Amnon Rubinstein: We must be cautious in our jubilation

Here in Israel, the reaction to President Bush's speech is, naturally, a sigh of relief. After being bombarded by what most Israelis regard as hostile European media, here comes the President of the mightiest nation on earth and he vindicates everything Ariel Sharon has said about Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian terror.

Most Israelis regard the Palestinians not as helpless victims of Israeli armoured might – the prism through which British watchers of the nightly television news see them – but as the vanguard of an Arab-Muslim sea, which threatens to drown the tiny Jewish state. Most Israelis believe that the very survival of our nation is at stake.

So President Bush's words come at the right time: with the Israeli economy in dire recession, with Israelis afraid of the next suicide bomb, with every ride on a bus turning into an exercise in personal courage, with hotels bereft of tourists and businessmen, Israelis needed this boost to their morale. And when we hear that Egypt and Jordan have endorsed the speech, we can see a flickering light at the end of a long, dark tunnel; perhaps peace is not, after all, a mirage.

I am a dove, but a dove wounded by Arafat's rejection of the Barak and Clinton proposals. Thus, I agree with this positive reaction to the words of President Bush, since I believe that Arafat and his Palestinian leadership deserve this verbal comeuppance.

There are, however, two big buts. The flamboyant right, both within and outside the Likud, is jubilant today. It is pressuring Ariel Sharon to use the Bush speech as a vehicle to expel Arafat, claiming that his excuse for not doing so – the objections of the Americans – is gone. How Sharon will respond to this pressure is an open question.

But it would be a grave mistake to use this speech as an excuse to chuck out Arafat. Such a move would turn the chairman of the Palestinian Authority into an all-Arab martyr and hero – a symbolic victim of Israel's brute force. Furthermore, his capacity to veto any progress towards peace – an old speciality of his – would be greatly enhanced by such an expulsion.

We must be patient. An alternative Palestinian leadership, "uncontaminated" by terror will emerge, if at all, in the Palestinian Authority, only through new elections and constitutional reforms; these might leave Arafat as merely a titular head of the emerging Palestinian state. This would benefit the whole of the Middle East, since Arafat has been unable to make the transition from underground warrior to statesman. Any Israeli use of force aimed at driving him out of power would nullify the dim hopes of such progress, thus prolonging the bloody conflict. No light would flicker in the end of the dark tunnel.

There is a second big but. The chances of making such progress do not look too bright at the moment. But if we do move forward, the jubilant Israeli right must give up its dream of Greater Israel, complete with a web of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. If the Palestinians elect a new, realistic leader and the Arab world follows in Mubarak's and King Abdullah's footsteps, Israel must give up much of what it holds dear – and what the Israeli right regards as sacred.

When this historic moment arrives, both Arabs and Jews will have to give up their age-old dreams. Israel will have to relinquish most of its 1967 conquests, accept a Palestinian state and recognise Arab-Muslim rights in its capital, Jerusalem. The Palestinians and the Arab-Muslim world will have to give up the dream of annihilating the Jewish state, either through force or by exercising a so-called right of return – in other words, the flooding of Israel by descendants of 1948 refugees – and recognise the symbolic and religious meaning of Jerusalem, and the Jewish holy sites in the Old City, to Israel and to Jews all over the world.

No Israeli Prime Minister would agree to less than that. You in Europe, as well as the Arab world, must realise that the right of return – the moral equivalent of returning the descendants of the Sudeten Germans to the Czech Republic – is rejected by the Israeli left as well as the right.

When both sides abandon their tired old dreams, when the terror stops and the negotiations start, when the ballot and not the bullet speaks, we can look forward to a peaceful future in out region. Future generations of Arabs and Israelis, as well as all Muslims, Christians and Jews worldwide, will praise those leaders who brought it about and put an end to the bloody nightmare that engulf us at present. And, perhaps, President Bush will be remembered as the leader of this process.

The author is a Member of the Knesset for the Meretz Party, served as Minister of Education in Yitzak Rabin's cabinet, and is presently Chairman of the Knesset's State Audit Committee