An Open Letter from Yossi Beilin

10/31/2006

Tel Aviv, 31 October 2005

Dear Friends,

Having returned from a week-long visit to the United States, I wanted to write you a short note in order to share with you some of my impressions from my trip.

My visit included numerous political meetings with, among others, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, U.S. Representatives and Senators, State Department officials, as well as Abu Mazen. The visit also included a day-long seminar at the Carter Center, which focused on the prospects for advancing a negotiated process toward a two-state solution.

If I were to capture my impressions from these meetings in a single sentence, I would say that the diplomatic euphoria over Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip has dissipated. This, certainly, was the message of Secretary General Annan, who expressed his growing sense of urgency with regard to a number of critical issues, such as the opening of crossings to and from the Gaza Strip; the forthcoming elections in the Palestinian Authority (which, in his view, must be allowed to take place without Israeli interference); and the continued (in?)significance of the road map. On this last issue, I attach below a copy of an opinion piece I published in The New York Times during my visit to Washington.

Abu Mazen, for his part, seemed to me determined to press forward. I met with him at his hotel the night before his meeting with President Bush on his second visit to the White House in five months. I shared with Abu Mazen my view of what he could hope to achieve in this meeting, and he briefed me on his expectations from the current Administration. I was glad to see Abu Mazen use the platform of a Rose Garden press conference with President Bush the next day to make a strong statement about his readiness to resume permanent-status negotiations with Israel.

It was precisely the prospects for resuming such negotiations that we discussed at the Carter Center later in the week. Our day-long discussions, led and moderated by President Carter himself, proved to be very productive and yielded some operative conclusions. President Carter's steadfast support for the Geneva Initiative is invaluable to us, and the group he assembled for these discussions proved to me that we can accomplish a lot in the United States, the priorities of the current Administration notwithstanding.

Meanwhile, here in Israel the Knesset began its winter session on Monday. My party will now resume its oppositional role and will strive, first and foremost, to bring about early elections. This, in my opinion, is crucial, since waiting for elections to take place next November promises 12 months of political stalemate during which frustration will mount and extremism will thrive. For this and other good reasons, I hope this winter session is the last in which the Knesset convenes in its current form.

Yours,

Yossi Beilin