Local Arab, Jewish leaders say optimism hard to find in peace talks

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By Thomas Geyer | Tuesday, December 11, 2007 | 4 comment(s)

Sixty years ago, the United Nations approved the partitioning of Palestine into two states, one Jewish, the other one Arab.

In May, 1948, Israel declared its independence.

From those times to the present there have been wars and periods of deadly violence. There also have been peace talks and even some agreements.

But the goal of a Palestinian state sitting peacefully beside Israel has been elusive.

So with a new round of peace talks scheduled to begin today in Annapolis, Md., between Israel and the Palestinians, local Arab and Israeli leaders say they don’t wish to be pessimistic, but it is tough to summon optimism.

“I’ve always tried to be optimistic and bringing both sides together is a good thing,” said John Dabeet of Muscatine, a native Palestinian and Christian Arab who teaches economics at Muscatine Community College. He also is the founder of AMPAL, Americans and Palestinians for Peace.

“But if they couldn’t even agree on the content of a memo on the meeting before they met in Annapolis, how can they achieve the greater issues,” he added.

Dabeet said the perennial three key issues remain: The right of return for refugees, East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital and Israel returning to pre-1967 borders.

The meetings appear to be little more than U.S. President George Bush making a last attempt to save the legacy of his presidency rather than a meeting “to reach a fair and just agreement between the two parties,” Dabeet said.

“Just looking at what Bush said or mentioned during his speech to open the meetings, more than half of what he said was demanding, demanding, demanding things from the Palestinian side,” he said.

It is obvious, he added, that Bush’s words rule out any discussion on the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.

And there is no way, Dabeet said, that the right of return can be dropped if there is to be justice and a just peace.

Rabbi Henry Karp of Temple Emanuel, Davenport, said that history “has given us more than enough reason to be pessimistic.

“The ultimate question is and always will be whether or not the Palestinians and the Arab world will truly seek a viable compromise or will they continue to try and seek a victory,” Karp said.

If the peace process is going to succeed, though, both sides have to make serious concessions, he added.

In 2000 at the Camp David Summit with Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat, there was a proposal for some sort of shared or divided Jerusalem, Karp said.

“That’s a price Israel should be willing to pay if there are some real concessions on the part of the Palestinians,” he said.

“I think there needs to be serious adjustments to the borders, but it’s not going to be the pre-1967 borders and the Palestinians have to accept that,” Karp added.

But the right of return, he said, “is a red herring. That issue, if they insist upon it, is simply a deal breaker.

“If they would be open to reparations, or some sort of financial settlement then there’s something to talk about,” Karp said. “But Israel is not going to commit demographic suicide.”

To make the right of return a “drop dead issue is to say, ‘we don’t want this process to proceed.’

“Also, there has to be full recognition of Israel’s right to exist,” Karp said.

Palestinian native Jamal Tayh, a chemistry professor at Scott Community College, said he believes there is a solution.

“The problem is if the people doing the negotiations can get to terms and both sides agree on concessions,” he said.

Even if Israel agreed to the principal of the right of return, he said, “Not many Palestinians will go back,” he said. “But Israelis are stubborn about it and don’t want to discuss the right of return.”

Tayh added it would be hard to go back to the exact 1967 borders, but there could be exchanges of land that would satisfy both sides.

Jerusalem, he believes, will be the hardest issue to resolve.

“But it still can be done,” he said. The old city can be used by the Palestinians for their capital, but there would be access for Israelis to their holy sites. “I don’t think the Muslims will have a problem with that.

“But it depends on the political will, if they would like to reach an agreement,” Tayh said.

A problem that has to be resolved before any negotiations can continue is that the Palestinians have to agree on one government, he said.

Currently there is Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Fatah movement, and there is the Hamas-controlled legislative council. Hamas is considered by Israel, the U.S. and other nations as a terrorist entity bent on destroying Israel.

Tayh said there was a unity government before, but Israel and the U.S. boycotted the government because of Hamas.

“I think that was a bad decision,” he said, adding that only by negotiating can issues be resolved.

Rock Island attorney Sam Gilman, who was invited to witness the signing of the Oslo Accords, an agreement between Israel and the Palistinian Authority, in Washington D.C. in 1993, said the Palestinian people “need and want relief from the suffering of the occupation.

“That life under occupation is terrible,” he said. “But terrorists are allowed to run rampant. Israel turned over Gaza and look what happened.”

There are elements that do not want peace, Gilman said. “They only want a bloody military victory. They are waging their war of terrorism. Whenever peace threatens, they do their best to derail any peace process.”

If the Arab nations and the Abbas government are truly desirous of peace, “then they will have to recognize that there are those who are the enemies of peace and that the enemies of peace are their enemies,” he added.

Israel on the other side, he said, has to be willing to make serious concessions, “and on the third side the rest of the world has to recognize the concessions that Israel does make and appreciate them, and not ignore them as if they didn’t happen,” Gilman said.

Thomas Geyer can be contacted at (563) 383-2328 or tgeyer@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.