ANALYSIS: Israelis and Palestinians occupy different peace planets

By Jeff Abramowitz May 25, 2011, 16:23 GMT

Tel Aviv - Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to the US Congress, and the dismissive Palestinian reaction to it, proved once again that when it comes to the peace process, one side is from Mars and the other from Venus.

The Israel leader outlined his version of the foundations of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. Palestinians accused him, in the words of President Mahmoud Abbas, saying nothing the Palestinians 'can build on positively.'

It is incorrect to generalize that only one side or the other - or neither - wants peace. But each side has a different understanding what 'peace' - that all-purpose, elusive, magic word - entails.

When the accusations fly - and they fly with a frequency that would make an experienced air traffic controller dizzy - that the other side is not interested in peace, what is actually meant is 'interested in our vision of peace.'

Each side has a different bedrock on which peace can be formed, and this trumps all other considerations.

Palestinians, traumatized by now nearly 44 years of occupation, see the establishment of a functioning state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as the fulcrum around which any lasting agreement will turn.

For Israelis, peace means security. Claims that peace will bring security do make much impression on a mindset acutely aware of Jewish history, and hence unwilling to place its fate in the hands of outsiders.

And if there is no joint, agreed comprehension of what 'peace' entails, there is no mutual understanding of what the sides need to do to bring it about.

For Palestinians, an Israeli withdrawal to the border which existed before the June 1967 war, with minor adjustments, is a prerequisite for a viable state.

Israel sees these borders as indefensible, and currently wants the adjustment to be larger than the Palestinians are currently prepared to accept.

As part of his security concern, Netanyahu wants the Palestinian state demilitarized and an Israeli military presence along the River Jordan, to prevent a hostile forces from using the Palestinian state as a conduit to Israel's borders.

This is a non-starter for Palestinians, who insist on no Israeli presence in the West Bank after any future peace deal.

For Israelis, peace also means an Israeli state recognised as the Jewish homeland. No return, in other words, of Palestinian refugees and their descendents to the homes abandoned in the 1948-49 Arab Israeli war.

But Palestinians, whatever their leaders say privately, insist that the refugees be allowed back.

'Netanyahu did not come with anything new and he proved to us we do not have a partner for peace,' chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said after the premier addressed Congress.

Israeli Cabinet Secretary Zvi Hauser, however, said that the ball was now in the Palestinian court and that if the Palestinians accepted Israel's demand to be recognized as a Jewish state, 90 per cent of the problems would be solved.

Calls for compromise also fail to address the fact that while the positions of each side may be opening bargaining gambits, they are also largely visions of what a final peace treaty will bring about. They are engraved in stone.

Each believes it has already made the essential compromise and it is now up to the other.

Palestinians say they have already given up the majority of what was the territory encompassed by British-mandated Palestine; Israel says it accepts the need for a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and over 90 per cent of the West Bank.

But what seems like a major, far-reaching concession for one side, is simply acknowledgement of the existing reality for the other.

'The Israeli electorate is willing - some are eager - to live alongside a sovereign Palestine, but on conditions the Palestinians cannot remotely accept,' historian Yaacov Lozowick wrote Wednesday on his blog.

'So,' he concluded, 'there will be no peace anytime soon.'