Having gained an unquestionable mandate, Hamas should feel empowered to propose clear alternatives where previous leaders but followed Israeli whims, writes John V Whitbeck* The coming weeks offer an unparalleled opportunity to leapfrog over the long comatose "peace process" and actually achieve peace in the Holy Land. All that is needed is some clear, constructive and original thinking on the part of the new Palestinian leadership. Demonised though it may be in the West, Hamas won the recent Palestinian elections not simply because it was perceived as clean but also because it was perceived, justifiably, as competent and coherent. It is capable of such thinking. As its first order of business after forming the new Palestinian government, Hamas should publicly announce its support for the Arab League's Beirut Declaration of March 2002, by which all Arab states (including Palestine) offered Israel permanent peace and normal diplomatic and economic relations in return for Israel's compliance with international law by returning to its internationally recognised, pre-1967 borders. (Not incidentally, such an announcement would destroy the "destruction of Israel" excuse for current Israeli and Western plans to overturn the results of Palestine's democratic elections and to bring the Palestinian people to their knees through economic privation). Israel has been able to ignore this generous offer, whose continuing validity the Arab League has periodically reaffirmed, because it has always been offered as a carrot unaccompanied by any consequential alternative that a significant number of Israelis might view as a stick. In this context, the new Palestinian leadership should simultaneously declare (preferably with the concurrence of President Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah) that, if Israel does not publicly agree to proceed toward a two-state solution in accordance with the Beirut Declaration by a reasonable date (say, three months hence), the Palestinian people will consider that Israel has definitively rejected a two-state solution in favour of a one-state solution and, accordingly, will thereafter seek their liberation and self-determination through citizenship in a single democratic state in all of pre-1948 Palestine, free of all forms of discrimination and with equal rights for all who live there. The new Palestinian leadership should make clear that, after 39 years of foreign military occupation, the Palestinian people can no longer tolerate the cynical series of never-ending "peace plans" (including the current "roadmap") designed by others simply to postpone the necessary and obvious choices and to string out forever a perpetual "peace process" while further entrenching the occupation with new "facts on the ground". It should make clear that the Palestinian people demand, without further delay, a solution that will permit both Palestinians and Israelis to live decent, dignified and secure lives; that they could accept either a two-state solution in accordance with international law or a one-state solution in accordance with fundamental democratic principles and that they are willing to let the Israeli people choose whichever of those two alternatives Israelis prefer and to accept Israel's choice. It should appeal to the international community, and particularly to Israel's traditional friends, to encourage Israel to choose peace -- on the basis of whichever of these two alternatives (the only alternatives for peace which exist or will ever exist) Israelis prefer. Finally, it should appeal to all Palestinian factions, with the full force of the legitimacy it has earned, to suspend all acts of violent resistance to the occupation throughout the period allotted for Israel's choice and to make that suspension permanent if Israel chooses positively. Importantly, this "Palestinian peace plan" should be launched promptly, prior to Israel's 28 March general election. Israeli law does not contemplate referendums, but general elections can serve that purpose. One or more competing parties, if given adequate time to react, might offer Israeli voters a positive choice. If all the major Israeli parties were to reject both a decent two-state solution and a democratic one-state solution, the world could draw the appropriate conclusions and Western public opinion could shift in ways that, over a longer term, would themselves prove a force for peace with some measure of justice. The former Palestinian leadership was a passive and reactive one. It simply responded to whatever initiatives others, who rarely had the best interests of the Palestinian people at heart, chose to declare, for a time, the "only game in town". It never dared to try to seize the initiative, to set the agenda and to make Israel and the world react to a positive Palestinian idea. The Palestinian people have voted for change. A rare moment of opportunity is at hand. It can and must be seized. * The writer is an international lawyer and author of The World According to Whitbeck.
