There are at present two private efforts under way to reach a Middle East settlement. Frustrated by the stalemate, they are alternatives to the moribund road map. Surprisingly, the US administration that drew up the road map and which usually wants no one in the Middle East except itself, is suddenly endorsing both efforts. One concerns a petition that Israeli officer Ami Ayalon and Palestinian professor Sari Nusseibeh have circulated. It calls on Israel to give up the territory the Arabs lost in 1967 and turn it into a Palestinian state.

In a second, more significant effort, former Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo and former Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin produced a plan for a Palestinian state including most of the West Bank and Gaza. US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has met with Ayalon and Nusseibeh and praised their efforts. “As Americans, we know there are times when great changes can come from the grass roots,” he said. Secretary of State Colin Powell, responding with encouragement to a letter from Beilin and Rabbo, said that while the US remains committed to Bush’s two-state vision and to the road map, “we also believe that projects such as yours are important in helping sustain an atmosphere of hope.” While the Ayalon-Nusseibeh initiative reportedly has 90,000 Israeli and 60,000 Palestinian signatories, it is the Geneva declaration that has gained most attention. The declaration is based on the premise that if an influential Israeli opposition group could reach an agreement over final status issues with a similarly influential group of Palestinians, this would kill Sharon’s claim that there is no Palestinian partner to talk to.

The effort has produced a much more specific deal than that offered by the road map. It proposes a Palestinian state on almost all the West Bank. But the Geneva agreement also has one huge flaw from the Palestinian perspective: Land in exchange for relinquishing the Palestinian right of return with the recognition this implies of the Jewish character of the Israeli state. This is of grave significance. The right of return is a fundamental Palestinian principle.

Apart from the Palestinian people, no one else can relinquish that right. Once the right of return is renounced, it becomes that much harder for the Palestinians to begin future negotiations without taking this into account. The text of the Geneva declaration has won not only Bush’s support but also that of some 40 percent of Israelis. They have found a Palestinian partner, one apparently approved by the Palestinian Authority, that is ready to cede the right of return and scrap the historic UN resolutions. Had the writers of the Geneva declaration managed to bring on board significant figures representing major factions from both sides, it would have been a different matter. What we are left with is untenable for an occupied nation.