At last, an international peace conference for the Holy Land
Tel Aviv (AsiaNews) New hope for peace in the Holy Land is now offered to Israelis and Palestinians by the French-Spanish-Italian peace initiative. The initiative, announced on Thursday, November 16, by French President Chirac and Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero, after consultation with Italy's Prime Minister Prodi, arisesits authors point outfrom the increase in violence and desperation in the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation, from which there does not now appear to be any other way out.
The dramatic announcement, coming out of a French-Spanish summit meeting (during which consultation took place by telephone with the Italian Prime Minister) is, in fact, the first clear, decisive, international attempt to bring about peace in the Holy Land (rather than just design complicated "road maps" to it . . .) since the convening of the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991(by U.S. President George Bush). Indeed the new initiative calls for peace to be effected by precisely such an international conference, and the Spanish Prime Minister has appeared to hint that the desired peace conference might well be a continuation of that conference, or at least modelled upon it. Italy, for its part, has spelled out the intention to give the initiative a great deal more weight still by making it an initiative of the European Union as a whole, in cooperation with other Mediterranean nations. Italy has, moreover, added that the new peace initiative must "obtain at once tangible, efficacious, lasting, agreed results."
A long-time observer of the search for peace in the Holy Land (who cannot be named because of his institutional affiliation) does, however, confess to AsiaNews that he feels some perplexity at seeing that even this bold new initiative comes with the kind of pre-conditions that caused the failure of earlier attempts: "These European leaders appear to put these preconditions to the calling of the peace conference: Immediate cessation of violence between the Israelis and the Palestinians, exchange of prisoners, formation of a national unity government in the Palestinian Authority . . ." And he asks: "Why? Why risk seeing the initiative get mired in just such interminable bickering over the preconditions as killed the famous 'road-map' and so on? Why not simply call the peace conference right away? What is the point in demanding cessation of all violence as a condition for the conference? Is not this precisely the purpose of the conference itself: to make peace? What is the point in insisting on first having peace before actually making peace?" He also points out the "irrelevance, for the conference, of any government of the Palestinian Authority," a "unity government" or any other government, "since legally the representative of the Palestinian people, specifically for the purpose of peace negotiations, is the P.L.O., under its President Mahmoud Abbas, 'Abu Mazen', and not in any way the Palestinian Authority, which is only a temporary administration in certain parts of the occupied Palestinian territorieswhile waiting for the actual peace agreements to be completed. To demand a 'national unity government' in the 'Palestinian Authority' as a precondition for the peace conference is legally incomprehensible," he says, "as well as politically foolish, since it gives Hamas a veto over the possibility of the conference, or rather, of peace!"
In response to the new initiative, the The P.L.O.'s Presidency welcomed at once the call for the international peace conference. Official Israel, for its part, immediately rejected it. However, it is clear that the Israeli government's harsh rejection(Foreign Minister Livny has been reported as indignantly berating the Spanish Foreign Minister, an experienced European envoy to the Middle East) is not shared by everyone in Israel. Thus, only hours before the news of the European initiative, Israel's former Education Minister, Yossi Sarid, had published an article calling precisely for an international initiative, while former Justice Minister Yossi Beilin had earlier actually called for the re-convening of the Madrid Conference. It can be foreseen that, if the Europeans keep up their vision and courage, and persevere, Israel's "silent majority" of citizens who long for peace may ultimately support the call for the peace conference, if only because no one can see any alternative on the horizon.
In the end, of course, much may depend on the position ultimately taken by the United States.
As if sensing the direction in which the Europeans were moving, Israel's Prime Minister Olmert, while recently in Washington to visit President Bush, already explicitly discouraged talk of an international conference, and implied that the White House was of the same opinion. However, it is not certain that this isor will remainthe case. After all, it was the present President Bush's father who, in 1991, called together the Madrid Conference, andwith only two years remaining to his PresidencyGeorge Bush may well be persuaded that he now has an extraordinary opportunity to be remembered as the man who successfully finished that job. And with a President Bush once more leading the peace conference, together with Europe, it should be far easier to persuade official Israel that it too has everything to gain from confirming its 1991 acceptance of the international peace conference. For, in a paraphrase on a famous statement by a great leader: "Everything can be gained with peaceeverything can be lost by war."
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