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World heavyweights lend their
support
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - If the success of the unofficial
Israeli-Palestinian peace plan launched amid great
fanfare in Geneva on Monday were dependent on
international goodwill, it could be implemented
tomorrow.
With three Nobel Peace Prize laureates
- including former US president Jimmy Carter - in
attendance, as well as messages of support sent from
leaders from around the world, including a video hookup
with former South African president Nelson Mandela, the
so-called Geneva Initiative was signed by former
ministers Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo before more
than 300 Israelis and Palestinians.
But the
question that remains to be answered is whether the
initiative, as well as a parallel citizen's petition,
known as the "People's Voice" project, initiated by
former Israeli intelligence chief Ami Ayalon and a
prominent Palestinian leader, Sari Nusseibeh, can
generate sufficient international and domestic pressure
to achieve a breakthrough for both sides.
"We
are saying to the world: 'Don't believe those who tell
you that our conflict is unsolvable'," urged Beilin, who
served as justice minister under the Labor-led Israeli
governments of the 1990s. "Don't try to help us manage
the conflict. Help us to end it."
"We cannot
wait while the future of our two nations slides deeper
into catastrophe," warned Rabbo, former information
minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and a
long-time collaborator of its president, Yasser Arafat.
The detailed, 50-page initiative, based largely
on official peace talks held in Taba, Egypt, just before
the Labor Party was voted out of office in January 2001,
was completed in October and has been circulating since,
drawing support from prominent global figures, including
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, British
Prime Minister Tony Blair and US Secretary of State
Colin Powell.
The People's Voice, which has been
signed by some 200,000 Israelis and Palestinians, has
also drawn favorable comment from US Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the principal proponent of the
US war in Iraq and widely considered the highest-ranking
neo-conservative hawk in the administration of President
George W Bush.
Nonetheless, Washington
maintained a discreet silence on the two plans on
Monday, apparently fearful that anything it said could
upset the current diplomatic mission to Israel - the
first in several months - aimed at getting Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon and his new Palestinian
counterpart, Ahmed Qurei, to resume peace talks.
The initiative calls for the creation of a
Palestinian state roughly defined by the Green Line that
marked Israel's borders before the Jewish state
conquered East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip in the 1967 war. Jewish settlements close to the
border would be incorporated into Israel in exchange for
comparable territory in Israel being turned over to the
Palestinians. Others would be abandoned or absorbed by
Palestine.
Palestinian refugees would have the
right to return to the new Palestine or opt to be
resettled with compensation and rehabilitation
assistance in third countries. A few would be permitted
to return to their homes in Israel, subject to Israel's
agreement. The Palestinian state would also be
demilitarized.
As to the contentious issue of
Jerusalem, Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem would
become the capital of Palestine; each side would govern
its holy sites with guarantees of access by members of
all religious faiths; while a US-led multinational force
would help provide security and ensure the accord's
implementation.
A public opinion survey
sponsored and released last week by the Texas-based
James Baker III Institute and Brussels-based
International Crisis Group found that such a plan has
majority support among both Palestinians and Israelis.
In face-to-face interviews, 53.3 percent of Israelis
said they would support such a proposal, while 43.9
percent said they opposed it. Among Palestinians, the
proportion was 55.6 percent for and 38.5 percent
against.
While Arafat and his ruling Fatah Party
in the PA have not taken a formal position on the plan,
he reportedly encouraged Rabbo in his work and several
other top Fatah officials, including Arafat's top
security official, to attend the Geneva signing.
Sharon, on the other hand, strongly denounced
the plan when it became public, going so far as to
suggest that it constituted treason. But after Powell
and Wolfowitz indicated they support such initiatives,
the prime minister muted his remarks, leaving it to his
right-wing ministers to lead the charge against it.
In this, they have been supported by US
neo-conservatives - apart from Wolfowitz, who has long
voiced more sympathy for the plight of Palestinians than
his ideological comrades - and leaders of the Christian
Right, who have attacked the Initiative.
New
York Times columnist William Safire wrote last week that
Sharon had nothing to worry about since he "is backed up
by a US president who has shown he understands the value
of patience and courage in the face of terror".
Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, who often
acts as a mouthpiece for hardline pro-Likud officials in
the administration, said the initiative amounts to a
"suicide note [for Israel] - by a private citizen on
behalf of a country that has utterly rejected him
politically". He added that Powell's letter of
encouragement to Beilin and Rabbo was a "disgrace".
Still, both plans have support from some
surprising US sources, including Wolfowitz and Powell.
Republican Senator John McCain, normally close to the
neo-conservatives on foreign policy issues, has spoken
favorably of them, as has California Democrat, Senator
Diane Feinstein, one of the most prominent Jewish
members of Congress, and Republican Senator Lincoln
Chafee, a Republican moderate who recently complained
that the administration's "disengagement" in peace talks
was hurting its credibility in Iraq and the rest of the
Arab world.
Outside the United States, current
and former leaders who have taken an interest in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict appear virtually unanimous
behind the plans. Among those who sent messages of
support to Geneva were Blair, French President Jacques
Chirac, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Morocco's King
Mohamad VI and former president Bill Clinton. Former
president Jimmy Carter told the Geneva audience: "The
only alternative to this initiative is sustained and
growing violence."
Fifty-eight former world
leaders also signed a statement endorsing both plans and
noting the critical importance of laying out the basic
principles of a "fair and lasting solution" at the
beginning of the peace process rather than negotiating
incremental steps that gives leverage to "extremists on
both sides".
They also called for the US, the
European Union, Russia, and the United Nations, which
have been trying unsuccessfully to get both parties to
implement a "road map" unveiled 10 months ago, to line
up behind the two initiatives. Signers included former
Finnish presidents Martti Ahtisaari and Kalevi Sorsa;
former Costa Rican presidents Oscar Arias Sanchez and
Jose Maria Figueres; former Swedish prime ministers Carl
Bildt and Ingvar Carlsson; former Brazilian president
Fernando Henrique Cardoso; and former Soviet president
Mikhail Gorbachev.
Former Indian prime minister
I K Gujral; former Australian prime ministers Malcolm
Fraser and Bob Hawke; former South African president F W
de Klerk; former Philippine president Fidel Ramos;
former Ghanaian president Jerry Rawlings; former Polish
prime minister Hanna Suchoka; and former Mexican
president Ernesto Zedillo also endorsed the plans.
Among international officials, former UN
secretary general Boutros Boutros Ghali; former European
Commission president Jacques Delors; former UN High
Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata; former UN
Population Fund director Nafis Sadik; former
Organization of African Unity secretary general Salim
Ahmed Salim, and former UN commissioner for human rights
Mary Robinson also signed the statement.
(Inter
Press Service)
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