Israel needs peaceful talks
Israel is the United States’ strongest ally in the Middle East. It is a democracy where all of its citizens; Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Baha’i, Druze, male and female, white and black, have the same rights under the law. Israel wants peace. With the Oslo Accords in 1993, Israel wanted peace. Prior to the Second Intifada in 2001, Israel wanted peace. In 2012, Israel still wants peace with its Palestinian neighbors and all who can engage in a respectful and peaceful dialogue. In 1979 with Egypt, and in 1994 with Jordan, Israel demonstrated that it can achieve a lasting peace with its Arab neighbors.
Israel completely withdrew from Gaza in 2005, hoping for peace. Israel has numerous times offered the Palestinians nearly 100 percent of the West Bank, with land exchanges, and billions of dollars in response to the Palestinian demand for a right of return. The Palestinians have rejected all Israeli offers and, in the past, refused to even offer a counter-proposal.
Israel imposed a freeze on all settlement development for 10 months in response to a Palestinian demand as a precondition for negotiations. The Palestinians waited nine months into the freeze to return to the negotiating table, and then only to demand an extension of the freeze.
Although many Israelis would prefer to be out of the West Bank, over 70 percent believe that withdrawal without a peace agreement including real security guarantees would leave Israel unacceptably vulnerable. Israel is a country nine miles wide at its narrowest, and its citizens are highly exposed to frequent missile attacks and suicide bombers, creating an untenable environment for work and family life. Palestinian leaders are clear in speeches to their own people that their goal is no Israel at all.
It was the newly founded Palestinian Authority that waged war on the Israeli public after the Oslo accords of 1993. PA Chairman Yassar Arafat rejected the offer of peace made by Prime Minister Ehud Barak that met 98 percent of Palestinian land demands. This was followed by the Second Intifada in 2001, with Palestinian suicide bombers targeting Israeli citizens on a daily basis:
Christmas Day 2001: The Second Intifada had started in August. My husband, Steve, and I had come during the holiday break to visit our son studying at Hebrew University. We were standing on Ben Yehuda St. in Jerusalem, a street full of shops and restaurants normally teeming with tourists and religious pilgrims from all over the world. Now everyone stayed away, avoiding the risk of public places and public transport. The streets were empty, the shopkeepers desperate. The rubble from a recent suicide bombing of a pizzeria that killed 15 civilians, including seven children, served as a sober reminder that anyone in Israel was at risk, anywhere, anytime.
Arafat’s “reign of terror” lasted from 2000-2005, resulting in over 1,000 Israeli deaths.
This past decade, despite a continuing barrage of over 12,000 rockets fired by Hamas and other Islamic militant groups from the Gaza Strip, Israel still sent humanitarian relief and aid into Gaza on a daily basis. During a three-day period this June, over 1,200 truckloads of supplies and goods entered the Gaza Strip from Israel, including those carrying food, humanitarian products, medical supplies, clothing, electrical products, construction materials, gas and animal food.
In the absence of negotiations, Israel is doing what it can to move peace forward. Checkpoints have been closed and roads opened. Palestinian doctors train in Israeli hospitals. Palestinian and Israeli businessmen meet to work together on building markets. However, not everyone is comfortable with this one-on-one cooperation.
A majority of Israelis support a negotiated two-state solution. If the Palestinians do have a genuine desire to gain a state, they need to come to the table willing to sincerely recognize Israel as a Jewish state with a right to exist, and to then be committed to a successful future for all parties involved.