SPME Faculty Forum editor’s note: This piece was submitted by Itzhak Levav M.D. Advisor in Research to the Israel Ministry of Health.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=106006

Ever since the reins of power in Israel were turned over to Benjamin Netanyahu by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the idea of a Palestinian state with provisional borders has again become fashionable. Some support it for reasons of realpolitik, on the assumption that the right-wing lineup of the new government of Israel leaves no chance for anything but modest interim arrangements. Others believe that a “probation period” would assist in bridging gaps regarding sensitive issues like Jerusalem and refugees. They suggest that once it becomes clear the “provisional state” is functioning well – Israelis feel secure and Palestinians enjoy prosperity – both sides will cease thinking in zero-sum terms and will be more receptive to win-win solutions.

After decades of violence and hatred, and given the conditions of uncertainty, there is ostensibly some logic in formulating a “probation period” prior to creating an irreversible situation. After all, even the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt allowed Israel to implement the withdrawal from Sinai in stages, with reasonable intervals.

But as Israeli President Shimon Peres likes to say, you can make an omelet out of eggs but you can’t make an egg out of an omelet. Peres, a supporter of the “provisional state” idea, now proposes reversing things. He recommends that, after the parties have invested hundreds if not thousands of hours in the omelet of final status – phase III of the “road map” – they go back to phase II. Ahmad Qorei, Peres’ partner in the Oslo negotiations, recently hinted to me that he supports this idea. He argues that the border issue constitutes 70 percent of the Israeli-Palestinian track.

Yet the proposal to replace a final-status agreement with yet another interim arrangement ignores the reality of the Palestinian-Israeli track over the past 16 years. Who could imagine back in September 1993, when Peres stood on the White House lawn alongside the Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, that the temporary borders of areas A, B and C would still be in place at the close of the first decade of the new millennium? According to the Oslo agreement, those borders were supposed to be replaced by permanent boundaries between Israel and a Palestinian state more than 10 years ago – no later than May 1999. Final-status negotiations were inaugurated by then-Prime Minister Peres 13 years ago. His successor then, Netanyahu, not only froze those talks, he refused to implement even the modest interim agreement he signed at Wye Plantation (moving 12 percent of area C to B and one percent to A).

Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s attempt to initiate practical talks on final-status issues was shipwrecked by the Al-Aqsa intifada. Road map Phase I conditioned renewal of the process on a cessation of violence and mothballed the Clinton parameters and the Taba understandings. The Annapolis conference held in November 2007 effectively determined that Phase I was over and launched Phase III. Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas revealed recently that they reached impressive understandings regarding all core issues. It’s hard to imagine the Palestinians agreeing to file away these understandings too and return to a track of provisional agreements. Indeed, the program ratified by the sixth Fatah general conference completely rejected the option of a state with provisional borders.

Were we able to freeze the situation on the ground for an interim period, it might conceivably be possible to postpone final-status negotiations until the Israeli and Palestinian publics are “ripe” to support the concessions required for an agreement. Yet in reality, the time that has elapsed since Oslo has been exploited to generate unprecedented momentum in settlement construction: from 110,000 settlers in the West Bank in 1993 to 300,000 in 2009.

With the passage of time, the confidence of the Israeli and Palestinian publics in the likelihood of reaching agreement continues to decline. This month’s opinion survey by the Truman Institute in Jerusalem and the PSR Center in Ramallah found that only 29 percent of Israelis think Israel has a partner for peace negotiations, while 59 percent believe it does not. Some 46 percent support a final-status agreement on the basis of the Clinton parameters as against 52 percent in the December 2008 survey. Among Palestinians, 38 percent support those parameters as against 41 percent in the previous survey.

In order to move forward, we need to find a formula to bridge the gap between Palestinian fears that Israel will turn any provisional agreement into a permanent one, and Israeli fears that the Palestinians will treat a permanent settlement as a provisional one. This formula comprises prior agreement over all aspects of a final-status agreement on the basis of the Arab Peace Initiative. Implementation of the agreement will be phased, in accordance with a strict timetable and with international supervision and support. The road map, which promised that the Israel-Arab conflict would end four years ago, offers numb testimony on the outcome of a peace initiative that ignores these vital components.

Akiva Eldar is a columnist and editorial board member at the Israeli daily Haaretz, and is coauthor of “Lords of the Land” (2007), about Israeli settlers. This commentary first appeared at bitterlemons.org, an online newsletter that publishes views on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.