Unlike what is about to happen in Annapolis, the Geneva Initiative was an important attempt to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A Possible Peace Between Israel and Palestine; An Insider’s Account of the Geneva Initiative by Menachem Klein

Menachem Klein
“Exceptionally interesting and important. An excellent presentation, with full details, of almost all the objective and subjective obstacles that face a settlement of the Zionist-Palestinian conflict, along with concrete suggestions of different ways and tactics to overcome these obstacles.”
—Baruch Kimmerling, author of The Invention and Decline of Israeliness

“A model of engaged scholarship. Menachem Klein offers a seamless blend of detailed narrative, hard-headed analysis, and idealistic vision. His book gives us an account of an attempt to devise a two-state solution that engages rather than avoids the issues that have divided generations of Israelis and Palestinians.”
—Nathan J. Brown, professor of political science and international affairs, George Washington University, and author of Palestinian Politics After the Oslo Accords: Resuming Arab Palestine

“The unofficial Geneva accord of 2003 was a refutation of the endemic despair of the Middle East. Crafted by Israelis and Palestinians, it showed that a peace agreement can be reached if the will exists. With a scholar’s critical analysis and an insider’s knowledge, Menachem Klein superbly portrays the drama of negotiations, the obstacles, and the achievements. This will be an essential text for anyone interested in the region, or in diplomacy anywhere.”
—Gershom Gorenberg, author of The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977

In 2003, after two years of negotiations, a group of prominent Israelis and Palestinians signed a model peace treaty. The document, popularly called the Geneva Initiative, contained detailed provisions resolving all outstanding issues between Israel and the Palestinian people, including drawing a border between Israel and Palestine, dividing Jerusalem, and determining the status of the Palestinian refugees.

The negotiators presented this citizens’ initiative to the Israeli and Palestinian peoples and urged them to accept it. One of the Israeli negotiators was Menachem Klein, a political scientist who has written extensively about the Jerusalem issue in the context of peace negotiations. Although the Geneva Initiative was not endorsed by the governments of either side, it became a fundamental term of reference for solving the Middle East conflict. In this firsthand account, Klein explains how and why these groups were able to achieve agreement. He directly addresses the formation of the Israeli and Palestinian teams, how they managed their negotiations, and their communications with both governments. He also discusses the role of third-party facilitators and the strategy behind marketing the Geneva Initiative to the public.

Menachem Klein is a senior lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, and was a team member of the Geneva Initiative negotiations of 2003. He has advised both the Israeli government and the Israeli delegation for peace talks with the PLO (2000), and was a fellow at Oxford University and a visiting professor at MIT. Klein is the author of Jerusalem: The Contested City and The Jerusalem Problem: The Struggle for Permanent Status.

A Palestinian farmer feeds carnations to sheep at his farm in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip (AP).

Israel okays renewal of flower, strawberry exports from Gaza,

Haaretz, Nov. 21, 2007

The government has decided to permit the renewal of flower and strawberry exports from the Gaza Strip to Europe from agricultural export terminals inside Israel.

Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, both of Labor, approved the move after Palestinian farmers and Israeli exporters appealed to the High Court of Justice against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Simchon and Barak.

The exports came to a halt after the security cabinet declared the Gaza Strip a ‘hostile entity’ in response to ongoing militant Qassam fire on the western Negev.

Simchon is to send the details of the decision to Palestinian Authority Agriculture Minister Mahmoud Habash.

The export of flowers and strawberries from the Gaza Strip to the European Union is carried out with the cooperation of Israeli exporters and European buyers, and amounts to roughly NIS 100 million each year. Of that sum, NIS 45 million comes from the sale of carnations.

Gaza: Israel Blocks 670 Students from Studies Abroad (Human Rights Watch, 20-11-2007)

Egypt, Palestinian Authority and Hamas Share Blame

(New York, November 20, 2007) – The Israeli government is arbitrarily blocking some 670 students in Gaza from pursuing higher education abroad, Human Rights Watch said today. Israel is denying exit permits that the young men and women need to leave Gaza for university programs in countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Germany, Britain, and the United States. The students are among roughly 6,400 Gazans with foreign citizenship, permanent residency, work permits, student visas or university admissions abroad, who have been trapped in Gaza since June, when Hamas took control of the territory by force.

Israel has near total control of Gaza’s borders – land, air, and sea. Since June, it has mostly allowed only extreme medical emergencies, some journalists, and employees of international organizations to leave.

“Israel seems determined to punish all Gazans, including students, for the behavior of Hamas,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division. “Israel should not make young people seeking education pay the price for its conflict with a political or military group.”

Universities in Gaza do not offer degrees in a variety of subjects, including undergraduate degrees in languages other than Arabic, English and French, and master’s degrees in law, journalism and information technology. Doctoral degrees are not offered at all in Gaza or the West Bank.

Israel forbids Gaza residents from studying in Israel or the West Bank, and rarely permits foreign professors and lecturers to visit Gaza to teach.

Most of the students are waiting for permission to leave Gaza, either to get visas for the countries where they have been admitted to universities or to travel to those countries directly. Many started their studies in previous years and were trapped in Gaza when they returned home for the summer.

In some cases, Israeli authorities have given students exit permits but then refused to let them leave via the passenger crossing at Erez due to unspecified “security concerns.”

Among the roughly 670 students, some 400 are trying to pursue their studies in Egypt. The southern crossing from Gaza to Egypt at Rafah has been closed since June 9, 2007, at Israel’s insistence. Reopening it requires the participation of Israel, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority, under the terms of the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access. Israel has declared its opposition to reopening Rafah. Both Egypt and the Palestinian Authority appear to have acquiesced to Israel’s demand, and have not pressed for the crossing to reopen.

Nissenbaum Blog: Checkpoint Jerusalem, Nov. 20, 2007

The cashier at the Unity Market in Gaza City pulled up video of last week’s deadly Arafat memorial rally on his computer and cursed the Hamas gunmen who opened fire on the crowd, killing at least seven.

“I went to the rally not to support Fatah or Yasser Arafat, but to send a message to the whole international community that we don’t want Hamas,” said the shopkeeper who gave his name only as Ala’. “I hate them because of what they did at the rally.”

Then, suddenly, the man went quiet, put his finger to his lip and shook his head.

In walked a thin man with a black shirt, black jeans and a well-cropped red beard. The store owner kept quiet until the Hamas member bought his bottle of cooking oil and left. Then he returned to cursing Hamas.

“How do you want me to love or respect Hamas?” said Ala’, who voted for Hamas in last year’s election. “It’s only a matter of fear.”

Across the Gaza Strip, there is growing frustration and resentment as life for the 1.5 million Palestinians remains mired in a swamp of economic and political despair.

More than five months into its unilateral control of Gaza, Hamas is slowly losing its grip on the main thing the Islamist forces brought when they took power in mid-June: Security.

Lobe, Iraq: Toward National Reconciliation, or a Warlord State? AW, 11/21/07

While the vast majority of analysts agree that sectarian violence in Iraq has declined sharply from pre-”surge” levels one year ago, a major debate has broken out as to whether the achievement of the surge’s strategic objective – national reconciliation – is closer or more distant than ever.

On one side, advocates of the surge – the deployment beginning last February of some 30,000 additional troops to Iraq to help pacify Baghdad and al-Anbar province – claim that the counter-insurgency strategy overseen by Gen. David Petraeus has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

On the other side, surge skeptics argue that the strategy’s “ground-up” approach to pacification – buying off local insurgent and tribal groups with money and other support – may have set the stage for a much bigger and more violent civil war or partition, particularly as U.S. forces begin drawing down from their current high of about 175,000 beginning as early as next month.