The majority of the Palestinians, Israelis, Arabs, Jews, Americans, Europeans, and people all over the world as well as global institutions and bodies are in support of an outline that goes as follows:

1. A two-state solution, Palestine alongside Israel, with borders established on international legality defined by UN Resolution 242, with minor mutually agreed-upon adjustments.

2. A shared, open Jerusalem, with the Arab part serving as a capital for Palestine and the Jewish part serving as the capital of Israel.

3. End of occupation and settlements.

4. A fair and equitable solution of the refugee problem, based on international legality, with resettlements, compensation and redress of moral and psychological grievances.

5. End of conflict and a complete cessation of violence between Israel and all Arab States, including Palestine, with open borders and normalized relations for all.

6. A Marshall Plan to rebuild Palestine and provide an underpinning for a lasting peace.

If the question is when do we achieve the solution rather than what kind of a solution are we to expect, it is supremely frustrating to witness the unending murders, the injuries, the demolitions and the sheer destruction and fear the people of both sides must endure before sanity prevails and peace is restored. It is hard to imagine in these days of turmoil, but it is indeed possible, that both people can live, build, enjoy and contribute to humankind.

Palestinian parents should not live in fear that their children will be killed by an Israeli soldier or a missile while walking on the way to school just as Israeli parents should not live in fear that their children will be blown up by a suicide bomber on the bus that takes them to school.

Why is it, we ask, do we have such a congruity of spoken objectives and paucity of implementation? Why is the will of dedicated extremist minorities in each society able to frustrate the will of the majorities and exercise its veto power with spectacular acts of violence against innocent civilians on both sides? Why are we, here in this hall, like so many hundreds of millions across the globe, concerning ourselves so seriously with a conflict that is thousands of miles away in a small piece of land?

There are no easy answers but there are ways to explore and probe, and it is my intention to do just that today.

The problem with history is that it has been around for too long. It has provided arguments, based in fact, fiction or perceived wisdom, for each party to the conflict and even to those who seem to have no axe to grind.

The Palestinian narrative, again in its crudest and most elementary form, is that of their dispossession by an alien, more powerful force with a bogus religious claim to the land. It is a tale of suffering from continued land-grab, dispossession, disinheritance, displacement coupled with powerlessness and with the virtual absence of an organized and effective military. It is oblivious to the suffering of the Jews in Europe and to the Holocaust and innocent of any knowledge of pogroms or Ghettos. All it feels is its own victimization and illegal usurpation of what it once had. A sense of justice violated and dignity insulted infuses and sustains its psychology of resistance. This mix has led to, and will continue to feed, a violent and bizarre phenomenon that has defined the Palestinians like no other people: the phenomenon of suicide bombing and political murder of civilians. Extremists, be they secular or religious, have refused to accept the Israel of 1948 or 1967, and hope to liberate the land from Zionism. They view the Two-State solution as a compromise of the weak and have used all means to frustrate a political compromise.

On the other hand, there is a growing sense of battle fatigue; devastated lives and economies, a sense of fear and despair of a better future for the children: the Palestinians fear that they may never have a state, and some Israelis fear that the future of Israel itself is in doubt. There is genuine concern on both sides for the corrupting and decaying influence of the conflict on both societies and their values.

If history has taught us anything, it has taught us this: Left to their own devices the Palestinians and Israeli will simply not be able to resolve this conflict. Period.

The gross imbalance of power between the parties, the erosion of the political clout of the peace camp in both sides and the depth of hostility that breeds a phenomenon like suicide bombing, and the hardening of Israeli attitudes manifested by tolerance of missiles directed at urban centers, are but a few factors that support such a conclusion. Were it a viable option, the rest of the world, as well as some American Administrations including this one, might wish to take a Rhett Butler approach, to walk away and frankly not give a damn. All serious people, however, realize that this not possible.

Fear, anger, despair, injustice and an almost exclusive sense of victimization on both sides have their most damaging consequences in narrowing the space needed for policy options. Public discourse is stunted, simplistic and crude. Sloganeering has taken the place of honest analysis in many political and media circles. It is easier in this climate to follow the safe course of demonizing and dehumanizing the “other.” To assume the worst and to impugn the motives of the other is much safer than to explore possibilities of compromise and working out solutions, wherein you run the risk of being labeled as naïve at best, and a sell out at worst. Politicians, even the few with courage, are caught in this logic and find it more prudent to assign all blame to the declared enemies on the other side than to forthrightly address their own constituents. The tried and true policies of the past, built on total mistrust with aggressive intent, are much more convenient to pursue and will bring about yet more catastrophes and mayhem. These fundamentally violent policies have born this rotten fruit. Their logic, which traps traditional decision makers on either side, makes it imperative to have a third party intervene and take charge to lead us all out of this deadly impasse.

Make no mistake: We in this country have a fundamental national security interest in addressing and resolving, rather than merely “managing,” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. No single decision we make can top the resolution of this conflict to enhance our national security. We also happen to be the only party in the world that is capable of doing so. We have the leverage with billons of dollars doled out to Israel annually, and a hundred million dollars given to the Palestinians annually. We have the political, military and social tools needed to make our choices and proposed solutions carry the weight we want. We have Media with the global reach to add credibility to the policies that we may chose to adopt. Our longstanding, tried and tested commitment to the existence and well-being of Israel should give it enough assurance that we will stand by our commitment and see it through. The Palestinians have but one party left in the world that can deliver to them a state of Palestine and that is us.

The fact is that we are the one indispensable party to the solution. We have historically leaned heavily towards Israel. It has been an emotional issue, a domestic policy issue. We have managed to steer it in such a way that it has not adversely affected our relations with the Arab and Muslim governments but certainly not with their people. The seething anger of the Arab and Muslim people had not manifested itself to us prior to 9/11 and the power of incitement of Arab satellite TV stations had not channeled the anger of the masses against us so visibly before. The Palestinian issue has not motivated Bin Laden and Al Qaeda but it is the key to diffusing and containing their influence. It is in our interest as Americans to do so. Dealing seriously with this issue is not, as some claim, caving in to terrorism; on the contrary it is precisely the best tool to defeat it.

Our choice to support a State of Palestine alongside Israel, as voiced by the President on many occasions, should be the beginning of establishing a genuine democratic, constitutional state, with modern tools of governance, transparency, free speech, free enterprise, and free men and women protected by law. This, more than any other decision, will help steer that region away from the scourge of terrorism and fanatical religious extremism. The United States itself has lacked credibility in its failure to be an honest broker in the past; Tenet, Mitchell, Zini, and now the Roadmap are proposals and agreements that were crying out for implementation. None of them is perfect, however, it is now our challenge to implement what we proposed, adopted and celebrated: the plan of the day is the Roadmap, which both the Palestinians and the Israelis have accepted.

We, like all enablers, have let violations of this agreement go unpublicized, unchecked and unpunished. We have condemned terrorism with every breath we exhale and asked the Palestinian Authority to “do more” to eradicate it. All successive Prime Ministers of Israel have been unable to root out terrorism, including Sharon who placed no limits on his army as they dealt out collective punishment to the whole Palestinian society. No Palestinian Authority can accomplish this task outside a political framework. Viewing and dealing with this conflict exclusively as a security problem without resolving the political issues simultaneously has been a miserable policy failure. It is, in fact, a recipe for extending the period of suffering and mayhem.

It is time that we think more of our children’s future than our father’s past. Should we decide to measure up to the task of resolving this conflict in our time we have the following steps to ponder:

1. We need to agree clearly on objectives such as the proposed historic compromise of a two-state solution based UN resolution 242. Confidence building measures that are supposed to lead us to an “End Game” are doomed because the parties involved have consistently failed to demonstrate any measure of good will that justifies confidence.

2. We need to establish bridges among people and institutions that support the historic compromise of all religions, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Such bridges need to develop into political mechanisms and tools to impact decision making.

3. We need to isolate extremists, secular and fundamentalists, and to expose their threat to peace and to universal values of equality of people. Each group has a special obligation to speak out against extremists within its own ranks and to condemn their actions.

6. Arab leaders must also share the collective responsibility for compromise and those who shirk this responsibility must face political consequences. They should engage their public and the world in support of the Beirut Arab League resolution to end the conflict.

7. Israeli supporters of the historic compromise, in and out of office, should organize and state their position in public. Renunciations of metaphysical claims that justify land grab are fundamental to the package that leads to the end of conflict with no further claims. Occupying other people’s land and lording it over them cannot be sustained. Incremental land grab that precludes the formation of a viable Palestinian State must cease. Violence against civilians must cease. Jewish people in Israel and all over the world must hold those who perpetrate the measures taken in their name into account.

8. We, all of us, need to push in every way we can for expanding the scope of freedom in the Arab and Islamic World. This cannot be done by forcing a grotesque emulation of Western democracies, but rather by a steady program of opening up and securing economic opportunities, educational reform and accountable governments. The West can genuinely help rather than pontificate and condescend. The Palestinian issue should be removed as an excuse or justification for all the actions that Arab governments undertake.

9. American and international institutions and individuals should organize a superfund to support the private sector and provide humanitarian aid to rebuild the Palestinian society.