03 December 2003
Former Israeli, Palestinian Peace Negotiators Propose New Initiative
Beilin, Abed Rabbo says unofficial Geneva Initiative offers solutions
By Stephen Kaufman
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- Drawing upon their experiences as negotiators during the Oslo, Camp David and Taba peace discussions, former Palestinian and Israeli negotiators Yasser Abed Rabbo and Yossi Beilin say their "Geneva Initiative" offers a practical and feasible solution to decades of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
At Washington's Renaissance Mayflower Hotel December 3, Abed Rabbo, former minister of information and culture of the Palestinian Authority, and Beilin, former Israeli justice minister, said their "Geneva Initiative," unveiled in Geneva December 1, complements the Road Map for Middle East peace drawn up by the United Nations, European Union, Russia and the United States, collectively known as the Quartet.
Secretary of State Colin Powell welcomed the plan, saying it presents "ideas that I think deserve to be listened to."
"[T]he more people who talk about the prospect for peace, the better off we are," Powell said. However, he said the Road Map remains "the only real plan that is out there that ... has been signed up to by the parties."
Powell made that comment December 3 in Marrakesh, Morocco. The secretary is tentatively scheduled to meet with the Geneva initiative presenters in Washington on December 5.
Beilin said the agreement "is not an alternative" to the road map. "We are all referring to the Road Map as the only game in town and rightly so, but we also know that it is not a very active process," said Beilin.
Beilin and Abed Rabbo pointed out that while the Road Map offers a specific timetable and details on security arrangements, it offers only vague notions of a final agreement to be negotiated between the two parties.
The Geneva Initiative offers a detailed solution to realize President Bush's stated goal of a two-state solution by 2005, they argued.
Abed Rabbo said the initiative was a departure from the past logic of delaying the most controversial issues -- Jerusalem, refugees, settlements and borders -- until the end. In proposing solutions to those issues, he said, the authors wanted to tell Israelis and Palestinians that "your basic interests and needs can coexist with each other."
"Frankly, I cannot see a real implementation of the Road Map without the end game being known to the two parties," said Beilin. "And this is actually our message here. We want to save the Road Map, not to compete with the Road Map. This is the picture of the future."
Palestinian delegate Nabil Kasis outlined some of the major solutions offered by the plan.
Israel would withdraw from much of Jerusalem and the territories occupied in the 1967 war, but would maintain sovereignty over Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter and Western Wall and contiguous settlement areas around the city, he said. Israel would also keep some highly populated settlement blocs on its border with the West Bank, Kasis said.
In exchange, he said, the Palestinians would receive an equal amount of Israeli land near Gaza and Hebron. All Palestinian refugees, he said, would be offered compensation, and Israel would settle an undetermined number of them in its territory or in areas ceded to the Palestinians.
Kasis also said the Palestinians would have a strong security force instead of an army, and that Israel would keep two monitoring posts in the Jordan Valley for up to 15 years.
Beilin said under the Geneva Initiative, "sovereignty is handed over to the Palestinians on the Temple Mount [Haram el-Sharif] and sovereignty about the admission of refugees is handed over to the Israelis."
"It might be phrased differently by different people ... but in my view, this is the formula," he said.
"We tried to find a line of balance that goes across the whole issues and a line of balance inside the solution of every issue" in order to meet the basic needs, but not necessarily all of the aspirations on both sides, Abed Rabbo said.
"I do not have a way to measure who conceded more than the other, but ... both will be winners if they accept this formula," he said.
Israeli delegate Daniel Levy argued that in transferring most of East Jerusalem's sovereignty to the Palestinians "we're recognizing a reality that exists." He said the accord, like the Road Map, envisions a strong international role to oversee its implementation.
Criticism of the accord came from Palestinian groups and the Israeli government, who said Abed Rabbo, Beilin and other members of their delegations negotiated the agreement without the sanction of their elected leaders.
Abed Rabbo acknowledged that the plan came from the initiative of private citizens. But, he argued, "It is not the duty of the civil society, of people like us ... just to wait and observe until maybe the leaders, and maybe not, will decide to sit and negotiate and find a final solution."
"We do not replace the governments," he said, "but we tried to find a solution that will motivate them, that will show the public opinion that there is a possible solution and that peace can come at the end."
Beilin said Israelis and Palestinians "are thirsty for a solution," and claimed that 40 percent of the public on both sides have already expressed agreement with the principles of the accord.
The full text of the Geneva initiative can currently be found at http://www.heskem.org.il/Heskem_en.asp.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
This page printed from: http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2003&m=December&x=20031203193314namfuaks0.9644129&t=usinfo/wf-latest.html
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