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How to Get the Peace Process Going Again

[Daily Beast] Walter Russell Mead - The U.S. needs to try getting "out of the box" on Middle East peace. West Bankers might be willing to settle for the two-state solution. But for refugees huddled in miserable camps in Gaza, Lebanon, or Syria, the right of return to an overpopulated, violent, and poor homeland is not very attractive. Nor do Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank look forward to welcoming hundreds of thousands of "foreign" Palestinians into their camps. Israeli leaders know that even if some Palestinians sign a peace treaty with Israel, violent resistance will continue. Eighty years after partition in Ireland, bombs still sometimes go off in Belfast. Israeli leaders aren't enthusiastic about making territorial concessions that, in the end, won't bring them the kind of security they crave. Many Israelis believe that a two-state solution is desirable in theory, but won't work in practice because there isn't a partner - a Palestinian government that can not only sign the peace but enforce it against the inevitable radicals and extremists that are sure to pop up on the Palestinian side. Washington needs to figure out how to make the deal work better for Palestinians. This can't be about land or the right of return. There isn't any more land to divide, and there isn't any room in pre-1967 Israel for the descendants of the Palestinians who fled more than 60 years ago. That ship has sailed. Working with our friends and allies, the U.S. needs to take the lead in developing workable and dignified solutions to the concrete problems Palestinians face as a way to energize the negotiating process and make both sides more willing and able to make the tough choices they both know lie ahead. The writer is the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.
2009-11-12 06:00:00
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