I am perplexed by the so-called 'Geneva accords', the fruits of a two-year secret dialogue between a group of Israelis and a group of Palestinians which purports to have solved the Middle East crisis, just like that. It seems to be a re-run of 'land for peace'. Fine; we all know that's what an eventual negotiated settlement would broadly be about. And it's certainly encouraging to see that there are Palestinians who are prepared to forgo -- in public, at least -- the demand to settle as of right in Israel as well as in their own state.

But hey -- so what? This is just a group of benignly disposed Israelis and Palestinians. They represent no-one but themselves. Probably, if a group of random, ordinary Israelis were to sit down for two years with a group of random, ordinary Palestinians, they would arrive at something that looks pretty similar.

But the crisis has been manufactured and sustained by Arab states using the Palestinians as proxy warriors, inciting and equipping them to murder Israelis and progressively de-moralise them -- in every sense. Their goal remains, as ever, the eradication of the Jewish state. That is why Amos Oz, one of the Geneva participants, both got the point and didn't get the point.

This is what he wrote in the Guardian: 'the document we signed, the Geneva Initiative, recognises, unequivocally, the right of the Jewish people to their own country, alongside the state of the Palestinian people. As far as I am aware, we have never heard from any representative Palestinian actor the words "the Jewish people," and we have certainly not heard any word of recognition of the Jewish people's national right to establish an independent state in the Land of Israel'.

Quite. And we still haven't -- at least, not from the people who can actually deliver a deal. On the contrary, when President Bush explicitly said at Aqaba that he supported Israel as a 'Jewish state', the Palestinians went crazy. That's because the goal of annihilation remains the same as it always was. That's why, when land -- including half of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, let's not forget -- was actually offered to the Palestinians in exchange for peace, the response was the three year campaign of mass murder.

Posted by melanie at October 17, 2003