Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has accepted President Bush's vision of "Two States for Two Peoples," and has thereby reconciled himself ("High time," Sharon said) to the need to divide Eretz Yisrael [M.K.: the historic Land of
Israel] between a Jewish state and a Palestinian state. The profound significance of this partitioning for the State of Israel is back to the 1967 borders less 5-6%, including, among other things, a settlement freeze, and the dismantling of outposts.

The new Palestinian leadership headed by Abu Mazen has also accepted the partition principle: the profound significance of partition for the Palestinians is renunciation of the demand for the return of [1948] Palestinian refugees to Israel proper and unqualified readiness to live peacefully in the state of Palestine alongside Israel as the Jewish people's state. Not merely "two states for two peoples," but also "two peoples in two states."

Those who stubbornly reject any compromise with Israel are the intellectual elites of the Arab world. Widely held among these elites, and through them among significant sectors of Arab public opinion, is the discredited notion that the Jews are not a nation, but only a religion, and since they are a religion they have no need for a sovereign state of their own. This is accompanied by categorical denial of any historical connection of the Jews with Eretz Yisrael within borders of any sort. To the best of Arab writers. Zionism is nothing less than cruel colonialism.

Arab thinkers continue to regard the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as "the heart of the Middle East problem," even though there is not an iota of truth to this. The economic, social, and technological backwardness of the Arab Middle East - as analyzed in a special United Nations report on human development in the Arab states - stems from the absence of democracy, the oppression of women, and the corrupt regimes. Full Israeli-Palestinian peace is important for both Israel and the Palestinians, but it will not solve the domestic problems of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran.

Throughout the Arab world the "Palestinian problem" still serves, as it did 40 years ago, as an excuse for conservatism, silencing of criticism, dictatorship, isolationism. Tyrants and religious clerics use it to tighten their holds: they are not interested in resolving the conflict, because then they would have to confront the real miseries of their citizens.
Readiness to part with territories for the sake of peace has been the banner of the overwhelming majority of the Israeli intellectual community for a generation now. It played a crucial role in persuading Israeli public opinion and politicians of the authenticity and legitimacy of Palestinian aspiration for a state of their own.

On the Arab side, however, there is absent a broad cultural and professional elite that would push hard for compromise, peace, and full recognition of Israel. In recent years there has even been a process of hardening among the intellectuals in the Arab countries to the point of categorical denial of the legitimacy of the Jewish state. The overwhelming majority of Arab intellectuals have not only not engaged in any parallel peace actions, but they have even refused to internalize the fact that Zionism was and still is the Jewish people's national liberation movement.

In Israel, the "Women in Black" demonstrate in front of the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv, but there is not one single "Woman in Black" demonstrating against suicides in front of the Islamic Jihad headquarters in Damascus. Israeli Jewish poets protest against Israeli military actions in their poems; Arab poets write paean of praise to terror acts.

The Arab poets and their colleagues urge the Palestinians in Gaza to maintain "a continuous intifada," an intifada that serves their frustrated intellectuals as a kind of spiritual elevation in which they are not required to sacrifice anything but words dripping with hate. Thus the Arab "spiritual nobles" betray first and foremost their Palestinian brethren.

A summit in Jerusalem, a summit in Sharm e-Sheikh, a summit in Akaba - new hope-stirring gambits. But as long as the idea of reconciliation with Israel does not sink into Arab consciousness as a natural and desirable choice of the Arabs themselves, but as something imposed on them by the United States under the pressure of the Jewish lobby, imposed by globalization - the prospects of peace are very slim.