Roger Cohen urges presumed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to
show "tough love" toward Israel in his
latest column. His argument rests on the premise that if only
Israel compromises more --withdraws from the West Bank and East
Jerusalem -- there can be peace. The article is based around some
comments made by outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose
administration was an abject failure and whose approval ratings
were in the single digits even before it was rocked by scandal
that will likely lead to his indictment. If making peace were as
simple as this, then we would have had it 40 years ago, but the
problem has always been that a large enough segment of the
Palestinian people do not want to accept any Israeli state at
all. As I wrote
a few weeks ago, no matter how earnest you assume that
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is in his desire for peace,
as long as he exerts no influence over Hamas in Gaza, there can
be no security for Israelis, and thus, no peace. Cohen does not
even bother mentioning Hamas.
Throughout his column, Cohen repeats several times that Israelis
have to be willing to give up parts of Jerusalem, as if this were
a bold new suggestion. But we've already been down this road
before. The 2000 peace offer made by Ehud Barak divided
Jerusalem, giving the Palestinians the eastern part of the city,
and the Palestinians rejected it. Unfortunately, it's not as easy
as merely dividing up Jerusalem. The most contentious area comes
when you get to the holy sites, and when you visit the city and
see how the competing holy sites are physically on top of and
intertwined with each other, you get a good sense of why peace
has been so elusive.
Let me be clear about something: I'm not one of those dead-enders
who believes that Israel should never give up an inch of land. I
think a two-state solution with Palestinians in control of the
West Bank and Gaza is the best of many imperfect alternatives.
But I also recognize that getting there is a lot easier said than
done. And I have little patience when writers such as Cohen
completely oversimplify everything, especially by arguing that
peace would be at hand if only Israel does exactly what it tried
to do eight years ago.
