Don't let the radicals win

[LeftishBrit]

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4071078,00.html

In one sense, Israel’s leadership should be grateful to the hundreds of protestors who invaded the Golan and illustrated to all of us what Israel faces ahead of the Palestinian UN move in September. In the face of settler insistence to cling to the Greater Israel vision and Palestinian demands (endorsed by small parts of Israel’s Left) to turn the territories and Israel into one state, lacking a Jewish majority, the mainstream of Israel’s society must unite and earnestly promote the two-state vision..


The hourglass is running out. In September, precisely a year after Israel’s unilateral announcement on the resumption of settlement construction, the Palestinians will embark on their own unilateral move and promote a declaration of Palestinian statehood at the UN. The Arab side, which upon Israel’s establishment rejected partition and embarked on war against Israel, will adopt the same idea 63 years later and declare that the West Bank and Gaza are the new Palestinian state...


In the past, the Palestinian unwillingness to accept the partition notion cost the Palestinian people years of victims and pain. Israel’s
current unwillingness to recognize the partition idea will cost all of us a third Intifada, international support will decline, and the Jewish people’s right for a national home in the 1967 borders will be undermined as well. Those who are unwilling to compromise on dividing the land and withdrawing from the territories will end up having trouble explaining and fighting for the legitimacy of the Zionist idea as a whole...



A moment before this game is over, all pragmatic forces within Israel’s society must adopt a clear, joint ideological line that endorses the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, while securing a compromise in Jerusalem and turning it into a shared capital for both states. This is the only solution.

[shira]

1. What more can Israel realistically offer beyond the Olmert 2008 deal?

Even if the offer was the Geneva Initiative, the PA would reject that - not to mention Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Iran, and Syria. The PA just continues to say "NO" and Israel is blamed, more pariah status, bogus nazi and apartheid analogies, etc.

Who here would say that if Israel offered the Geneva Initiative and the PA rejected it, then it's up to the PA to decide to make peace and that Israel has done its part?