Michael Oren
Negotiations for peace between Israel and the Palestinians should resume immediately and without further preconditions.
This isn’t only Israel’s position – it is that of Egypt, Jordan, Europe and the United States. All want Israel and the Palestinians to do the hard work of negotiating a comprehensive peace deal. All understand that this is a propitious moment that must not be squandered – everyone gets this, except our Palestinian partners.
The moment is right because 2009 has been a year of strong economic growth in the West Bank, with indications of greater prosperity should peace finally come, and its been a year of deepening economic stagnation in Gaza under Hamas rejectionist rule.
Never has the peace dividend in the Middle East been more evident.
This is an opportune moment from the standpoint of Israeli leadership as well. In an attempt to create better conditions for resuming peace talks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has undertaken gestures never made by even the most dovish Israeli political leaders.
He has ordered a 10-month construction moratorium on private building in settlements throughout the West Bank, and in so doing has been willing to harm his own political base in order to bring the Palestinians, our future partners in peace, back to the table.
The settlement freeze is a very profound statement of Israel’s peace intentions, and the Palestinian leadership is committing a tragic but oft-repeated blunder in rebuffing Israel’s outstretched hand.
Netanyahu could not have been more clear than in his policy statement announcing the moratorium on settlement building: “We hope that this decision will help launch meaningful peace negotiations and finally end the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel.”
We are committed to moving as swiftly as possible to resolve all outstanding issues between ourselves and the Palestinians, including the thorny issues of Jerusalem, borders and refugees.
Israel’s response to the Haiti crisis is a reflection of the salutary role our country wants to play in the international system. The effectiveness of the Israeli field hospital outside Port-au-Prince, and the speed with which it was deployed and made operational, reflect only a minute fraction of our capacities as a nation for the global welfare.
With skills honed in the course of six difficult and isolated decades, Israel knows how to hit curve balls; and we look forward to employing these abilities for the greater international good once we achieve peace with our neighbors and are finally allowed to take our rightful place in the family of nations.
This is one of many reasons why I was thrilled last week to visit Sacramento and the Bay Area, a region so full of innovation and enterprise, and in which the Israeli economy is already deeply integrated. At this juncture of Silicon Valley and Silicon Wadi, Israeli companies, technologists and entrepreneurs work seamlessly with Californian counterparts in the creation of new means of alternative energy, Internet communications and computational capacity that will form the infrastructure of prosperity and peace in the 21st century.
As such, my visit to Northern California was both invigorating and bittersweet. It presented a vision of the future to which we aspire and which, at many levels, Israel has already arrived; but it also served as a reminder of the hurdles that still must be overcome back home in our region, not least of which is Iran’s drive to achieve nuclear weapons.
I am encouraged that many in the United States, Europe and in California are finally waking, and are beginning to plan and implement the necessary economic sanctions required to keep this threat from knocking on every door.