October 24, 2008

They came in waves, ardent Jewish settlers, religious women from central Israel, black-clad followers of Hasidic courts and groups of teenage boys and girls, almost a thousand of them in all.

Crammed into a dozen buses and escorted by the Israeli military, the Jewish pilgrims slid quietly along deserted streets throughout the early hours of a recent morning while the residents of this Palestinian city, a militant stronghold ruled until recently by armed gangs, slept in their beds.

The destination was the holy place known as Joseph’s Tomb, a tiny half-derelict stone compound in the heart of a residential district that many Jews believe is the final burial place of the son of Jacob, the biblical patriarch.

The first group arrived around midnight. Rushing through the darkness into the tomb, they crowded around the rough mound of the grave and started reciting Psalms by the glow of their cellphones, not waiting for the portable generator to power up a crude fluorescent light.

They were praying to be infused with some of the righteousness of Joseph, as well as to be able to return. A gaping hole in the domed, charred roof of the tomb left it partly open to the sky, a reminder of the turmoil of the recent past.

The Palestinians seek Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and full control over cities like this one. But these religious Jews, spurred on by mystical fervor and the local Jewish settler leadership, are strengthening their bond.

To them this is not Nablus, one of the largest Palestinian cities, with a population of more than 120,000, but the site of the ancient biblical city of Shechem. The tomb, they believe, sits on the parcel of ground that Jacob bought for a hundred pieces of silver, according to Joshua 24:32, an inheritance of the children of Joseph, meaning that its ownership is not in doubt.

Here, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is boiled down to its very essence of competing territorial, national and religious claims. The renewed focus on what the Jewish devotees call the pull or power of Joseph appears to reflect a wider trend: a move by the settler movement at large away from tired security arguments and a return to its fundamental raison d’être — the religious conviction that this land is the Jews’ historical birthright and is not up for grabs.

“We are as connected to this place as we are to our patriarchs in Hebron,” said Malachi Levinger, a son of Rabbi Moshe Levinger, who founded the first Jewish settlement in that city after the 1967 war. The younger Mr. Levinger had come to the tomb with his wife and three small daughters at 2 a.m.

By day, Nablus is the realm of the Palestinian police, who have largely managed in recent months to restore law and order and to keep the gunmen off the streets. By night the police melt away to avoid encounters with the Israeli forces that still carry out frequent raids.

Under the Israeli-Palestinian agreements of the mid-1990s known as the Oslo accords, Israel withdrew from the Palestinian cities but was assured free access to Jewish holy sites. The army turned Joseph’s Tomb into a fortified post, and a small yeshiva continued to operate there.

But the tomb became a frequent flash point. In 1996, six Israeli soldiers were killed there in a wave of riots by the Palestinian police and militants throughout the West Bank. The second Palestinian uprising broke out in September 2000, and the tomb was the scene of a battle in which 18 Palestinians and an Israeli border policeman were killed; the policeman was left to bleed to death inside. (The settlers note pointedly that the family name of the Israeli, a Druse, was Yusef, Arabic for Joseph.)

To avoid further friction, the Israeli prime minister at the time, Ehud Barak, ordered the army to vacate the tomb and hand it over to the protection of the Palestinian police.

Some declared the tomb an Islamic holy site and painted the dome green; Joseph is considered a prophet in Islam, and his story is related extensively in the Koran. Others believe that the compound is actually the tomb of a Muslim sheik also called Yusef.

Hours after the handover, however, a Palestinian mob ransacked the structure, smashing the dome with pickaxes and setting the compound on fire.

Since then, according to the settlers, the Palestinians have continued to desecrate the tomb, using it as a local garbage dump and sometimes burning tires inside. Though the Palestinian authorities recently cleaned up the tomb, an acrid smell hung in the air, and the walls and floor remained covered in soot.

Since Israel forfeited the site in 2000, Jewish pilgrims, particularly Breslov Hasidim, have visited sporadically, sometimes stealing into Nablus alone in the dark.

The local settlers say they are now working on establishing a routine. Since the beginning of the year, Gershon Mesika, the newly elected mayor of the Samaria Council, which represents settlers in the northern West Bank, has made the resumption of regular visits a priority, coordinating with the army to organize entries at least once a month.

“Our hold on Joseph’s Tomb strengthens our hold on the whole country,” said Eli Rosenfeld, an employee of the council and a former administrator of the yeshiva at the tomb.

Now their goal is to make the visits weekly, then to re-establish the kind of permanent presence that existed before 2000 so that the pilgrims will no longer have to come, as Mr. Mesika put it, “like thieves in the night.”

The recent nighttime pilgrimage, during the Jewish festival of Sukkot, had been organized with precision and was shrouded in secrecy until the last minute, according to a Samaria Council spokesman, David Ha’ivri, not least to avoid hundreds of would-be worshipers’ just showing up.

The operation began just before midnight, as the leaders of the regional council of Samaria, which takes the biblical name for the northern West Bank, gathered at a nearby army base. Boarding a bulletproof minibus, they headed for Nablus. The bus was whisked through a military checkpoint into the city, where the army had secured the tomb in advance and military vehicles were stationed at every junction along the route.

Over the course of the night the buses came and went in convoys according to a tightly organized schedule, bearing pilgrims from the Hebron area, Jerusalem and locations all over Israel. Some of them said they had been on a waiting list for months.

A few of the women cradled babies and toddlers in their arms. Some of the long-skirted teenage girls prayed so intensely that they wept; one rubbed ashes into the palm of her hand.

Growing numbers of soldiers in battle gear joined the worshipers, swept up by the spiritual aura as tea lights flickered on the grave.

As Karlin and Breslov Hasidim surged into the compound, many in fur hats and black silk coats, they spoke excitedly in Yiddish and photographed one another with their cellphones in the sunken courtyard where a mulberry tree once grew. “I come to Joseph, and I feel new,” said one of them, Moshe Tanzer, 22.

In a side chamber that used to house the yeshiva, a lone clarinetist played klezmer music and men sang and danced in circles. Outside, in a hastily erected sukkah, a temporary dwelling for the holiday, pilgrims feasted on sweet and spicy kugel and orange squash.

For those present it was as if the tomb, like Joseph, betrayed by his jealous brothers and sold into slavery in Egypt, had been temporarily redeemed.

Both Israel and the United States soon will have new leaders at the helm. The Palestinians, too, are facing possible elections. During such transitional times for the three major players in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, few expected any concrete steps toward peace.

But a new calm has emerged in the cross-border battle between Gazan militants and the Israeli army, Palestinian rival factions Fatah and Hamas are preparing for reconciliation talks, and on Thursday in Egypt Israeli President Shimon Peres backed the "spirit" of a 2002 Arab initiative that maps out regional peace.

Many unresolved issues stand in the way of real peace, but all parties seem newly interested in avoiding a return to the daily violence and finding interim solutions ahead of upcoming anniversaries, deadlines, and changes in leadership.

The cease-fire that Israel and the Islamic militant group Hamas reached, expires Dec. 19, six months after it went into effect. Both sides would like to continue this calm.

While the Associated Press reports that at least 50 rockets landed in southern Israel since the truce, including one Tuesday in Sderot, it's a far cry from the daily rain of rockets that southern Israel coped with during the height of cross-border violence earlier this year.

"We've been returning to normal life, going back to work and school without all the problems and stress of having a warning of an incoming rocket every hour. It's become livable here again, and we hope it will continue," says Tovah Malka, the director of the mayor's office in Sderot.

But the cease-fire, even if extended, will remain tenuous as long as the Gaza Strip struggles with economic hardships.

"What is the point of extending the tahdiya if there's still no fuel, no basic materials coming in? Could you imagine Gaza without tunnels? We would have died by now," says Ismail Ammar, who runs an electronics repair shop in Gaza City, referring to the smuggling tunnels underneath the Egypt-Gaza border.

"Since the Israelis are controlling the crossing and keeping up the siege, I am losing my business."

Israel has continued to keep economic pressure on Gaza as a way to force Hamas to release Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who was captured by militants more than two years ago in a cross-border raid.

When Mr. Peres was in Egypt Thursday for an official state visit – the first of its kind in several years – to discuss a proposal to revamp and relaunch the Arab peace initiative (also known as the Saudi Plan), Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said he was committed to seeing Mr. Shalit released through a prisoner swap.

In Egypt, Peres said the Saudi plan would need to be negotiated further, but that the spirit of it was "correct." The deal offers Arab peace with Israel in exchange for the Jewish state's withdrawal from Arab lands seized in 1967.

Another motivating factor for the increase in talks is the fact that Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas's term expires Jan. 9. Hamas and Fatah are preparing to meet in Egypt on Nov. 9 to for talks with an eye toward reaching a national reconciliation agreement, one that could heal the schism that has plagued Palestinian politics since Hamas's takeover of Gaza 16 months ago.

Mkhaimar Abusada, a political scientist at Al Azhar University in Gaza, says that the looming expiration of Mr. Abbas's term has given Palestinians a target date for reaching some kind of plan to move forward. But the skeleton of an agreement is thin on exact details, leaving much to be worked out in negotiations.

"We're not expecting them to get a deal after the first round of negotiations next month, but the goal is to get one before the end of the year, or before Jan. 9, which is the expiration of Abbas's term. But the problem will be the implementation of that agreement," he says.

First there are the external differences: Fatah wants to negotiate with Israel, Hamas doesn't. Then there are the internal ones: Fatah wants to hold new elections, Hamas doesn't.

"Hamas is very adamant about having legislative elections now as part of a way to solve this crisis," Mr. Abusada says. "Hamas wants the parliament to have its four years, until January 2010."

But how to avoid the Fatah-Hamas divisiveness of the past? Egypt is proposing that the new government be a "nationally agreed upon government," but not a national unity government.

What has shifted recently in the Fatah-run PA's favor, notes Jonathan Spyer, a fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzilya, is the success of the PA to boost its security profile in the West Bank. But Hamas remains in firm control of Gaza.

"The fact that the cease-fire may be extended is indicative of the quite significant entrenchment of Hamas in Gaza," Mr. Spyer says. "It shows Hamas is maintaining order on a certain level. It's a de facto acceptance by the Arab world. Part of the price of that is keeping things quiet vis-à-vis Israel, and so the cease-fire kind of serves everyone's interests at the moment.

"But I would suspect that we are not on the verge of a major reconciliation of Palestinian politics, which would result in a return of Fatah playing a major role in Gaza," he adds. "I don't think Hamas feels itself under such pressure in Gaza that it would actually cede power, and that's what [reconciliation] would require."

In the city of Ramallah, the value of central commercial plots has doubled each year since 2005, hitting $4,000 per square metre ($372 per sq foot).

Prices are being pushed up by a weak dollar and Israeli control of large chunks of the territory, the organisation said in a report.

Investment in the Palestinian economy is "precariously" low, it also warned.

In the report published on Thursday, the World Bank said prices for land in key West Bank cities are now beyond the reach of most local businesses and homebuyers.

It cited Israeli controls over much of the West Bank, which it said was "fragmented into a multitude of enclaves, with a regime of movement restrictions between them".

"The physical access restrictions are the most visible, with 38% of the land area reserved by the government of Israel to serve settlements and security objectives," the report said.

It said demand is also rising because of a Palestinian population growth rate of about 3% per year.

It also said remittances from overseas Palestinians increased in 2006 and 2007, leading more families to invest in land, given the falling value of their savings, which are usually held in US dollars.

Economic stagnation

But overall, the report noted that investment in the West Bank had "dropped to precariously low levels".

Public investment has virtually ceased over the past two years and private investment remained stagnant after dropping 15%t between 2005 and 2006, it said.

The findings come less than a year after international donors pledged more than $7bn over three years in the hope of boosting progress towards a Palestinian state.

Foreign aid, the World Bank said, "has succeeded in doing little more than slowing down the deterioration of the economy, despite ever larger volumes".

The report concludes that little that can be done to improve the situation without a peace deal.

"Ultimately, the restrictions on access to land (under Israeli control) will only be resolved with the final resolution of the peace process and the end of the occupation," it said.

Israel and the Palestinians formally re-launched peace talks at a conference in the United States in November 2007, with the goal of resolving their decades-old conflict by January 2009.

But with changes in leadership in Israel and the US under way, and uncertainty over the future of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, few in the region believe the target is reachable.

The Israeli ultra-orthodox Shas party decided on Friday not to join a coalition led by Israeli premier-designate Tzipi Livni, a party spokesman said, making early elections almost inevitable.

On Thursday, Livni set a Sunday deadline to either say she can form a new Israeli coalition government or announce failure, thereby starting the constitutional process that leads to an early general election.

Shas spokesman Roy Lachmanovich said in a statement that the party was unable to reach agreement with Livni's Kadima party over two main issues -- the status of Jerusalem and social welfare benefits for the poor.

"Shas has asked only for two things ... real financial help for the (financially) weak in Israeli society and protection for Jerusalem ... which is not merchandise for sale."

Lachamnovich said that as a result, the party's spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who heads a group of sages who determine party policy, decided not to continue coalition talks.

Foreign Minister Livni has been trying to forge political partnerships since she was elected leader of the centrist Kadima party last month, taking over from Ehud Olmert who resigned as prime minister in a corruption scandal.

The next US president, be it Barack Obama or John McCain, should get to work immediately to jump-start Middle East peace talks, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said here Thursday.

Erakat was visiting Tokyo for talks with Israel's Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit, in the latest meeting arranged by leading donor Japan aimed at building confidence between the two sides.

"Whoever will be the next president of the United States, whether Mr. McCain or Mr. Obama, they must immediately engage and continue their engagement and no time should be wasted," Erakat told reporters.

Erakat conceded that the next US leader will have an overwhelming number of pressing issues, including the global financial crisis, US military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a nuclear standoff with Iran.

"But we need them to focus and to remain engaged for their own interest in achieving peace between Palestinians and Israelis, and Israelis and Syrians, and Israelis and Lebanese," Erakat said.

US President George W. Bush brought Israeli and Palestinian leaders to a summit in Annapolis, near the US capital, in November last year, which set a goal of reaching a peace accord by the time he leaves office in January.

However the Palestinian side say the target is impossible to reach because of political developments in Israel, where outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is waiting for his successor Tzipi Livni to form a government.

The negotiations still need to resolve thorny issues such as the status of Jerusalem, Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Palestinian refugees and the final borders of a future Palestinian state.

Obama, who is ahead in opinion polls, said on a visit to the Middle East in July that the next US administration should "continue to work toward the goal of the two states living side by side in peace and security."

Both the Palestinian and Israeli officials voiced hope that the global economic downturn would not set back peace efforts in the Middle East.

"No financial crisis should affect our efforts to achieve peace," Erakat said.

"As Palestinians, we depend a lot on the generous contribution of the donor community -- the US, Europe, Japan and others," he said.

Japan, the world's second largest economy, has sought a larger involvement in the Middle East peace process in line with ambitions for a greater global role.

Japan has spearheaded a project to build an agro-industrial complex in the West Bank to create badly needed jobs.

Sheetrit also said that the financial crisis should not "interfere" with the peace process.

"The damage that is happening without peace is much higher and bigger than any financial crisis can cause," Sheetrit said.

The Palestinian Authority received aid pledges totalling 7.7 billion dollars over three years at a donors conference in Paris in December last year.

AT around 10am last Saturday, Abed Hashalmoun, 45, a Palestinian news photographer who lives in the West Bank city of Hebron, followed a group of Israeli and international peace activists on an exercise to help local Palestinian farmers harvest their annual olive crop.

Hashalmoun was accompanied by his brother Nayef, 55, a photographer for the Reuters news agency, and several other Palestinian journalists and television news crews.

The harvest was taking place in an olive grove near Tel Rumeida, a suburb of Hebron that is under the strict control of the Israel Defence Forces and has become notorious for housing some of the most extreme Israeli settlers in the West Bank. According to Nayef Hashalmoun, the harvest had begun peacefully.

"It was a beautiful morning, and there was lots of enthusiasm for the harvest. People seemed happy," Nayef told the Herald .

As the media separated among the olive trees to follow different groups of farmers, Nayef Hashalmoun says four Israeli settlers aged in their early 20s approached from Tel Rumeida.

"They followed my brother [Abed] who was a little way away from us, on his own, and where there were no other journalists."

Abed Hashalmoun says he was unaware the settlers were approaching him, and was simply photographing harvesters at work when he was struck on the head from behind.

"Then one of the settlers held me, while the others were kicking me and punching me," Abed said.

Forced to the ground, Abed says the attack continued for several minutes, and one of the settlers took his camera.

"They were shouting at me, calling me an Arab dog, an Arab son-of-a-bitch, kicking me."

Nayef Hashalmoun says he and several other journalists and peace activists went to his brother's aid, managing to film part of the attack.

When Janet Benvie, 53, a British member of the Christian Peace Teams organisation, asked for the return of Abed's camera, she too was assaulted and pushed to the ground by the settlers.

"Eventually the IDF intervened and stopped the situation getting worse," Nayef says.

"But their attitude was just to shoo the settlers away. One soldier gave Abed some water while an ambulance was called."

Abed was taken to hospital for observation and released later the same day, but pictures of the attack have dominated both Israeli and Palestinian media during the past week, provoking outrage from both Israelis and Palestinians.

The Israeli Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, described the settlers as "thugs who interfere with the olive harvest which constitutes an important sector of the Palestinian economy".

The Palestinian Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, denounced what he called "settler terrorism and their barbaric actions against Palestinian farmers".

The four settlers involved in the attack were placed under house arrest.

Baruch Marzel, an American-born Israeli who lives in Hebron and who is a leader of the far-right Jewish National Front party, told the Herald the four Jewish settlers were acting in self-defence in response to extreme provocation.

"I walked by this area about half an hour before this so-called 'attack' happened," Marzel said. "And I was attacked with stones, I was abused. Every week we are subjected to this provocation by Arabs, and by the anarchists and the left-wing extremists who are paid by the European Union to come with their cameras and make us look like we are to blame."

Marzel says that when an Israeli judge viewed the videotape of last Saturday's attack on Abed Hashalmoun, he was quick to point out that it had been "heavily edited".

"This was a fight. A fight between two groups of people. It was not an attack. They were kicking and punching Jews as well and what everyone has seen is a disgraceful distortion of the truth."

Marzel says that because the incident took place on a Saturday, the Sabbath, Jews were unable to use cameras to film it. "If we had a film, we could make it show the opposite," he said.

Nayef Hashalmoun, who is also the director of the Hebron-based al-Watan Centre, a Palestinian non-governmental organisation that promotes non-violent conflict resolution, rejects the allegation that he or anyone else associated with the Palestinian farmers provoked the settlers.

"Every day during these olive harvests we see our olive trees being cut down, or large buckets of harvested olives stolen, or turned upside down and the olives scattered over the ground.

"This is what we have to contend with. This is why we have people who want peace - Jews, Christians and Muslims - coming here to try and stop the violence from occurring."

In isolation, the incident at Tel Rumeida is a worrying enough sign of continuing tensions between Jews and Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza.

Yet since the beginning of the year there has been an 80 per cent rise in the number of violent incidents initiated by right-wing activists against Palestinians - and also against IDF soldiers - compared to last year.

Last week three Palestinian men were killed in the West Bank in what Palestinian political leaders claim were the result, in two cases, of attacks by Jewish settlers, and in the third case, the result of IDF gunfire.

Jews have also been the victims of recent attacks from Palestinians. Between July and September, three Israelis were killed and dozens wounded in three separate incidents involving Palestinians deliberately driving vehicles directly into crowds of people.

Earlier this month, several days of violent clashes between hundreds of Arabs and Jews erupted in the ancient port of Akko in northern Israel after an Arab drove his car into the heart of a Jewish neighbourhood on Yom Kippur - the holiest day on the Jewish calendar - when driving a car is virtually banned.

Dr Mustafa Barghouti, an internationally respected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, believes hopes of finding a peaceful solution to the conflict prompted by the current round of US-backed negotiations are fading.

A cardiologist who earned a Masters in Business Administration from Stanford, Barghouti, 54, says that despite criticism within Israel of attacks against Palestinian farmers, there seemed to be no genuine political will to end Israel's 40-year military occupation of the West Bank.

"How can Israel be moving towards creating an independent state for Palestinians when the rate of settlement growth in the West Bank has continued to increase in the last 12 months, not decrease? The annexation of the West Bank continues."

It is a foregone conclusion that the Arab-Israeli conflict is difficult to resolve. A wide variety of obstacles stand in the way of a solution. While most have to do with Israel’s intransigence, internal politics, hidden agendas and long-term aspirations in the region, some have to do with exaggerated reliance on the US’ and the international community’s part to intervene and facilitate peace.

No one denies the role the US can play - has in fact played - in attempting to resolve the conflict. Europe, as a close neighbour and a party well informed of the complexities of the conflict, is also important.

Had the Arabs and Israelis, over the years, been able to meet and negotiate on their own, they would not have needed the US, Europe or UN. At a number of critical moments in the past, the Arabs and Israelis needed the intervention of the said three parties, both as facilitators and as patrons of the peace process.

While the intervention of these parties is still far from satisfactory, there were undeniable moments of success and progress. But reliance on these parties (and others) is not without its disadvantages or problems. In general, the UN has not been very effective. Europe is important, I believe, but its role is tied directly to that of the US. The US is crucial.

But US involvement has its limitations. For one, US priorities change - at times rapidly. For the most part of his two terms, US President George W. Bush has been focusing more on fighting terrorism than on resolving the Middle East conflict, for example. Additionally, US administrations change and there are many dead periods and much lost time: virtually the last year of an outgoing administration’s tenure and the first year of a new administration. During these periods, peace efforts freeze.

In light of this, of the fact that the Arabs and Israelis have already met each other in negotiations, should not they wean themselves of the US and other parties and start negotiating directly?

Arabs and Israelis are the direct parties to the conflict. They, more than anyone else, know what the real problems are and what a satisfactory solution is. Furthermore, they, and not anyone else, have much to gain or lose, based on the success or failure of the negotiations.

Should not they then forget about the US and other partiers and start a process on their own?

Now that there is a new leadership in Israel, that the friction among the Palestinian Authority and Hamas has somewhat lessened, that the Syrians and the Israelis have met under Turkish patronage, and that Israel is sending signals to Lebanon to negotiate, the time seems ripe for an initiative from within the region - one that involves the concerned parties directly, with or without (better without, in my opinion) external intervention or facilitation.

Countries like Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, I am sure, will not spare any effort to assist.

Arabs and Israelis should not tie the fate of the peace process, and their fate, to the US, nor should they waste time.

In a meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak today, Israeli President Shimon Peres praised the Arab Peace Initiative, first introduced by Saudi Arabia and adopted by the 22 states of the Arab League, and said that, “peace has never been more possible than it is now. It would be a mistake to miss out on this opportunity.”

With this statement, Israel and Egypt (which hosts the Arab League headquarters) revived the moribund Arab Peace Initiative of 2002. The initiative offers Israel permanent peace and full recognition by all the Arab countries in exchange for a withdrawal from the territory that Israel occupied in 1967. In addition, it calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and an agreed upon solution to the issue of Palestinian refugees—all components of the current Israeli-Palestinian negotiating track.

At a “track-two” dialogue organized on Sunday by the Oxford Research Group, Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal,King Abdullah's nephew and former ambassador to Washington, explained the initiative's details. In the UK Guardian on Monday Prince Turki said that, the Arab States “will pay the price for peace, not only by recognizing Israel as a legitimate state in the area, but also to normalize relations with it and end the state of hostilities that has existed since 1948.” Israel would “withdraw completely from the lands they occupied in 1967, including [East] Jerusalem, . . . accept a just solution for the refugee problem, . . . and recognize the independent state of Palestine.”

Prince Turki’s comments marked the third time that the Saudis have promoted this initiative officially. The first presentation, at the Arab League Summit in Beirut on March 28, 2002, was overshadowed by the suicide bombing at Netanya’s Park Hotel, which killed 30 and injured over 140 Israelis attending a Passover Seder. The Arab proposal was renewed at a summit in Riyadh on March 28, 2007. Although Prime Minister Ehud Olmert lauded the Arab states’ move toward recognizing Israel and said that the initiative had “positive elements,” talk of the Arab Initiative stopped there. Olmert had significant reservations, and government officials largely dismissed it. The initiative, therefore, failed to gain traction among Israelis.

This time is different. President Shimon Peres addressed the UN General Assembly on September 24 and called on Saudi King Abdullah, who was in the audience, to revive the initiative: “the Arabs replaced the three ‘nos’ of Khartoum (no peace, no negotiations, no recognition) with a peace initiative, inaugurated by King Abdullah Abdul Aziz Al Saud. I call upon the King to further his initiative; it may become an invitation for a comprehensive peace, one to convert battlegrounds to common grounds.”

Of course, Peres is the president of Israel and not the prime minister. His endorsement alone, though significant, is not that of the government. Foreign minister and prime minister-designate, Tzipi Livni, who was just given another two week mandate to form a government, is more circumspect.

Livni has taken issue with the Arab Initiative for providing seemingly final resolutions on issues that are currently being negotiated—borders and refugees in particular. Her “red line” is the issue of Palestinian refugees. When Livni remarked to Israel Army Radio last year that some of the clauses in the Arab Initiative “are contrary to the principles of two states,” it was widely understood that she was referring to refugees. According to her, the Palestinians displaced in 1948 should return to the Palestinian state not to Israel itself. For Livni, as well as much of the Israeli public, accepting the Arab Initiative as-is may seem tantamount to accepting a solution to the refugee issue that they oppose.

But the promoters of the plan have answers to her concerns. While the issues of borders and refugees must be addressed, they insist that the details are up for negotiation: land exchange can still rectify differences on final borders, and the return of refugees will be dealt with in a “just” and “agreed” manner. King Abdullah of Jordan reaffirmed this in an interview with the Spanish daily El Pais on Saturday: “we aren’t saying take it or leave it. There are ideas that must be agreed between the two parties. . . .The proposal is extremely flexible so as not to isolate Israeli politicians.”

Livni, who has been engaged in the current Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, has also expressed concern that the bilateral Israeli-Palestinian talks might be stalled by a pursuit of a comprehensive track. Some analysts have argued that Israel cannot engage in more than one peace track simultaneously. If one track fails, the whole deal goes under, the thinking goes. Others feel that including Syria in talks, while negotiating with the Palestinians, would allow Syria to “veto” the Palestinian track by sabotaging the process.

The other side of that argument, however, is that Israeli-Syrian talks that worked parallel to an Israeli-Palestinian track would open a channel in which Israel could demand that, as a price for continuing the talks, the Syrians not sabotage their progress with the Palestinians, by supporting Palestinian terrorist groups. Having the Arab states behind this process could also bolster Syrian public support for talks with Israel. In fact, the most important aspect of the Arab Initiative is the involvement of the Arab states in Israel’s peace processes.

Regardless of whether or not Livni becomes prime minister, her concerns about the Arab Initiative could affect how the initiative is included in the peace process, or if it is included at all. If Livni fails to form a coalition government, early elections will be called, and the choice between a comprehensive, Israeli-Palestinian, or no peace track at all would be the stuff of election year campaigns.

In the meantime, the debate has become a part of the coalition negotiations. Defense minister and Labor head, Ehud Barak, who has already signed on to Livni’s coalition, tried in vain to get tasked with leading the Israeli-Syrian negotiations. He has now begun to speak in favor of Peres’ vision of a comprehensive peace track. On Sunday, he expressed interest in the Arab Initiative’s reintroduction in an Israel Army Radio interview. He also said that he had recently discussed the matter with Livni and that Israel was considering its response.

In an October 17 interview on Israeli television’s Channel 2, Barak discussed Labor’s role in the next coalition government. Without referring to the Arab Peace Initiative by name, he told reporter Yair Lapid that, “Israel needs to formulate an Israeli plan for regional peace . . . including Syrian, Palestinian, and even Lebanese tracks to be conducted simultaneously.” Barak’s statement indicated the possibility that a new governing coalition will address the initiative in some way, possibly by submitting a counterproposal that accepts some principles and refines others. The fact that Peres spoke of the need for a regional agreement while sitting in the sukkah of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef,head of the Shas Party, which Livni is now trying to bring into the coalition, could be another signal.

Supporters of the Arab Peace Initiative maintain that it is a framework and not a final dictate. This could give the new government room to work with and ways to address its concerns. The initiative, furthermore, does not rule out the current negotiations with the Palestinians and the Syrians, nor does it resolve the outstanding issues between Israel and the Palestinians or Israel and Syria.

However, if Israel’s new leadership becomes convinced that it should work on multiple fronts simultaneously, the Arab Initiative could provide Israel with the international backing it craves. “Israel does not have to invent a new international framework in order to solicit the necessary Arab involvement,” Israeli analyst Yossi Alpher stated in the September 10 edition of Bitterlemons. The Arabs themselves have created it, in the form of the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 and 2007. Now the time has come for them to acknowledge and exploit the opportunity they have created.” Government transitions can push political initiatives to the back burner, but they can also create momentum for them. The new U.S. administration should be there to help both the Israelis and the Arab states in this process.