| Talkback | |
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Title: | Is peace impossible | |||
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| Name: | Dan Chazan | | |||
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| City: | State: | Israel | | ||
| The comments of people on the futility and perhaps stupidity of those who work for peace are the result a smug feeling that peace is impossible. Those on the Zionist side feel that all the Palestinians want is to destroy Israel and those on the Palestinian side feel that all Israel wants is to perpetuate the settlment effort eventually displacing the Palestinians. There is only one way to counteract this belief. It is to create a process which will allow people to visualize peace as a real possibility. One way to do so is as follows: 1) Have Israel and the Palestinians agree today that as soon as a final status is negotiated there will be negotiations on a detailed staged implementation plan. Such a plan will proceed only if the Palestinians and Israelis carry out the individual steps of the plan each in his turn. Only if there is backing of both peopls for the plan will it be possible for a weak leader such as Olmert and a disfunctional leader as is Abbas to carry out the plan. 2) Finish in parallel negotiations for a final status shelf agreement 3) Following that negotiate an implementatoin agreement 4) Following that carry out the negotiated implemetation plan No one sided steps outside the implementation plan will be needed, so no large risks will ever be taken by any of the sides. The implementatoin plan itself will involve only small steps at a time with time to see that the other sides has carried out its part. Unlike Oslo where each side had a good reason to believe that the current step is probaly the last step and the Palestinians knew that the negotiations for the final status are kept to the end, in this process, the implementation starts only after all is known. At each step each of the sides must decide whether to carry out the next small step or to stop the process a risk resumption of hostilities. Since each side knwos the other side faces the same choices and since the process ends in the agreed peace, there is a positive payof to carrying out the next step. |
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