Inter Press Service,
Middle East peace activists are seeing rays of hope for the first time since pro-Likud neo-conservatives grabbed control of US policy toward the region after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
The specific focus of those hopes lies with two “unofficial” peace plans put together by leading Israelis and Palestinians that have begun transforming the debate over US Mideast policy from demands that the Palestinian Authority (PA) “dismantle the terrorist infrastructure” in the occupied territories before further steps toward peace, to what should be the shape of a final settlement between Israelis and Palestinians.
The two most prominent promoters of the former approach, US President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, have both seen their popularity plummet in recent months, according to polls.
And two key US officials, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, have already offered encouraging words for the new peace efforts, as has key Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, who has long taken an interest in the conflict.
Both initiatives are circulating as the Palestinian intifada enters its fourth year, and the right-wing Likud government headed by Sharon races to build a controversial security fence in and around the West Bank to wall off Israel and many Israeli settlements there from the surrounding Palestinian population.
Palestinians and many Israelis are concerned that the fence, which cuts deeply into Palestinian territory, is an effort to impose a final border between the two peoples, one that would effectively prevent the emergence of a viable Palestinian state, as called for by both the Oslo accords and the US-backed “road map.”
Even Bush has called the barrier a “problem,” although, like other concerns he has raised about Sharon's policies over the past two years, he has failed to follow up with sanctions. Washington even vetoed a recent United Nations Security Council resolution that demanded a halt to construction.
The two peace plans are based on the premise that the PA will be able to effectively combat terrorism only when the Palestinian population can be assured of a final settlement that will meet their demands for an independent and viable state. Unlike Oslo or even the road map, both offer a vision of such a final settlement to which both parties are asked to agree.
One plan, worked out by the president of Al-Quds University, Sari Nusseibeh, and former Israeli intelligence chief, Ami Ayalon, has been signed by over 100,000 Israelis and more than 60,000 Palestinians.
It calls for Israel to withdraw to its 1967 borders and to share Jerusalem as the two people's capital, in exchange for a demilitarized Palestinian state and the surrender by Palestinian refugees of any right of return to Israel.
The initiative has been signed by four former heads of Israel's main security agency, Shin Bet
