May 9, 2003	Friday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 6, 1424

AL QUDS: As this predominantly Jewish nation celebrates its Independence Day on Wednesday, hope along with a large dose of skepticism permeates the air.

A week after the unveiling of the US-backed “roadmap” for a final peace between Israelis and Palestinians, there is a fragile sense that this time, just maybe, events have aligned to create circumstances conducive to a resolution of the conflict.

Most dramatic is the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, which removed one of Israel’s staunchest enemies and has given the Israeli government more flexibility in its security strategy. Also, a new Palestinian leader has arrived on the scene, Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, a man many believe is willing to jettison armed struggle in favor of a political settlement.

Not so sudden but no less important, experts say, is the entrenched support among Israelis for a separate Palestinian state — not necessarily out of a sense of moral obligation or charity but from a hard-eyed judgment that it offers the only way out of the fighting, which has claimed more than 2,000 Palestinian and 700 Israeli lives in the past 31 months.

A decade ago, the idea of carving out a separate Palestinian state was the mantra of Israeli leftists but anathema to most other Israeli Jews. Now, it is firmly part of the political mainstream, according to analysts and pollsters.

“Ten years ago, I’d have said, ‘Who are they that we give them a state?’ Now I say, ‘This is the reality,’ “ said Eran Levy, a restaurateur in downtown Al Quds. Levy, 34, puts himself on the right of the political spectrum, but if a two-state solution will “stop the mess here,” he said, then so be it.

Palestinian statehood is the final destination on the roadmap, an initiative sponsored by the United States and other international parties. The document envisions an immediate end to violence, an Israeli pullback from parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and a Palestinian state as early as 2005.

“The reason why you see today much greater support from the center of the political map for the concept of separation is really due to the fact that, for better or worse, the last two- and-half years have created deep pessimism here about the ability to coexist peacefully,” said Shai Feldman, who heads the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. “I don’t think there’s any illusion anymore that the two communities can intertwine.” Akiva Eldar, a prominent columnist with the newspaper Haaretz. “Now Analysts trace the shift in public opinion in support of Palestinian statehood back to the Oslo peace process of the 1990s, when a resolution to the crisis seemed tantalizingly within reach. Talks between Israel and the Palestinians led to agreement that there ought to be a separate Palestinian homeland, carved largely out of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Ultimately, the 1993 Oslo accord fell apart, leaving both sides embittered and disillusioned. But the concept of a separate Palestinian state had crept from the political fringe toward the center and stayed lodged there.

“If we go back before the beginning of Oslo, let’s say 1991 or so, there was not a majority in favour” of giving Palestinians their own state, said Ephraim Yaar of the Tami Steinmetz Institute for Peace at Tel Aviv University. “In this respect, you can say the Israeli public has shifted toward the left.”

Yaar co-directs a monthly poll examining peace issues. In a survey, conducted last week, 60 per cent of respondents said they favoured the creation of a Palestinian state, while 36 per cent were opposed. (The rest did not answer.)

Yet the resounding re-election of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in January reflected a curious dichotomy in the public psyche, Yaar said. Although a majority of Israelis have now adopted one of the key elements of the leftist agenda, they apparently want a strong right-wing government to bring it about.

Yaar’s poll found that 64 per cent of Israelis back the new road map. The Israeli government has expressed reservations about the plan — Sharon is likely to discuss his misgivings with President Bush in a meeting later this month — while Palestinian officials have welcomed it.

The challenge for negotiators will lie in the details. The roadmap leaves undecided some of the thorniest issues dividing the two sides, emotional questions such as whether to turn over East Jerusalem to Palestinians to serve as their capital and whether to allow Palestinian refugees to return to lands they fled or were ejected from at the time of Israel’s creation. Those issues would be decided in the last phase of the plan, in 2005, according to the road map’s present timeline.

Akiva Eldar, a prominent columnist with the newspaper Haaretz, said the Israeli public would probably be prepared to accept some sort of compromise.

“They just need to be convinced that it’s a good deal,” he said. “What Israelis hate most is to find out that they were usurpers. If they (are) convinced that the price is good, and the merchandise is good, they don’t care about ideology and religion and that ‘God gave us this land.’”—Dawn/The LAT-WP News Service (c) The Los Angles Times.