Middle East peace initiative.

FOUR OF the Israelis and Palestinians behind the Geneva Initiative, a civil-society effort to produce a peace agreement for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, spoke together in Caux.

Welcoming Avraham Burg, Tsvia Walden, Yasser Abed Rabbo and Walid Salem as well as other Palestinians and Israelis, Swiss Ambassador Urs Ziswiler described the Geneva Initiative as 'a taboo-breaking proposal'. Its very existence 'is the proof that there are partners for peace on both sides, a real alternative to the senseless cycle of violence and destruction'.

The Initiative was the result of more than two years' patient work, with the help and support of many people, said Abed Rabbo, a member of the executive committee of the PLO and spokesperson for the Palestinian Peace Coalition. They had built on the foundations of many previous peace efforts and negotiations to arrive at a 'realistic, detailed and credible agreement'.

There was no solution without pragmatism, he continued. The claims of religion, culture and history must be addressed, 'but in the most open and pragmatic way possible'. In this approach, the devil didn't lie in the details, but rather 'the details can overcome the devil'.

Avraham Burg, a former Speaker of the Israeli Knesset, now working in private business, said he 'belonged to the same orchestra' even though his music was a little different. Governments and leadership had failed. They had long talked of 'painful compromise', but had never spelt out the details. Both sides tended to be paralyzed by the feeling that they had no partners on the other side, 'but we have a partner on the other side,' he insisted. 'He empowers me, and I empower him.'

They needed to move to an understanding that both sides could be winners--too often, they still lived in a mentality of total victory, and contempt for the vanquished. 'We want to be sensitive to each other, to respect each other,' he said. They were dealing with icons, symbols and emotions, 'the trauma of history'--the Holocaust for the Jews, and colonialism for the Arabs. It was important to 'reintegrate hope into the equations of despair'. In the Middle East, 'If you don't build your rationale on a miracle, you're a lunatic!'