Ignoring one point

In his thoughtful “Peace, the ultimate deal” (Observations, May 5), Ilan Evyatar observes that any offer Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would make to the Palestinian Arabs “would be certainly far less generous than those [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas has already rejected.”

Although there is no shortage of issues that make a real peace virtually inconceivable in the foreseeable future, there is one crucial, negative dynamic that is almost universally ignored: the Arab expectation that they will never pay a price for saying no. They have been conditioned to expect that every time they reject a proposal, no matter how overly generous, the world community will increase pressure on Israel to make even greater concessions, and that eventually Israel will cave in.

We must change that dynamic if there is ever to be any hope for peace.

The obvious first step is to quash the most perverse idea that was raised during the Camp David negotiations in 2000, so-called “land swaps,” where as compensation for not giving away some of the territory Jordan captured in 1948 and we recaptured in 1967, we would give the Palestinian Arabs some of the land Jordan had not captured in 1948.

When it comes to negotiating borders, it must be done in accordance with the meaning of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which calls for an Israeli withdrawal from some, but not all, of the territory recaptured in 1967. The resolution called for negotiating secure borders and in no way envisioned Israel giving away additional territory.

While I would avoid building in the isolated “settlements,” slowly expanding the footprint of the consensus settlements close to the Green Line would increase the prospects for a peace agreement by sending a message to the Palestinian Arab leadership that the longer they reject peace, the less land they’ll wind up with. Although it’s obviously too much to hope for, if the world community were enlightened, it would support and even encourage such a stance.

ALAN STEIN Netanya