So near, yet so far: Veteran Israeli peacenik to speak here

Even though he admits there is no Israeli-Arab peace process worthy of the name, Gershon Baskin calls himself an incurable optimist.

“I am always an optimist,” said the 53-year-old founder of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, who’ll give a talk here next month as part of a coast-to-coast swing. (See below for details)

“I believe that in a strange, bizarre kind of way, it’s actually closer than it’s ever been before,” Baskin said. “And that is mostly because the parameters of a solution are accepted across the board. There is international consensus, as well. The problem … is to convince people’s it’s doable. When we started 21 years ago, we would sit with the Jerusalem working group, or the water group or the economic group, and we had lots of questions. Today there are no questions; every single issue is resolvable.”

Baskin was born in New York and moved to Israel in the late 1970s. He’s been a peacenik ever since, even serving as an adviser to the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin during the Oslo-Accords era. His opinion articles appear frequently in the Jerusalem Post. He now serves as co-CEO of the IPRCI (www.iprci.org) think tank with longtime Palestine National Council member Hanna Siniora. Siniora is a Christian and a former journalist.

IPCRI is a staunch advocate of a two-state solution, and has been since its formation during the first intifada, or Palestinian Arab uprising, in 1988.

“We were created during the first intifada, and survived the second,” Baskin quipped in a recent telephone interview from his home in Jerusalem.
A fly in the ointment

Baskin said supporters of Israel who argue against a Palestinian Arab state should think again.

“For Israel, sitting on the Jordan River and having 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank under its occupation is not security,” Baskin said. “We need different definitions of what security is. A Palestinian state needs to ensure there won’t be terror attacks against Israel. The Palestinians need to be ready to make a 100 percent effort … to make sure its eastern border is secure. Because today, the real threat is not from Ramallah, but Tehran. So the continuation of the occupation is not the answer to Israel’s security needs.”

There is one new and deadly fly in the ointment, however, since the first intifada, and that is Hamas, the militant Islamist organization that now rules Gaza. And while he alluded to “ways of dealing with Hamas,” Baskin also expressed frustration.

“It’s not a serious military problem to get rid of Hamas in Gaza,” he said. “The cost is the reoccupation of Gaza. And at this point, no one in the military, no one in the security establishment and no one at political level wants to pay that price.

“The real problem for the military in the last war in Gaza was that it couldn’t use all the force at its disposal. The Hamas leaders were hiding under Shifa hospital … and Israel decided not to get them. Abu Mazen (Ed. note: West Bank PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas)  can’t go riding in there on the coattails of Israel tanks.”

‘We don’t need more negotiations’
Even the optimistic Baskin is thus far unimpressed with the Obama administration’s efforts to revivify the peace process, led in the region by former Sen. George Mitchell.

“I had a meeting with a senior Obama administration official the other day, and he said Israel wants negotiations without results, while the Palestinians want results without negotiations. So it’s difficult to call it a peace process,” Baskin said.

“I have gone through a lot of U.S. administrations doing this work, and I have never encountered a U.S. administration that gives out as little information as these people do. They are extraordinarily engaged. They are open to receiving e-mails and phone calls, and you get zero response. I used to get responses all the time from Elliott Abrams.” (Ed. note: A Bush administration official)

That said, “I don’t think anything serious is going on, based on conversations with Israelis, Palestinians and U.N. officials. The sense of everyone is that Mitchell is persistent, determined and will chip away a piece at a time … like he did with Northern Ireland. …

“My own assessment is that that’s not really going to go anywhere. We don’t need more negotiations. It’s been negotiated to death. Everyone knows what the issues are. We need direction from the U.S. and the international community; we need answers on how they’ll provide the guarantees required to get the parties to do what needs to be done.”

Kicking the can down the road will do the Jewish state no good, Baskin said.

“What’s that Paul Simon song? It’s slip-sliding away. No doubt we are at some kind of breaking point. In my view there is no other option; there is no one-state option. People who talk about that are deluding themselves to think some new reality could be created. … We are not in conflict with the Palestinians over us or them, it’s us and them; the question is how. If we turn this into a conflict over identity, we are finished. It will be unending and carry a much higher price. The moment of truth, really, is not about demographics, although that pressure pushed (former prime ministers) Sharon and Olmert. Really, it’s about whether we, as Jewish state in Israel, can be what we think we should be; what we want to be proud of; part of.”

Baskin at Campus Nov. 1

Gershon Baskin will visit greater Kansas City as part of a 10-city U.S. fundraising and speaking tour. Baskin’s visit was arranged by the late Allan Abrams, a former member of the national board of Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, before Abrams’ recent death.

Baskin will speak at 1 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 1, in the social hall at the Jewish Community Campus. The event is free and open to the public.

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