Gershon Baskin, an Israeli peace activist, “was at the center of attempts to open negotiations,” and that he is in touch with senior members of the Hamas movement, as well as high-ranking Israeli officials, including Olmert and members of his family.
Gershon Baskin, disclosed that for more than two years he had been in contact with a “senior Hamas personality” in Europe over the release of Gilad Schalit, the Israeli soldier captured by Hamas and held in Gaza since 2006.
Baskin has been living with the feeling that the Gaza war was not really a war of no choice aimed at protecting the inhabitants of the south. He is not the only one.
Gershon Baskin wants to ensure that his party also addresses social and political issues like peace with the Arab world.
In meetings with Hamas figures, arranged through texts, calls and emails, Baskin established a kind of one-way channel of communication to the office of Israel’s prime minister
As we watch the Gaza bloodshed with horror, appalled at how the crisis is spiralling further out of control, one thing is clear — this violence will only lead to further civilian suffering and an escalation of the conflict.
Gershon Baskin observed how Israel ‘s unilateralism and determination not to negotiate and engage President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority has strengthened the claims of Hamas.
The end of Zionism is in sight, brought to us by the very hands that created the binational reality on the ground in the name of Zionism.
The Annapolis conference in Maryland held in 2007 and sponsored by President Bush, fell short of achieving its aim of concluding a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians by the end of 2008. Even so, Mr Bush can now leave office knowing that the aims of Annapolis have at least been enshrined in UN Security Council Resolution 1850 which passed without opposition on Tuesday.
“What that resolution does,” said US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, “is to put the international community on record in believing in the irreversibility of the Annapolis process – bilateral negotiations toward a two-state solution, a comprehensive solution, and the various principles of Annapolis and what the parties have established since then.” The peace process has become “the Annapolis process”. What if anything that process will yield in 2009 is far from clear. An international meeting in Moscow is under consideration.
Gershon Baskin founded the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information is a bastion of coexistence initiatives that participates in Track II diplomacy (informal diplomacy, in which non-officials engage in dialogue, with the aim of conflict resolution or confidence-building) between Israelis and Palestinians and also focuses on peace education and environment and water issues.