Two Postings Today -- This is the second

Book Review

One State, Two States

Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict

By Benny Morris

Yale University Press, $26

201 pages



Two-state solution, Yada, yada, yada


"I am a strong supporter of a two-state solution. I have articulated that publicly and I will articulate that privately," President Barack Obama said on April 21 in an Oval Office meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah.

On April 17, America's special envoy George Mitchell, now in the process of setting up an office in Jerusalem, said that the Obama administration will be applying "great energy" in pursuit of a two-state solution. "A two state solution is the only solution," said Mitchell.

In the background, Fatah leaders have been urging the White House to press the recently elected government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to explicitly and unconditionally commit to a two-state solution. Netanyahu formally did so on June 14 at his seminal Bar-Ilan speech and again this past Sunday around the Cabinet table.

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On April 22, the One Voice movement -- which works to build support among Palestinians and Jews for a two-state solution -- funded a poll which, lo and behold, revealed that an overwhelming majority of both peoples favor a two-state solution.

Along comes Benny Morris to burst the bubble. His latest book, a slim account of the two-state solution idea is premised on the conviction that, rhetoric aside, the Palestinian Arabs have never really accepted the legitimacy a Jewish state, and that "one-statism" was, is, and remains the dominant Palestinian position.



Whether it is the clear and unequivocal voice of Hamas's Mahmoud Zahar saying “We cannot, we will not, and we will never recognize the enemy in any way, shape or form,” or the more nuanced and Western-savvy tone of Fatah negotiator Saeb Erekat, reiterating that Fatah -- 16 years after Oslo -- will under no circumstances recognize the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state, Morris's convincing thesis is that the last thing the Palestinians really want is a state of Palestine living side-by-side in peace with a Jewish state.

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One State, Two States opens with the unexceptional assertion that one-statism is the dominant line among Hamas radicals, but also – in what may be startling news for some – among Fatah "moderates" and the anti-Zionist intelligentsia on campus and in the punditocracy. The "moderates" and their academic backers say they have given up on "two-states for two peoples", ostensibly because Israel's presence in the West Bank and east Jerusalem is so entrenched that it will never agree to withdraw to the 1949 Armistice Lines – an unalterable Palestinian demand along with the "right of return for Palestinian refugees." Morris has a go at intellectuals such as Rashid Khalidi whom he persuasively shows to be faux moderates.

Of course, this conflict is not over borders, as Morris makes clear: "Put simply, the Palestinian Arab nationalist movement, from inception, and ever since, has consistently regarded Palestine as innately, completely, inalienably, and legitimately 'Arab' and Muslim and has aspired to establish in it a sovereign state under its rule covering all of the country's territory."

The Arabs' steadfast rejectionism is painfully predicable because it is premised on the conviction that the Jews have no civilizational connection (predating the arrival of the Arabs and the birth of Islam) to the Land of Israel and that the Jews are colonial interlopers. The struggle, therefore, is not about borders but over the zero-sum question of which people is, or will be, the majority population between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.

When the Zionist movement and the soon-to-be nascent Arab national movement first encountered one another, the Jews were a clear minority. In 1882, Morris writes, there were about half a million Arabs and maybe 25,000 Jews. By 1920, there were 80,000 Jews and 700,000 Arabs. When the UN voted for partition, there were 600,000 Jews and 1.25 million Arabs. Today, there are about 3.9 million Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza plus another 1.5 million Palestinians inside the Green Line compared to a Jewish population of 5.5 million.

No matter how much the ratio narrowed – and even if the Jews achieved majority status over a sliver of their historic homeland -- there was no way the Arabs would agree to share the land or that Jewish sovereignty was legitimate. It didn't matter that the Arabs had never been sovereign in Palestine or that most of the land was owned by the faraway Ottoman rulers; compromise was out of the question. Nor did it matter that nearly 80 percent of the Jewish National Home, as defined by the League of Nations and the Balfour Declaration, had been lopped off by the British in 1922 and turned over to the Arabs as Transjordan. The Jews, in response, had reluctantly abandoned claims to eastern Palestine, the singular exception being Ze'ev Jabotinsky and his revisionist followers who held fast to the belief that the Jews would one day be the dominant majority.

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Once the extent of Arab opposition to the Zionist enterprise registered, Zionist idealists sought to accommodate the Arabs by proposing a bi-national solution. Morris summarizes the efforts of a number of small groups such as Brit Shalom and Hashomer Hatza'ir which pursued the bi-national idea. Some would have even consented to a permanent Jewish minority in the name of sharing the land. But these groups lost steam (not that they had much to begin with) in the wake of the 1929 Hebron intifada and subsequent murderous uprisings in 1936-39. Like today's J-Street radicals pushing for an imposed solution, pacifist rabbi and Hebrew University president Judah Magnes hoped that a bi-national state would be forced on the parties even if it meant a permanent Jewish minority. But in the wake of the April 1948 slaughter of a convoy of medical staff and faculty heading to Hadassah Hospital and Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, even Magnes gave up, went home, and died, Morris tells us.

In the period leading up to the creation of the state, Zionist pragmatists grudgingly accepted the partition of Western Palestine once it became clear that other options of sharing this land with the Arabs, such as a bi-national state, were either unacceptable or impractical. The pragmatists did so despite the realization that western Palestine was and is, basically, an indivisible geographic, political and economic unit.

Yet, every Zionist "yes" to compromise was met by an Arab "no." Their leaders rejected the July 1937 Peel Commission which would have granted Arabs the bulk of the country west of the Jordan; they even said no to the 1939 White Paper which essentially overturned the Balfour Declaration. And they then rejected the 1947 UN Partition to create two states.

Zionist leaders knew all along that ruling over a hostile Arab minority in a partitioned state would be impractical. Had there been goodwill, an exchange of populations would have been possible. There were precedents, such as the Greek-Turkish exchange in the 1920s. Morris cites David Ben-Gurion: "We never wanted to dispossess the Arabs. But since England is giving [the larger] part of the country promised to us for an Arab state, it is only fair that the Arabs in our state be transferred to the Arab area."

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The 1948 War, Morris reminds us, displaced 700,000 Arabs but left a 160,000-strong Arab minority inside the Green Line. But that war, he points out, also ended "in an effective two-state partition of Palestine, albeit between Israel and Jordan…" with the Jews holding 8,000 sq. miles and the Arabs holding 2,000 in the West Bank and Gaza. Yet the Arabs sat on the West Bank and Gaza for 19 years refusing to create a state. Soon after the 1967 war -- when, as a result of their war of aggression, they had lost the West Bank and Gaza also -- they once again said no to peace, no to recognition and no to negotiation.

Even in the wake of the 1993 Oslo Accords, writes Morris: "Arafat kept dropping hints, in speeches in Arabic to Muslim audiences, that he was still wedded to the phased policy of liberating all of Palestine and had no intention of honoring a two-state settlement." Morris mentions [page 151] that suicide bombings "were inaugurated by the Palestinian fundamentalists after the Goldstein massacre." In fact, the first suicide attack took place on April 16, 1993 in the West Bank at Bet El. There were about a dozen Hamas strikes (not all successful) before Baruch Goldstein went on his Hebron killing spree of Muslim worshippers at the Cave of the Machpela, in February 1994.

In any event, the Arabs again said "no" in July 2000 to the Clinton plan at Camp David; again to George W. Bush at Taba 2001, and at the end of 2008 when Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Ehud Olmert's magnanimous offer of virtually 100 percent of the West Bank (any difference to be made up by ceding territory in the Negev). This thumbnail sketch of rejectionism is comprehensible only if one appreciates how viscerally the Arabs feel that the Jewish presence in Palestine is a cancer which needs to be kept from spreading until it can, ultimately, be excised.

One State, Two States is a superb summation of just how steadfast the Arabs are about not sharing the Land. Genuine moderates who expressed the slightest interest in compromise were isolated or murdered. Long decades of largely self-inflicted suffering and displacement have only hardened Palestinian hearts, not made them reconsider the pointlessness of their intransigence.

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Morris shows how the differences between the PLO and Hamas are inconsequential as far as acceptance of Jewish legitimacy in Palestine is considered. He takes us through the creation of the Palestine National Council in 1964 which premised its platform on the idea that the "Jews are not one people" and have no national rights. It is a position that remains unchanged 45 years later.

He argues that the Fatah constitution has never been revoked or amended even if, post-1973, the movement modified its pronouncements to gain Western support. While the goals were unchanged, new pragmatic tactics, including a "policy of phases" was implemented. In other words, for a spurt of time, the Palestinians appeared willing to take whatever land they could gain in negotiations and use that as a staging area for the continued struggle to liberate all of Palestine.

The phased-plan, however, may now be off the table. How else to explain why Fatah's old guard dismissed the offer Olmert made at the end of 2008? Was it because Fatah lacks even a semblance of legitimacy within the Palestinian polity? Was it because rank and file Palestinians have lost faith in the phased plan? Perhaps the Palestinians fear that even a temporary demobilization will rob them of the will to fight. Morris raises this question, but like the rest of us can provide no satisfactory answer.

Personally, I don't think Fatah's inhibitions relate to Hamas. The Islamists would not stand in the way of the destruction of Israel in stages – indeed, Ahmed Yousef and others have even put forth a plan for a multi-year hudna that serves that is a variation on the theme.

Perhaps the stumbling block is Israel's insistence on a non-militarized Palestinian state, a rejection of the "right of return" and retention of strategic settlement blocs, which theoretically would thwart the phased plan from getting off the ground.

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For any student of the Arab-Israel conflict, One State, Two States is an excellent primer on Palestinian duplicity. Morris demonstrates that the Palestinians never really accepted a two-state solution and that Fatah moderates never really gave up on terrorism in the wake of Oslo. The Palestinian "right of return," he shows, will not be solved through diplomatic sleight of hand whereby, for instance, Israel "acknowledged the moral and material suffering caused to the Palestinian people as a result of the 1948 war" via "compensation, resettlement [and] rehabilitation." Nor would it do for Israel to accept a symbolic number of refugees. Even Palestinian moderates, Morris shows, will not bend on their "right" to demographically asphyxiate Israel with the millions upon millions of "refugees."

The future, plainly, belongs to Hamas and One State, Two States presents a workmanlike summary of Hamas's origins and intentions. The Obama administration's likely willingness to fund a Palestinian unity government even if Hamas does not recognize Israel, renounce terror and accept previous Palestinian commitments is disconcerting. Not surprisingly, we're witnessing EU member states flirt with the Islamists – just as they did with Fatah in the early 1980s -- and we're seeing how so-called moderate Hamasniks are learning to fudge their goals in a way that eases the consciences of euro-liberals.



Yet Hamas is unapologetically anti-Semitic, fulminating, as Morris shows, about freemasons, Rotary Clubs and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. "This, then, is the covenant of the leading political party among the Palestinian Arabs, the party that they elected to power in free elections, that thoroughly dominates the Gaza Strip…" he concludes.

One State, Two States is a gloomy, concise, and spot-on account of where prospects for peace with the Palestinians stand: in the same ditch that the Palestinian Arabs began digging a century ago. It is levelheaded polemic more than history. And Morris is no doubt right to acknowledge that non-strategic settlement building close to Palestinian population center in the West Bank has been unhelpful. Yet he is honest enough to acknowledge that most Israelis would be ready to uproot these communities in return for genuine peace.

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Morris, who worked at The Jerusalem Post long before I arrived there, made academic waves in 1989 with The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 which took the wind out of the Zionist line that the Arabs left of their own volition or because they were encouraged by their leaders to "get out of the way while Arab armies finished off the Jews." Yet he concluded that "The Palestinian refugee problem was born of war, not by design, Jewish or Arab."

To paraphrase Woody Allen, reading this book reminds me that we Israelis are at a crossroads in our relations with the Palestinians: One path leads to oblivion while the other to a total abyss. Pray we choose wisely.

Or as Morris puts it -- a one-state solution is a non-starter; the two peoples couldn't possibly live comfortably under one roof. At the same time, the prospects for a two-state solution are bleak "because the Palestinian, in the deepest fibers of their being, oppose such an outcome…"

About the only glimmer of hope Morris holds out is some kind of West Bank-Gaza-Jordan confederation. His next book, I imagine, will tell us why this, too, is a non-starter for the Palestinians.

Somehow, for a time, Morris got lumped together with anti-Zionist revisionist historians. Perhaps it was because of his reported refusal to do reserve duty over the Green Line; perhaps his association with Ben-Gurion University which has a reputation for being a hotbed of post-Zionist radicalism. And yet, precisely because Morris has for years labored in the archives with an open mind, his analysis here and elsewhere has added credibility. The highly accessible One State, Two States should be required reading from the Oval Office to the college campus.

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Clashes between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese

False familiarity in Xinjiang


To Israeli eyes, the international media's coverage of the clashes between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese in Xinjiang province has seemed relatively non-judgmental so far. Chinese authorities are less sanguine, wondering why rioters have been described as peaceful protesters.

Over 150 people have been killed, 1,000 wounded and 1,400 arrested in three days of unrest. Hundreds of shops and cars have been set ablaze and parts of the city of Urumqi look like a war zone.

Authorities insist the violence has been instigated by expatriate agitators, pointing specifically to the German-based World Uighur Congress, and to a Washington-area activist named Rebiya Kadeer.

The Uighurs (pronounced Wee-gurs) are ethnically and religiously tied to the Turkic-speaking region of the former Soviet Union. They complain that the Chinese government limits their freedom to practice Islam. Radical Islam has made inroads in Xinjiang; 20 Uighurs have been captured by US forces in Afghanistan.

The ethnic Han, who dominate China, view Xinjiang as not only geo-strategically essential, but vital because of its oil and gas reserves. The central government encourages Han people to settle in Xinjiang. Once there, they live mostly segregated from the Uighur majority.

A deadly brawl last month between Han and Uighur factory workers, followed by rumors of reprisals, ignited the latest surge of unrest. Muslim mobs chanting "God is great" have confronted security forces, while club-wielding Han counter-demonstrators, fuming because they feel police are not doing enough to protect them, tried marching on a mosque yesterday before being dispersed by police.

THE XINJIANG unrest caught most consumers of news unprepared and unable to form instant opinions.

Until 1977, when Deng Xiaoping began the still ongoing process of transforming China into a more open society, foreign journalists were not even permitted into the region. But when the latest violence erupted, 24/7 cable news coverage kicked-in, as did reporting by the prestige press and wire services. Still, viewers and readers were mostly unfamiliar with the "back story."

What they now "know" - having seen the images - is that heavily armed Chinese police backed by truck-mounted water-cannons confronted demonstrators, who included women and children. They "saw" a lone, elderly woman, leaning on a cane, facing down an armored truck of the paramilitary People's Armed Police; they "witnessed" unidentified victims of the violence hospitalized on life-support, and a child with a head wound reportedly shot while "holding the hand of his pregnant mother when she [too] was shot."

So which will have the lasting impact - the above images, or the assertion by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang that what has been going on in Xinjiang is "not a peaceful protest, but evil killing, fire-setting and looting"?

The Uighurs claim they have engaged in peaceful protest only to have been set upon by security forces. Qin says they are turning "black into white in an attempt to mislead the public."

The Chinese seem to appreciate that emotive images are overpowering their explanations. So they've gone on the PR offensive, escorting foreign journalists to Urumqi to "see for themselves." They have concurrently shut down cell phone networks and Internet access to keep the Uighurs' message from getting out, and to obstruct their ability to organize.

But the Internet age makes it basically impossible to seal a country hermetically, or manage the flow of news.

JUST about anyone with a computer or a television has a firm opinion about "what Israel must do" to address Palestinian grievances. Familiarity, even if rooted in ignorance, makes everyone an instant expert. The Xinjiang unrest, bringing new players into the media spotlight, leaves most people more befuddled than opinionated, though not averse to blaming the authorities by default.

The side that wears uniforms is always at a public relations disadvantage when it is confronted by images of wailing women and children in traditional garb. In days, some media coverage has planted the germ of the idea that Xinjiang is East Turkestan.

We Israelis might want to recall Xinjiang the next time we feel the world media is being uniquely harsh on us. And perhaps a more humble Chinese leadership will reflect on how easy it is to turn "black into white" before jumping on the anti-Israel bandwagon.

Thanks a lot, Mr. Vice President

Biden's signal


There's little doubt that US Vice President Joe Biden was signaling, in his Sunday television interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, that the Obama administration would not stand in the way if Israel chose military force to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons.

GS: Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it pretty clear that he agreed with President Obama to give until the end of the year for this whole process of engagement to work. After that, he's prepared to take matters into his own hands. Is that the right approach?

Biden: Look, Israel can determine for itself - it's a sovereign nation - what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else.

GS: Whether we agree or not?

Biden: Whether we agree or not. They're entitled to do that. Any sovereign nation is... But there is no pressure from any nation that's going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed. What we believe is in the national interest of the United States, which we, coincidentally, believe is also in the interest of Israel and the whole world. And so there are separate issues. If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right... That is not our choice.

GS: But just to be clear here, if the Israelis decide Iran is an existential threat [and] they have to take out the nuclear program, militarily the United States will not stand in the way?
Biden: Look, we cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do... if they make a determination that they're existentially threatened and their survival is threatened by another country.

GS: You say we can't dictate - but we can, if we choose to, deny over-flight rights here in Iraq. We can stand in the way of a military strike.

Biden: I'm not going to speculate, George, on those issues, other than to say Israel has a right to determine what's in its interests; and we have a right and we will determine what's in our interests.

BIDEN HAS been known to commit the occasional faux pas. But the Israeli consensus is that he was sending a message from President Barack Obama. Is live television the best way for two allies to communicate on a matter of such import? Yes - if the goal was to instantly "reward" Binyamin Netanyahu for uttering the magic words "two states for two peoples" at Sunday's cabinet meeting.

Or could Biden have been signaling the Iranians that Washington would unleash the Israeli military if the mullahs continue to drag their heels on engagement? Unlikely.

After Biden's remarks, however, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, implied he doesn't think an Israeli bombing is preferable to an Iranian bomb.

ISRAELIS FEEL little appreciation for Biden's signal. Not to sound churlish, but we don't really need his confirmation that we are a sovereign country. Moreover, president George W. Bush's April 2004 letter to Ariel Sharon - the one Obama studiously ignores - already supported Israel's right "to deter and defend itself, by itself, against any threat."

So rather than subcontracting the safeguarding of American, Western and Arab interests in keeping the bomb out of Iran's clutches - and being left to eventually face down Iran on our own - what Israelis would prefer is concerted US leadership now.

The administration remains committed to reaching out to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Fearing it would upset the mullahs, however, Obama's has been reluctant to adequately prepare for the likely possibility that the Iranians will not even discuss their nuclear program, or will use any talks to stall for time.

The Europeans - even as they conduct billions of dollars' worth of trade with Iran - are belatedly turning to Washington for leadership on genuinely meaningful sanctions, the kind that would get Khamenei's undivided attention, should engagement fail.

Though even its most hardcore Western apologists have stopped making excuses for the Iranian regime, the Obama administration appears hesitant to see it for what it is.

Obama will have an opportunity to prove our assessment wrong later this week, at the G-8.

Ultra-Orthodox riot while the Arabs shoot it out

Unquiet weekend


For 2,000 years, the Jewish people yearned to be sovereign and free in "the land of Zion and Jerusalem." That wish has not been completely realized, as two violent disturbances in the capital over Shabbat hammered home.

The first involved anti-Zionist Eda Haredit rioters - joined by other, non-Zionist haredim - protesting the Sabbath opening of a parking garage near the Old City's Jaffa Gate. The second reflected an abrogation of responsibility by authorities as Arab clans shot it out in Silwan.

Arab residents who called police say they hesitated to respond for long hours, and that ambulances were not given armed escorts (necessary when entering Arab neighborhoods), anxious calls for medical assistance notwithstanding.

THE HAREDI protesters violated the sanctity of the Sabbath they claim to be defending by forcing the deployment of large numbers of security forces - including helicopters, mounted police, and observant officers - at whom they hurled rocks and invective ("You will burn in the fire of hell," "Nazis," and - to policemen wearing kippot: "half-breeds.")

Other haredim opened a second front, throwing stones at cars traveling along Route 9. As night fell, louts set fire to trash bins in Mea She'arim.

Police reacted with questionable restraint, making just one arrest - compared to 60 last Saturday. It remains to be seen whether this approach will boomerang. Haredi elders did discourage overheated adolescents and children from participating in Saturday's unrest.

Police pledge to press for indictments of the 60 arrested, even as they continue to hold 10 of the worst offenders. The extremists are apparently divided, some wanting to up the ante by holding midweek protests that include many children.

The haredi claim that the car park upsets the religious-secular status quo is nonsense. The facility, in a non-haredi tourist area, is free and staffed by non-Jews to accommodate vehicles that would anyway have been driven into town and left, helter-skelter, to block streets and sidewalks.

One way for Diaspora Jews to register their censure of such extremist behavior is by insisting that Mea She'arim-based institutions seeking their support go on record as denouncing such Shabbat riots.

We are also waiting for leading non-haredi Orthodox rabbis to echo former chief rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau and challenge the pernicious idea that it is halachically permissible to assault security personnel of the State of Israel - much less on the holy Sabbath.

SILWAN IS located below and to the south of the Old City walls. It is home to some 45,000 Palestinian Arabs - tax-paying residents of Jerusalem who carry standard blue Israeli ID cards - and a small enclave of national-religious Jews based in the City of David.

The terrifying outbreak of night-long mayhem between the Rajabi and Udan-Gawani clans, reportedly involving automatic weapons and grenades, left two dead and up to 10 wounded. A number of Arab homes were set ablaze. Repeated calls for calm over mosque loudspeakers were ignored - which only added to the sense of chaos and abandonment.

City of David residents said their calls to the police were ignored; Arab residents said they called for ambulances which never came. A Magen David Adom spokesman said police would not escort MDA ambulances, so the Red Crescent was told to bring the wounded to the entrance of the village. Instead they were taken to an Arab hospital.

Yakir Segev, a Jerusalem municipal councilmen, told Israel Radio that police have essentially abdicated their responsibilities in the Arab sections of Jerusalem. "The chance of seeing a regular police cruiser is close to zero," lamented Segev. Unconfirmed Arab reports say that the police allow Palestinian Authority operatives (who are officially barred from the area) to deal with clan violence.

The police say complaints of abandonment by both Arab and Jewish residents of Silwan/City of David are unwarranted. They say a number of Border Police jeeps entered the area when the shooting was first reported, and returned when it resumed after midnight. They point to three suspects arrested.

Silwan is not located in Hamas-controlled Gaza nor in the Fatah-dominated West Bank, but within walking distance of the Western Wall, within Jerusalem's municipal boundaries. The police must act accordingly.

Sovereignty comes with responsibilities. When the latter is abdicated, so is the former.

A visit from Congressman Wexler with a message from President Obama

'Calling their bluff'


One of President Barack Obama's earliest backers, US Representative Robert Wexler, was in Jerusalem this week trying to persuade Israelis that a settlement freeze would be a win-win proposition.

"I want to call their bluff," Wexler told The Jerusalem Post, referring to the Arab countries.

"I want to see, if Israel makes substantial movement toward a credible peace process, whether they are willing to do it. And if they are not, better that we should find out five or six months into the process, before Israel is actually asked to compromise any significant position."

Wexler added: "And if the Arab world fails to deliver, you can rightly say that all bets are off."

The Democrat from south Florida told the Post that the Obama administration was placing America's Arab allies under heavy pressure to take substantial steps toward normalizing relations with Israel, in return for a settlement freeze. He said they were being lobbied to establish trade offices, economic links, and cultural and educational exchanges; and to permit Israeli airliners to traverse Arab airspace.

Wexler added that the US was "open to suggestions from the Israeli side" for "different indicators of normalization that would… create credibility among the Israeli public."

IT IS notable that otherwise savvy Israeli and Western politicians have found themselves repeatedly out-maneuvered in attempting to "call the bluff" of their Arab interlocutors. The assumption is that if their ostensible demands are met, the Arabs will be painted into a corner and have no choice but to be accommodating.

Ehud Barak thought he had called Yasser Arafat's bluff at Camp David in 2000, offering roughly 90 percent of the West Bank, all of the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.

Arafat said it wasn't enough - and launched the second intifada.

In 2005, Ariel Sharon unilaterally uprooted all Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and pulled the Israeli army out totally. He told the Palestinians: "To an outstretched hand, we shall respond with an olive branch."

They replied with an onslaught of Kassam rockets against the Negev.

In 2008, Ehud Olmert thought he had called Mahmoud Abbas's bluff by offering him the equivalent of 100% of the West Bank, plus international control of Jerusalem's Holy Basin. Abbas retorted: Make me a better offer.

When Binyamin Netanyahu took office, Abbas came up with a new bluff: The Palestinians would return to the negotiating table only in exchange for a settlement freeze.

Of course, had Abbas said yes to Olmert, the settlement issue would have become moot. All Jewish communities situated within the agreed boundaries of "Palestine" would, in all likelihood, have been uprooted.

At any rate, the Obama administration is, Wexler tells us, presently concentrating on calling the Arab states' "bluff," saying, in effect: "If we get you a settlement freeze - and you do keep insisting settlements are the stumbling blocks to peace - what sort of minimal moves toward normalization with Israel will you offer in return?"

To date, the Arabs have told the White House: "Have a nice day."

BUT SAY Netanyahu was prepared to call the Arabs' bluff (again) by agreeing to a freeze on construction outside the strategic settlement blocs. What reciprocal moves would mainstream Israelis want as a credible indication that the Arabs were on the way to normalization with Israel?

Some suggestions:

# Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States should establish interest sections at the Egyptian or Jordanian embassies in Tel Aviv and staff them with their own diplomats.

* The Arab states should declare a complete and immediate freeze on all anti-Israel agitation at the UN and associated bodies.

* Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah of Jordan should pay official visits to Israel.

* The Saudi king should meet with President Shimon Peres in a third country.

Wexler said that the Israeli press seemed oblivious to the administration's pressure on the Arab states to show signs of normalization with Israel, and that the Arab media wasn't publicizing these efforts either.

That can be remedied. Let Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Special Envoy George Mitchell make their normalization calls on the Arabs publicly, and with the same zeal that has characterized their calls for a settlement freeze.