Olmert offers hope

By Ilan Peleg
Thu, Mar. 30, 2006

Despite the relatively low-energy Israeli electoral campaign, Tuesday's victory by Ehud Olmert and his Kadima Party might prove a historical watershed in the movement toward lasting peace in the Middle East. Why?

First of all, Olmert is a pragmatic politician. In the past, he publicly and privately urged the now-comatose Ariel Sharon to withdraw Israeli presence from heavily Arab-populated areas in the West Bank and Gaza. While pragmatic in style, Olmert's ideological credentials are impeccable. He was raised in a family associated with Herut, the quintessential right-wing Israeli party in the country's formative years. He can speak to the Israeli right, albeit not to the radical right.

Olmert enjoys the support of the vast majority of Israelis for the eventual withdrawal from most of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967. This position has dominated the political landscape consistently for a long time.

There is an international consensus around the notion that the only solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is via the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, along the armistice lines of 1949 but with some changes.

There is also a growing recognition - sometimes unspoken publicly - that a resolution to that most intractable of conflicts will contribute immensely to the de-escalation of the hostilities between the West and the Arab-Islamic world. There has been new energy shown by American diplomacy and by Condoleezza Rice personally in regard to this issue over the last year or so.

Due to these conditions, Olmert might be in a position of doing what several of his predecessors were unable to do: determine Israel's final borders and bring the single most difficult of international disputes to its conclusion. The irony of ironies would be if the non-charismatic civilian lawyer could achieve what a long line of renowned, legendary generals could not.

There is, however, one crucial complication on the way to the two-state solution. The Hamas regime in the West Bank and Gaza must adopt a policy of moderation and compromise, replacing its radical Islamism with a concrete commitment to lasting peace.

The Palestinians, in other words, and particularly Hamas, must climb down from their own tree, just as the Israelis, including nationalist rightists, seemed to have done in moving away from long-held annexationist positions.

The conditions set by many in the international community for Hamas' participation in solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are not only necessary and reasonable, they are also the conditions that Hamas can, and in some ways has already begun to meet:

Recognizing Israel's right to exist, a mirror image of Israel's recognition of an independent Palestinian state, implied in the Oslo process and explicitly accepted by Sharon.

Accepting a permanent end to terror as a sine qua non for any future negotiations, a position implicitly accepted by the year-long Hamas cease-fire, but one that must be formally and publicly declared.

Endorsing all previously signed agreements between Israel and the Palestinian leadership, including the mutual recognition included in the Declaration of Principles signed on the White House lawn in September 1993. In joining the Palestinian Authority, Hamas has accepted this position de facto; it is time for it to do so in a formal manner.

The ascendance of Hamas, on the one hand, and the victory of Olmert, on the other, might translate into an agreed-upon, negotiated settlement sought for so long by many on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide. Olmert's victory is a sign of the yearning of most Israelis for normalcy, a precondition of which is a lasting resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The big unknown is whether Hamas' victory reflects a similar process on the Palestinian side. If it does, the way toward a historic territorial grand compromise might open.

© 2006 Philadelphia Inquirer and wire service sources.