Wall Street Journal, Israel and Palestine Can Still Achieve Peace, By Mahmoud Abbas

Wall Street Journal
Opinion

By Mahmoud Abbas

This month marks 15 painful years since the Arafat-Rabin handshake on the White House lawn. Palestinian children who started school when the Oslo Agreement was signed in 1993 are now young adults. They have not known a day of true freedom or genuine security in their lives.
Oslo offered peace on a timetable, freedom doled out in stages. Its promise was derailed by increased Israeli settlement construction, restrictions on Palestinian movement and, correspondingly, by violent resistance to occupation from some Palestinians. The process begun by President George Bush in Annapolis last year offers another opportunity to reach a lasting peace. History will judge none of us kindly if we squander this opportunity.
I continue to believe that we can achieve a lasting peace, with the Israeli and Palestinian peoples living as neighbors in two independent states. But if we do not succeed, and succeed soon, the parameters of the debate are apt to shift dramatically. Israel's continued settlement expansion and land confiscation in the West Bank makes physical separation of our two peoples increasingly impossible. The number of Israeli settlers in the Palestinian West Bank grew by approximately 85% after the Oslo accords were signed. . . more