The announcement by Israel's Vice-Prime Minister Shimon Peres that Israel wants to resume talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is a glimmer of hope in the Middle East.
The proposed meeting is conditional upon the release of a captured Israel soldier. Some reports in the Arab news media suggest a prisoner exchange is imminent. For example: President Abbas recently told the Bahraini Akhbar al-Khaleej newspaper that: "An agreement has been reached about exchanging prisoners that is based on Egypt taking the soldier as a deposit, and after that the number of Palestinian prisoners would be announced."
Is it possible Israel and Palestine can successfully negotiate the "roadmap" plan that outlines steps and a timetable toward establishing a viable Palestinian state? It's not only possible, but imperative. Still negotiations will require enormous patience and leadership.
What will a two-state solution require? Harvard University political scientist Stanley Hoffman explains that: "Then and now, a settlement would require that the Palestinians give up, in practice, the right to return to Israel, but it would provide them with a workable state that is not truncated or walled-in and has financial support."
It's only been a few weeks since the United Nations ceasefire resolution ended the month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah. Many serious questions have been raised about whether the U.S. and the UN could have prevented the war by --among other things-- providing leadership and mediation for the release of prisoners.
What is clear is that both Hezbollah and Israel violated the Geneva Convention during the 30-day war. Writing in the London Review of Books in early August, international law professor Michael Byers pointed out that: "Hezbollah's rocket attacks, which have been aimed in the general vicinity of Israeli cities and towns rather than at specific military targets, are illegal." But Byers added that: "So too are many of Israel's attacks. More than seven hundred Lebanese civilians have been killed to date, most of them women and children. Some were struck by missiles as they fled for safety. Others were hit because blasted roads, bridges and petrol stations made it impossible for them to flee."
When Vice-Prime Minister Peres says negotiations with Palestine "must be launched on the basis of the roadmap" we should take this as a positive sign. The answer to the conflict in the Middle East is not unilateral solutions, but negotiations undertaken in good faith. We can only hope and pray this happens.
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