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Triumph of Hope over Experience

(Miami Herald) Uri Dromi - Being a veteran of the Oslo process and someone who has participated in - and arranged - such parties in the past, I reserve for Tuesday's Sharm el-Sheikh summit a measured optimism only. Frankly, it reminds me of what Oscar Wilde said about marriage: "Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience." In the first ''marriage'' between Israelis and Palestinians, celebrated in 1993 on the South Lawn at the White House, once the two parties stopped demonizing each other and started talking to each other, there was suddenly room for a deal. Intelligence, in more than one sense, was pushed aside. My friend, Gen. Yaakov Amidror, who headed the Israel Defense Forces' intelligence-research branch during the Oslo years, still chides me as one of the ''Rabin Boys'' who dismissed his warnings about the bride, Yasser Arafat. He told us that the bride was fooling around with others, namely terrorists. Like deceived husbands, we refused to listen to him, until we caught the bride in the act: it was the affair of the Karine A, the armament ship smuggled under Arafat's orders, that we caught in mid-sea. Now to the second marriage - Abbas's vision of the final settlement with Israel is as radical as was Arafat's. When it comes to Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees, he hasn't suddenly registered as a member of the Zionist movement. But he is pragmatic, and he has people to feed and support. Abbas and Sharon are heading to Sharm el-Sheikh because they understand that in order for their two peoples to stop making each other miserable, they must strike a deal. By going there they indeed allow hope to triumph over their bitter experience. The writer is director of International Outreach at the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem.
2005-02-04 00:00:00
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