Today's news that the Israelis and Palestinians have agreed to direct peace talks once again is a very welcome development. However, no one should be fooled into thinking that bringing the two sides to any sort of agreement will be anything other than extremely difficult. Too many times in the past have direct peace talks been held to much fanfare, only to achieve nothing. Israel continues to expand settlements on Palestinian land and maintain a de facto siege of Gaza, while the Palestinians continue to launch missile attacks on Israeli communities.
Still, the international community has to try to bring the two sides to some sort of peace agreement. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an open wound on the body of the world, which not only brings untold misery to the Jews and Muslims of the Middle East, but also feeds worldwide Muslim resentment against the West, thus playing into the hands of extremist groups such as Al Qaeda.
The sticking points are now so well known that it seems almost silly to describe them. The Israelis wants diplomatic recognition from the Arab world (thus far, only Jordan and Egypt recognize Israel), peace and security for their people, and a unified Jerusalem as their national capital. The Palestinians want a halt to the construction of Israeli settlements on their land (and ideally a dismantling of those that have already been built), recognition of their independence by Israel and a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank, and a "right of return" for Palestinian refugees who have been living in limbo since the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
This basic retelling of the issues involved almost makes it sound as if the Israeli-Palestinian peace process might not be so difficult after all. The difficulties become more evident when one actually talks with Israelis and Palestinians on the streets of their communities and directly touches the atmosphere of deeply-ingrained mistrust and suspicion that prevails throughout the region. Even more fundamental is the deep pessimism many Palestinians feel about their future prospects, and the cynicism many Israelis feel about the possibilities of a lasting peace. There is a feeling among many on both sides that peace talks are a waste of time and that the status quo is virtually certain to continue indefinitely.
The essence of negotiation is to find an agreement that both sides can live with, even if they may not like it. The problem in this case, as in so many others, is that the two sides are absolutely intractable in their respective, mutually exclusive demands. The international community must deploy a full phalanx of carrots and sticks if it to have any hope of success, and they can't let the fact that no one has been able to resolve this problem for six decades discourage them.
Although the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems utterly intractable and unsolvable, it's important to remain optimistic. After all, who could have imagined in 1985, with South African apartheid still firmly entrenched and Nelson Mandela still in prison, that a united and democratic South Africa would successfully host the World Cup twenty-five years later? Who could have imagined in the 1920s, as the Greeks and Turks waged ethnic cleansing against one another, that Greece would be championing Turkey's accession to the European Union in 2010? For that matter, who in their right mind would have expected Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, the leader of a country that had fought four bitter wars with Israel in the space of thirty years, to dramatically fly to Jerusalem in November of 1977, address the Knesset, and the lay the groundwork for a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel?
When confronted with such problems as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it's always worth remembering the words of Ralph Bunche, one of the visionary founders of the United Nations: "I believe in the essential goodness of my fellow man, which leads me to believe that no problem of human relations is insoluble."
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