November 7, 2001	Wednesday	Shaba’an 20, 1422

LONDON: Pessimism has become a cliche in the Middle East. The past year of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been a deep sea dive that never quite touches rock bottom: from an intifada of stones to an armed revolt, from the bulldozings of homes to a policy of assassinations, from suicide bombs to tank incursions. Worse still, no one can see a way out.

Now one senior player has emerged to suggest a route out of the mire. Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel’s foreign minister in the last Labour government and tipped as a future party leader, has been touring European capitals seeking support for his own peace strategy. He is pushing the idea at home, too, driving it through his party’s policy-making machinery. He has become that rarest of creatures on the current scene: a man with a plan.

Ben-Ami has come to the reluctant conclusion that the two sides are incapable of making peace by themselves. The hopeful premise of the 1990s Oslo process was that, once Israelis and Palestinians had been brought face to face, they could be left alone to settle their differences. That hope ran aground last autumn, after the failure of talks at Camp David led to the eruption of a second intifada - and another failure of talks at Taba, Egypt.

The result, says Ben-Ami, is two peoples who cannot move towards each other. The Israelis are paralyzed, led by a prime minister who has always been hostile to the peace process and a divided coalition government. Israeli public opinion is also in no mood to embrace a peace plan and the deep sacrifices it would entail.

The Palestinians are no less frozen. They, too, are ruled by a coalition Yasser Arafat cannot move freely; he has to keep groups like Hamas and Jihad on the side. The past 14 months of death and violence have also hardened Palestinian public opinion.

Only one thing can make the two sides move: outside pressure. “Any progress that has come over the last year has come from third parties,” says Ben-Ami, citing the likes of the Mitchell report and the Tenet principles - peace or ceasefire plans drawn up by Americans. What is needed now, argues the former foreign minister, is the very opposite of Oslo: for the world to step in - and stay in - until Israelis and Palestinians have made peace.

The first move would be an international conference led not just by the Americans but everybody with a stake: the Russians, the European Union, moderate Arab states. Any deal agreed by the two sides would then be implemented under international supervision, with a multinational force on the ground (a radical proposal for a mainstream Israeli politician to make, given Israel’s historic opposition to any outside military presence). Neither side delivered on their promises at Oslo, Ben-Ami concedes. Under this scheme, they would have to.

There is one extra factor which convinces Ben-Ami this plan would work where others have failed: the personality of Yasser Arafat. After watching him closely for days on end at Camp David, the former minister pays tribute to Arafat as an extraordinary leader who has pulled off a remarkable feat, leading a national movement for nearly four decades, dragging it from the margins to the centre of world politics. Arafat has been assiduous in seeking world recognition, travelling tirelessly, seeing foreign dignitaries around the clock. If they, and especially the Arab states, are at his side, he might just make the move.

The plan is all there, waiting to be picked up. Ben-Ami admits Ariel Sharon is not likely to do it; a change of government in Israel would be needed first. An early victory would be getting Labour to pull out of Sharon’s coalition and into formal opposition. Labour’s de facto current leader, Shimon Peres, might not like that idea, but he may have to do it anyway. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.