Left Face

Yossi Beilin is nothing if not indefatigable. Sitting on stage with veteran Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and former French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner at the Eretz Yisrael Museum in Tel Aviv Beilin is clearly in his element speaking about a Palestinian state and the diplomatic storm that is likely to hit Israel when the PLO asks the United Nations to admit the nascent state in September.

It’s an old familiar script for Beilin and his colleagues — and one that President Obama verbalized more or less during his May 19 speech at the State Department. Israel is threatened by demographics the country is losing support and legitimacy around the world the status quo cannot be maintained indefinitely. The Palestinians are ready for peace if only they had a partner to deal with on the Israeli side of the table.

“There is a different Palestinian leadership today” contends Beilin. “They are committed to resolving the conflict with Israel without violence.”

Born one month after Israel achieved its independence Beilin is no longer the youthful deputy foreign minister that initiated secret talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization in the early 1990s meetings that were illegal at the time under Israeli law. Back from years in the political wilderness he has spent the better part of a decade promoting the Geneva Initiative a nongovernmental “peace treaty” that calls for the consummation of the Oslo process including a Palestinian state in most of Judea Samaria and Gaza; land swaps so Israel can retain the settlement blocs where a majority of West Bank Israelis live; shared sovereignty in Jerusalem; financial compensation and a limited right of “return” to Israel for children and grandchildren of Palestinian refugees.