Why Arabs Need to Talk to the Israelis?

Renaud Sarda
17/ 10/2010

Moroccan King Mohammed VI wrote Peres last Friday that such a rendezvous was impossible at the moment; President's Bureau believes decision was made to protest Israeli policy.
why?
The Arabs need fresh thinking if any Peace Initiative is to have the impact it deserves on the crisis that needlessly impoverishes Palestinians under Hamas Brutal occupation of Gaza and endangers Israel's security. This crisis is not a zero-sum game. For one side to win, the other does not have to lose. The peace dividend for the entire Middle East is potentially immense. So why have the Arabs not gotten anywhere?  Why are they always devided?
Here is an example stirring them right in their face i.e. lack of understand of the need for face to face talk, respecting and understanding their counterpart situation and decision making as a democratic state.
Their biggest mistake has been to assume that you can simply switch peace on like a light bulb. The reality is that peace is a process, contingent on a good idea but also requiring a great deal of campaigning -- patiently and repeatedly targeting all relevant parties. This is where I believe the Arabs have not done enough to communicate directly with the people of Israel.
An Israeli might be forgiven for thinking that every Muslim voice is raised in hatred, because that is usually the only one he hears the radical Muslim groups around the globe while the majority of the Arab population stay silence. Just as an Arab might be forgiven for thinking every Israeli wants the destruction of every Palestinian, and this has been going on for a some years.
Essentially, the Arabs refuse to accept or admit that Israel initiative can form part of a peace between equals in a troubled land holy to three great faiths. They refused to accept or acknowledge that they are over one million and half Arab Israeli living within Israel, and contributing. It has been clear for long time that they want Palestinians to stay victims so as usual they can be manipulated as proxies in a wider game for power.
The wasted years of deadlock have conditioned the Palestinians to take on a fortress mentality that automatically casts all us Jews as the enemy -- and not as the ordinary, decent human beings we are.
Speaking out matters, but it is not enough. Their governments and all the Western World also must be ready to accept what Israel has been saying all along that the hardship of Palestinian lives in Gaza is the making of Hamas alone.
The two communities in the Holy Land are not fated to be enemies. What can unite them tomorrow is potentially bigger than what divides them today.
The Palestinians need Help from Israel, and also require help from their Arab friends, in the form of constructive engagement, to reach a just settlement.
They must stop the small pity-minded waiting game in which each they refuse to budge or sacrifice an inch for the sake of peace. They 've got to be bigger than that. They need to take simultaneous, good-faith action if peace is to have a chance. A real, lasting peace requires comprehensive engagement and reconciliation at the human level. This will happen only if they address and settle the core issues dividing them as Arabs first, and the Israeli peoples second.