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David Grossman on Israel vs Palestine

Just got an email blast from Tom Atlee that includes a link to title="The New York Review of Books: Looking at Ourselves" href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19770?email">"Looking at Ourselves," the text of a speech by author David Grossman, given at the Rabin memorial ceremony, Tel Aviv, November 4, 2006, in the presence of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. It's a powerful speech about war and the possibility of peace in the Middle East.

Go to the Palestinians, Mr. Olmert. Don't look for reasons not to talk to them. You've given up on unilateral disengagement. And that's good. But don't leave a vacuum. It will fill up immediately with violence and destruction. Talk to them. Make them an offer that their moderates can accept (there are far more of them than the media shows us). Make them an offer, so that they will have to decide whether to accept it or instead remain hostages to fanatical Islam. Go to them with the boldest, most serious plan that Israel is able to put forward. A plan that all Israelis and Palestinians with eyes in their heads will know is the limit of refusal and concession, ours and theirs. If you hesitate, we'll soon be longing for the days when Palestinian terrorism was an amateur affair. We will pound ourselves on our heads and shout, why did we not use all our flexibility, all our Israeli creativity, to extricate our enemy from the trap in which he ensnared himself?

Just as there is unavoidable war, there is also unavoidable peace. Because we no longer have any choice. We have no choice, and they have no choice. And we need to set out toward this unavoidable peace with the same determination and creativity with which we set out to an unavoidable war. Anyone who thinks there is an alternative, that time is on our side, does not grasp the profound, dangerous process that is now well underway.

jon posted this at 8:02 AM
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