America's peace broker in the Middle East, George Mitchell, has a hot summer ahead. He will shuttle the few miles between the offices of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas . He's already begun what looks to be a long, niggling process of shuttle diplomacy in which the Israelis and Palestinians will not meet face to face, leaving it to Mitchell to try to reconcile the differences that stand in the way of creating the Palestinian state that the Israelis have agreed to in principle.
If the Obama administration wants to leave any kind of decent mark in history for its handling of the Middle East—pretty poor so far—it should do something right now that would clear the air and save Mitchell the four months he's allocated. It's simple. Just invite the Palestinians to do what the Israelis have done for decades, which is to declare in the language of their own people that both sides have genuine claims to this land, that both sides have the right to live in peace, and that a viable compromise is possible. If the Palestinians were to publicly begin the process of reversing Yasser Arafat's relentless delegitimization of the Israeli connection with this land, emblemized by his dismissal of the notion of a Jewish temple in Jerusalem, they would achieve the simultaneous feat of preparing their people for compromise and persuading Israel of its viability. The Palestinian leadership has all along made an honorable peace impossible by falsely stating that the Jews have no legitimate claims to any of the land.
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