The Warped Mirror: Peres's vision: succint and memorable

It was just the right title for a holiday interview with Israel's President: "Peres looks forward to tomorrow".  While the politician Shimon Peres certainly has his detractors, it is only appropriate to highlight on Israel's 60th anniversary that the indefatigable Peres can rightly claim to be one of the founding "generation of giants" who is still actively shaping Israel's fate. His memories of a lifetime of service span the country's history, and his visions for the future are bright and creative.

Looking back in his interview with the Jerusalem Post, Peres understandably preferred to focus on achievements - both his own and the country's -, and the one mistake he emphasized is therefore all the more noteworthy: "One of our greatest mistakes was in not exploiting the Jordanian option." The "Jordanian option" refers to an agreement that Peres, serving as Israel's Foreign Minister, had reached in April 1987 with Jordan's King Hussein on plans to hold an international peace conference that was meant to lead to a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict by returning the West Bank to Jordanian sovereignty.

As pointed out in the report on the interview with Peres, that would have meant that "the Jordanians rather than the Israelis would have been saddled with the Palestinian problem, and King Hussein would have taken care of Palestinian insurgents in the same way as when he dealt with them in 'Black September' in 1970."
    
However, the so-called London agreement with King Hussein fell through, largely due to mistrust between Peres and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. As a result, King Hussein withdrew from efforts to find a peaceful solution, and after the eruption of the first Palestinian Intifada in December 1987, the "Jordanian option" seemed no longer realistic, prompting King Hussein to announce a few months later that Jordan was relinquishing its claims of sovereignty over the West Bank.

Given that Jordan has been a solid neighbor and peace partner for Israel, there is indeed much reason to think that the "Jordanian option" offered a real chance to resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict already some 20 years ago. And there can be no doubt that the festering conflict between Israel and the Palestinians serves as the main justification for Israel's numerous critics, including those that ask, like The Atlantic in its May edition: "Is Israel finished?"

In order to make its point visually, the cover sports a Star of David painted in the Palestinian colors of red, black and green ensconced in a PLO flag.

To be sure, somebody like Shimon Peres, who has lived through all six decades of Israel's existence, could point out that the question if Israel is finished has been asked many times since the Jewish state was established - it was, after all, a quite unlikely achievement to make Theodor Herzl's dream actually come true. Some may argue that Herzl's dream will only come true fully once the Jewish state has internationally recognized and secure borders. That, however, may not be in the cards any time soon, because on this count, even Shimon Peres is pessimistic. In his view, the main obstacles are the political divisions among Palestinians and their failure to prepare for statehood by building the necessary social and institutional infrastructure.

But of course Shimon Peres is not one to sit idly by and worry; instead, he is energetically lobbying for his plan to develop a "Peace Valley" that would create jobs for Palestinians. As he confidently declared according to an earlier report on this project: "Politics is about borders, while economics shape relations." The project would involve cooperation between Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians, and with characteristic optimism, Peres has argued that the area is ready for this level of economic cooperation and that creating change is the only way forward - "Otherwise, all we'll have is history."

One question that could be asked in this context is whether the "Jordanian option" is really history. In the course of the past year, it has been quietly revived by various think tanks and analysts. Perhaps surprisingly, it seems that there is actually considerable popular support for some kind of federation between the Westbank and Jordan among Palestinians.

Given that many analysts are doubtful that current attempts to set borders between Israel and a Palestinian state can succeed, Peres’ efforts to at least "shape relations" through economics in a constructive way are certainly far-sighted.

Indeed, whatever Peres' failures, a lack of vision is not among them, and thus it is only apt that the conference he will be hosting this week in Jerusalem to mark Israel's 60th anniversary convenes under the motto "Facing tomorrow". The program is ambitious, the list of participants impressive - and Shimon Peres is, as always, ready to express his vision for Israel's future succinctly and memorably: "I want us to be as ancient as the Ten Commandments and as young as nanotechnology."