The Director-General of the Geneva Initiative, Gadi Baltiansky made a plea for positive attitudes across the board to the imminent negotiations. Last month he wrote,
In her speech in New York on September 24, [Israeli] Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that now is the time. We have been given an historic opportunity for turning the two-state vision into reality, she said, and the next generations won’t forgive us if we fail.
She is right. The current generation won’t forgive either, because the price of failure may be terrible. The peace-loving Palestinians—and this is the majority on their side—will argue they have no partner on the Israeli side, and the only horizon they will see is the one of the fence, roadblock, and settlement. Meanwhile, peace-loving Israelis—and they are the majority on our side—will sink deeper into despair, and with it we shall see the sinking of the hope for a normal Jewish and democratic state.
