HERZLIYA, Israel, March 30 (UPI) -- Overall peace between Israel and the Arabs, including the Palestinians, is feasible within five years, according to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, but independent experts doubted it.
Olmert sounded the optimistic note in interviews published Friday, telling Yediot Aharonot, "Things which did not happen in the past are ripening" and "there is intensive diplomatic activity that creates opportunities."
This week the Arab summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, reaffirmed a 2002 peace initiative, and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brokered an agreement on fortnightly meetings between Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Olmert told Haaretz the Palestinians are facing "an historical junction" where they will have to choose between being stuck "in the corner of extremist fundamentalism that will cut them off (from) the rest of the world or take the necessary steps."
"They will come to the moment of truth faster that it seems," he told Yediot Aharonot. "If we will act sensibly and responsibly, if the international community will continue acting as it has been doing, then eventually the Palestinians will go for a settlement."
Olmert was alluding to the Quartet -- the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations -- that in the past year boycotted the Hamas-led government. The United States, the EU and Israel consider Hamas a terrorist organization.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Rice, who visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority this week, met Abbas (who belongs to the Fatah party) but not Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is due this weekend. Germany now holds the EU's presidency.
The visits suggest a flurry of foreign involvement, but experts suggested such involvement could succeed only if both sides really want it.
Professor Asher Susser, who heads Tel Aviv University's Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, recalled the Camp David talks with Egypt hosted by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. They produced a peace agreement because Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin wanted one.
The Camp David Two talks that President Bill Clinton tried to advance failed because Palestinian President Yasser Arafat did not feel he could accept the deal that was being offered.
In an address Friday at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, former Minister Yossi Beilin, who played a key role in the talks that produced the first Israeli-Palestinian Oslo accords, cited a list of U.S. plans, initiatives and committees that made no real change. Even the Quartet produced only the roadmap for peace, and that gave the parties excuses to do nothing, he argued.
Beilin cited Olmert's reason for not fulfilling an undertaking to evacuating illegal outposts. "It has to be part of a process in which the Palestinians fulfill their commitments," the prime minister told Haaretz.
The breakthrough with Egypt occurred after Cairo dropped pan-Arab ideas and concentrated on its separate, national identity.
The conflict was resolved in an agreement that provided it regain control over all its territory up to the last inch. Peace with Jordan was made possible after King Hussein distinguished between Jordan and Palestine. There, too, it is clear where Jordan begins and ends.
The conflict with the Palestinians is much more complicated because it is not limited to the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
Some issues, such as borders, settlements and Jerusalem, emerged following the 1967 war and are relatively easy to resolve, Susser said.
But other issues hark back to the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948 -- the refugees, for example -- and that is the toughest nut to crack.
The Arab demand for "a right of return" to the refugees could affect Israel's very essence as a Jewish state.
The rise of radical Islam complicated matters. Egypt and Jordan suppressed their radical Islamic movements, but the Palestinian Authority was too weak to do so. Consequently, the Islamic Hamas controls the Legislative Council, heads the government and uses religious arguments to justify its refusal to accept Israel.
Moreover, Israeli-Palestinian agreements have been confined to the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza, but Hamas is now trying to bring the Palestinian Diaspora into the picture -- and as a major player.
Under the new national unity government agreement, any proposal or agreement that Abbas reaches with Israel requires ratification not only of the Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem but also of a yet unelected Palestinian National Council or a referendum among all Palestinians including those residing in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere. "It doesn't make an agreement easier to reach," Susser noted.
So is the Arab peace initiative, revived in Riyadh, a meaningless move?
It says that after Israel agrees to withdraw from all the territories it occupied since 1967, lets the Palestinians establish a sovereign state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital and agrees to a "just" solution to the refugee problem, the Arabs would consider the conflict "ended" and conclude peace.
"There is no chance we would reach an end-of-conflict (agreement even) with Fatah," Susser predicted. However, the initiative could help create an atmosphere whereby Israel and Hamas would conclude a partial, interim agreement and leave the most difficult issues to a later date, he suggested.
Hamas does not want a permanent settlement with Israel, and the hudna (cease-fire) it offered is a form of an interim agreement, Susser noted.
