fiefdoms of powerful chiefs," said the Crisis Group report.

The IDF has thus been able to remove checkpoints and roadblocks that restrict the free movement of goods and people.

This marked improvement in stability and security have led to a resurgence of the Palestinian economy in the West Bank. A World Bank report released last month forecast eight percent economic growth for 2010 and noted a 50% rise in tax revenues. "Anecdotal evidence" quoted in the report pointed to a rise in private investment and entrepreneurship in certain sectors.

The situation is so rosy that World Bank analysts concluded on this optimistic note: "If the Palestinian Authority (PA) maintains its current performance in institution-building and delivery of public services, it is well-positioned for the establishment of a state at any point in the near future."

However, both the Crisis Group and the World Bank warn that stability on the West Bank is unsustainable in the long run without a negotiated peace agreement that leads to a two-state solution.



PALESTINIAN DEMANDS for a complete building freeze in Judea and Samaria - and, strikingly, in Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem across the Green Line, too - seem to be nothing more than an excuse to derail talks. Neither previous US administrations nor the Palestinians expected Israel, as a condition for talks, to stop building designed to accommodate natural population in existing West Bank settlements.

All sides understood that the building of new homes in existing settlements does not further impair Palestinian access to locations on the West Bank nor does it significantly change the population balance. Substantive progress in face-to-face negotiations, by contrast, offers the potential to determine borders - and by extension to reach agreement on who builds where - in the long term.

The Palestinians understandably want the right to self-determination through political autonomy. But for all the talk of "creating facts on the ground," PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad cannot unilaterally declare the establishment of a Palestinian state without Israeli cooperation.

Israel also has an interest in the creation of a peaceful Palestinian state that respects the Jewish people's right to political sovereignty within secure borders. A successful two-state solution would not only bring about a peaceful end to decades of strife, but would also ensure that Israel remains both Jewish and democratic.

The fate of Palestinians and Israelis is linked. Only through dialogue - and a genuine commitment to reconciliation by both sides - can we hope to find a solution.