This kind of short term daily analysis that is expressed in political rhetoric, and a huge amount of daily political analysis made by "experts," is misleading, unable to interpret, and therefore unable to provide with a solution. Moreover it is a creator of pessimism, more blame, justification of one sided acts against the other, also it creates pessimism and all the backgrounds needed for the continuation of demonisation, the continuation of the technical approach to deal with the other defined as: "More use of power will make them surrender!"

2. Human Shared Security terminology versus the security terminology

The previous type of approach is the one that makes the issue "our security versus theirs." It is not possible, with such an approach, to get to a shared vision of security: Security for both sides in equal basis as human beings first and foremost.

In order to get to this shared security vision, one should change the terminology, by returning to the simple fact of occupied/occupier, colonized/ colonizer, which was and still the main characteristic of the Israeli Palestinian relations. If this relation will be ignored in practice, or if Israel withdraw its occupation from Gaza in order to sink more in it rather than getting rid of it, the two sides will be getting nowhere except to more suffering and more bloodshed.

3. The protracted occupation

Beyond the short term daily political analysis, the Israeli Army and the Israeli settlers left Gaza, but kept occupying it by control from outside, and by restricting all the movement for the sea, land, and air. And yet, Israel is surprised why some Palestinians are shelling Sderot? The alternative for Israel will be leaving the Palestinians to take their natural right of self determination, which is not a gift or a grant from Israel, but a natural right born with every human being!

The rhetoric of "We gave them Gaza therefore they should be thankful to us instead of shooting us," is not helpful, and leads to despair, therefore the right thing to do is to recognize that Gaza is still occupied, and also to recognize that Gazans are not disconnected form their people in West Bank which is still also occupied. With recognition of such very simple facts it will be easier to understand realistically what is going on without the feelings of despair and helplessness, also upon this understanding the discourse will not continue to be revenge on Hamas and the terrorists, but a discourse leading to a process that will bring back the Palestinians their natural rights of self determination as the only way to get rid of their terrorism/resistance, in contrast to all the partial solutions that failed to get to a real solution.

The writer tries here to analyze and understand, with no relation to his own personal position against all types of violence, and in support of nonviolence strategies of resistances.

4. The illness of two sides

"Ill treatment" is the name for the ways that both sides are handling their protracted conflict. On their side the Israelis became obsessed with chasing the "terrorists," the "targeted killings," as a tool to get to a situation where the other side will comply with the Israeli unilateral plans, also obsessed with a notion of security that includes getting rid of "them" by the walls and wires, while controlling them from outside.

The Palestinians, distorted by occupation, became for their part obsessed with being refugees and victims of victims who feel that they are not responsible for their acts. The "fighters" among the Palestinians became obsessed. with the acts against Israel and the hopes to become famous "shaheeds," and similar phenomena. The Palestinians became so obsessed with the occupation/resistance formula, that it is difficult for them to adapt to any other process. The outcome of this was that the Palestinians succeeded only in building a failed state system during the Arafat period and in fostering the emergence of warlords.

It is time again to reread the studies of how occupation distorted the occupied: the writings of Aime Caesar, Frantz Fanon and Albert Memmi are of great importance in order to understand all of this, as well as the Van Leer Institute's work on "comparative occupations" in the last year.

5. Ways ahead

The problem is: What ways lie ahead?

One of the ways is in action: Continue the violence against the other with Israeli illusion that the Palestinians will surrender, will remove Hamas Government, then "Israel will appoint Abu Mazen the general director of Israeli affairs in the West Bank and Gaza" (Tzvi Barel- Ayyam Newspaper 3/7/2006, Ha'aretz 2/7/2006). The mirror image for such position is some Palestinians belief that Israel can be defeated because of ineffective rockets fired towards Israel.

This way is a recipe for creating the environment where terrorism and extremism will grow and flourish. Unfortunately this recipe is there, practiced everywhere every day all around the Palestinian territories.

The alternative in the short run would be something like an agreement of mutual and reciprocal lull (Tahdiya), that includes the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, release of Palestinian prisoners, and stop all types of reciprocal violence and killing.

When the lull starts, negotiations upon Hudna (long term case fire), might take place between the two sides, where each side will bring their conditions to the table, negotiate them, till the two sides get to a Hudna agreement that will be signed.

If such an agreement will be signed, then a third step might be made in getting the two sides to the table in order to agree on the procedures of how to implement the previous agreements including the Clinton- Parameters, Moratinos non-paper, and the Road Map. In order to avoid the pitfalls of the previous partial processes, the two sides might move directly here to the permanent status issues, achieving an agreement on the steps leading to a two state solution, bringing this agreement to referendums in both societies, and bringing the agreements to implementation after that.

The realignments/convergence plan will not be helpful in this direction if it will be only unilateral without any agreement on the steps to be taken, and without coordination with the other side.

The whole idea here is to show how to move from a mere conflict management approach based on the assumption that peace is not possible (the reciprocal violence, and the realignment as examples of such approach), to a temporary conflict management approach that leads to conflict transformation. That can be accomplished through the move from the Tahidya and Hudna as conflict management tools achieved by bilateral agreement, to a conflict transformation process through engagement between the two sides leading to a two state solution. The assumption here is that the reciprocal Tahdiya, then Hudna, will pave the way for engagement in order to get to a transformation of the conflict.

Walid Salem