Gershon Baskin

Gershon Baskin feels that at five minutes to midnight, there is no time to wait for negotiations; it is time to put the real peace offer on the table, one that you know the Palestinians and Syrians can accept.

A letter to Ban Ki-moon, with a vision of a peace agreement.

Our peoples need leaders who understand that their leadership is not judged by how long they postpone the inevitable, but by how swiftly they resolve the conflict.

While I don’t support Abu Mazen’s position, I do understand him. Israel never demanded this kind of recognition from anyone else–not from Egypt or Jordan and not even from the United States. If the Palestinians recognize Israel, then as the Palestinians understand it they will be agreeing to remove the issue of refugee rights even before the negotiations begin; surely Israel cannot expect them to do so.

The stars seemed better aligned now to move peace forward than at any time over the past decade. What is lacking is any real call from the people of Israel and Palestine demanding it.

We, the people of Israel, need to stand up and declare – yes we won, we withstood the world, we are stronger than all the powers of the world combined. Now let’s stop wasting our precious resources on settlements.

Both Netanyahu and Abbas are correct in their respective assertions about the settlements but this shouldn’t prevent them from finding a creative way to make it work.

We’ve had the opportunity to take a step back and analyze the failed peace process and come away learning many valuable lessons.

Direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are likely to begin in the near future. The international community under the conductor’s wand of the Obama Administration has applied considerable pressure to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to withdraw from all of his demands for setting the conditions for his participation in the negotiations.