Powell's Right to Expand Pursuit of Mideast Peace

December 4, 2003

Secretary of State Colin Powell was right to ignore Israel's objections to his meeting with the authors of an unofficial peace document signed in Geneva this week.

While nobody should be so rash as to believe a document signed by peace activists on both sides will be enough to stop the cycle of violence that has plagued the Mideast for more than three years now, just the fact that some serious Israelis and Palestinians could get together and demonstrate what the outlines of a peace agreement could look like is welcome.

It's about time the Bush administration stopped seeming to approve anything and everything the government of Ariel Sharon does. The deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert, the official who criticized Powell, was way out of line in suggesting with whom the secretary should or should not meet. Rather than being so defensive about the mock peace treaty, the Sharon government ought to hold it up to the Palestinian Authority as an example of what could be, if it would only make a real, prolonged attempt to control violence.

The document was negotiated by a former Israeli minister, Yossi Beilin, a member of the opposition Labor Party, and Yasser Abed Rabbo, a former Palestinian minister. While they do not represent the far more hard-line views of their governments, they do, in a way, represent their populations. Recent polls in Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza show that a majority of Israelis and Palestinians say they support a two-state solution to the Mideast conflict.

The question, then, is why the leaders of both nations seem to lag behind their own publics' opinions. The answer is that the leaders are playing to more radical elements in their coalitions. Sharon does not want to alienate the right-wingers in Likud and Arafat will not split with the rejectionists in groups such as Hamas.

This page continues to believe, however, that if the Palestinians would take steps to stop the violence against Israeli citizens, the Israeli public would demand a response from Sharon - or elect a different government.