What would Netanyahu do for peace?

 So it is up to both parties to act. Netanyahu should spell out to Congress the major threshold he will cross, but only if Abbas is willing to respond publicly in kind. Since Palestinians’ major fear is that Israel will hold on to the West Bank, Netanyahu needs to clearly state that this will not be the case. Although Palestinians realize that Israel will not return to the pre-1967 borders and that enforced security arrangements are vital for any agreement, they want assurance that the 1967 line will be the baseline for calculations in configuring the final border. Thus, whatever land Israel keeps from within the West Bank — which is likely to be adjacent to the old pre-1967 boundary, where a significant majority of the settlers live — will yield an equivalent amount from within Israel proper. Such a deal is in line with Israeli offers to every other Arab state on its borders; a statement to this effect will go far in assuring Palestinians that Netanyahu is serious about peace.

The historic threshold that Israelis want Abbas to cross is acceptance of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, with equal rights for all its citizens. Netanyahu noted in a June 2009 speech that this would address Israel’s key fear that Palestinians will never accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state in the Middle East, regardless of the extent of Israeli territorial concessions.

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 Of course, mutual recognition must be accompanied by a vigorous public peace education campaign, with both sides making clear that each has a historic attachment to the land and that the land must be shared.  

These declarations alone are unlikely to solve all the problems, but making them would be an important step toward jump-starting a process that has completely stalled and could easily deteriorate. If they choose to maintain the status quo, Abbas and Netanyahu can win politically for now, but in the long run both peoples will lose. There is no substitute for a clearly articulated political vision from both leaders.

David Makovsky is a distinguished fellow at and director of the Washington Institute’s Project for the Middle East Peace Process. He co-authored “Myths, Illusions and Peace” with Dennis Ross.