| Chapter 1: | The Price of Failure |
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states. If we reframed the substantive issues in terms of a truly dynamic relationship between Israelis and Palestinians, we would have to ask different questions. What is a two-state solution going to look like? What kind of economic and social relations would exist? What kind of cultural relations? What type of reconciliation would we seek between the two peoples? Then when we went back to boundaries, settlements, and refugees, these issues would be much easier to deal with because they would be contextualized in a framework that would have much more breadth and depth than the five standard permanent settlement issues. I greatly respect the work that the framers of the Oslo agreements carried out at the time. Some of the Oslo people are friends, but I am still critical of the fact that they sat down and decided the five permanent settlement issues, and they locked us all into these five issues for almost two decades. If we have to deal with those issues, fine, we have some possible solutions. But we must find a way of going beyond them, creatively and innovatively, by reframing the issues in order to enable their resolution.
At the bare minimum, the beginning of any successful reframing requires in the first instance a willingness to revisit the roots of the conflict. It is critical to go back to the past, to the emergence of competing narratives and what lies at their base in order to understand the historical underpinnings of present dilemmas. This is a vital vehicle for surmounting these problems. It is also necessary to acknowledge the fundamental asymmetry between Israelis and Palestinians, and we should do everything possible to level the playing fields as a resolution is being worked out.
In summary, there are two basic issues: the political issue and the substantive issue. Each has some readily apparent approaches and some more creative approaches that could be employed in a reasoned attempt to progress. These immediate and basic sets of issues lead into a third procedural set of issues, which may be simpler to handle. Because they are relatively easy, I will address them quickly.
The first question is, who is going to implement all of this? The Annapolis formula of November 2007 implied that the negotiations are bilateral, economic improvements are international, and the security