Submitted by Susan Behrend, Oct 11, 2007 14:47

Why has George Bush ignored Bill Clinton's mistake in this kind of forced negotiations? This is madness. The Israelis and the Palestinians need time for a cooling off period, and a slow return to some kind of basic trust. A rush to make a deal that neither side can live with is a recipe for violence. Consider that Israelis will never accept giving up significant parts of Jerusalem, and Palestinians have been told for years that they will go "home" to Jaffa and Haifa, and you see the problem. Some things will not be acceptable to the people who have to live with the deal. So if the preconditions for a conference are an agreement on things that will never be acceptable, what is this but the prelude to another outbreak of violence? Negotiations require willingness to accept less than 100% of your demands, something no Palestinian leader has ever been willing to do. Israelis have already made concessions, painful concessions, and despite a lot of public dissension they have been able to make it stick ( the main example was leaving Gaza). But Palestinian leaders never talk about concessions, except in private to Western leaders, never in public, and never in Arabic. Therefore it does not mean anything. If a Palestinian leader is willing to say in public, and in Arabic, look we are going to have to accept Israel's existence. We are going to accept some large settlement blocs in return for a land swap elsewhere. And refugees will be compensated fairly, but they will not go home to Tel Aviv. Then there would be a reason to hold a peace conference. Israelis should demand such a statement from Abbas, in Arabic and in public, or no conference.

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