Clinton Should Press the Arab Side -Saul Singer
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's speech at the Saban Center was a classic example of the historic and failed U.S. approach. Almost every sentence was crafted to convey absolute evenhandedness. Every ounce of praise or pressure on one side was carefully balanced by an equal weight on the other.
Yet the reality is that the conflict is asymmetrical: Israelis are much more ready for the two-state solution than is the Arab world. Almost no Palestinian leader can openly admit the most basic tenets underlying a two-state solution: that there is a Jewish people; that Jewish temples stood under independent Jewish sovereignty for centuries; and that Jewish moral, legal, and historic rights to sovereignty are not inferior to those of Palestinians.
If tomorrow a peace agreement were announced in the Arab world there would be much more mourning than dancing. For Arabs, the two-state solution represents the abandonment of a century-old dream: the eviction of the Jews from Palestine. A Jewish state of any size would be a defeat, not a victory.
(bitterlemons.org)
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