All posts tagged mahmoud abbas

Ori Nir - On Monday, live on the
Internet, the ceremony that ushers in Israel’s Independence Day at Jerusalem’s
Mount Herzl took me back 24 years.

A rookie reporter for
the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, I
was covering the commemoration ceremony of Zafer al-Masri, the moderate mayor of
Nablus, who on March 3, 1986 ‹ my very first day on the job as Ha’aretz’s West Bank correspondent ‹ was
assassinated by Palestinian radicals.

At some point,
booklets were handed out. The title stunned me. It was an Arabic translation of
Theodor Herzl’s The Jewish State.

The introduction to
the book said: “let us examine how Herzl dreamt of a state with institutions and means of
existence while living in the heart of Europe, and his dream was realized. …
What about us, we who live here, don’t we deserve to dream of a state?”

At the time it was
unthinkable for young Palestinian – I later met the young Palestinian
intellectual, a former prisoner, who initiated the translation – to urge his
people publicly to emulate the success of the Zionist movement. To at least
start dreaming.

Look at the West Bank
now.

There is a capable
Palestinian prime minister in Ramallah, who earlier this month promised that the
Palestinians would be state-ready in less than two years. And with a disciplined
professional police force, with reformed government institutions, with a
recovering economy and with full international backing, he’s not dreaming any
more.

Palestinian Prime
Minister Salam Fayyad and President Mahmoud Abbas have the blessing of the Obama
administration to build a state. They should have the full cooperation of the
Israeli government. These two leaders are the best Palestinian partners that
Israel can realistically hope
for.

Most Israelis – and
many of their friends overseas – have been conditioned to believe that Israel
has no Palestinian partner for peace. Although most Israelis support the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, most
don’t believe that such an agreement with the Palestinians is possible, because
they don’t believe they can trust the Palestinians.

Israelis have a reason
for skepticism. But by dismissing the Palestinians – as do many American Jews – they don’t notice
the quiet revolution that Abbas and Fayyad are leading in the West Bank.

Examples abound. They
go much beyond the West Bank’s impressive economic growth rate (8.5 percent in
2009). With the help of U.S. Gen. Keith Dayton, the Palestinian Authority has so far
trained 2,600 members of a new, disciplined security force. In a month, that
force will grow to 3,100. Not one of them has gotten in trouble with the Israeli
authorities over security offenses or with the Palestinian authorities over crime or corruption. Almost
10 percent of the Palestinian police force are women.

Earlier this month,
David Cohen, assistant treasury secretary for terrorist financing, praised the
P.A. at a talk he gave at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy for taking
“important steps to limit Hamas’ influence” in the West Bank and Gaza by
supervising the Palestinian banking system and charitable contributions.

The Palestinian authority is dealing
with incitement, where it matters the most: West Bank mosques. Most West Bank
imams are employed by the Palestinian Authority. They are required to follow the
moderate talking points from the P.A. in their weekly sermons. Those who sway
are sanctioned. The P.A. under Abbas and Fayyad has reformed the court system.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pointed out last week that Palestinian courts
handled 67 percent more cases in 2009 than in 2008.

There has been very
little Palestinian violence emanating from the West Bank in the past years.
Israeli generals note with satisfaction their cooperation with the Palestinian security forces.

The Gaza Strip, obviously, is a different story. But
Israel’s understandable refusal to negotiate with Hamas should not deter it from
doing anything possible to reach a deal with Abbas and Fayyad, including an
immediate, indefinite and comprehensive freeze on settlement activity in the
West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem. Because it’s in Israel’s interest, and because
Abbas and Fayyad are an opportunity that may never reoccur.

Israel has capable
partners in the West Bank. It’s time to empower them and immediately negotiate
with them in earnest to secure a peace deal that would insure Israel’s future as
a stable Jewish democracy.