PART I

Many Jews in the Diaspora enfold their feelings about Israel in a peace wrapper. They worry so much whether Israel has peaceful relations with its neighbors that they fail to appreciate Israel's viability even without treaties with some of the neighbors.

News flash:

1) Israel has recognized borders with only two of the four adjoining countries, yet its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is $26,000 per capita, five times higher than the average of its neighbors.

2) Israel has the only truly democratic government in the region and its Arab citizens have a higher standard of living than that of Arabs near its borders.

3) According to the World Database of Happiness, Israelis are happier than all of their neighbors, and happier even than the citizens of France - many of whose Jewish citizens have been moving to Israel lately.

It's clear that Israel, whose population and wealth have multiplied dramatically since 1948, can continue to function without total peace. This isn't to say that peace wouldn't benefit Israel ... but even more dangerous than a lack of peace, is a "peace process" that undercuts Israel's very existence.

Some factors that thwart peace with the Palestinians are obvious. Gaza is the stronghold of Hamas, a military and political movement that is hugely influenced by, and dependent on, Iran. Hamas promotes the jihadist principle of a world governed by political Islam. Far from being a movement that took over Gaza by an armed coup, Hamas was voted into power by the Gazans. The majority of Gazans still support the movement and applaud its policies against Israelis, even after Israel (foolishly, in my opinion) unilaterally expelled all Israeli civilians and soldiers from Gaza. At this point, Hamas is isolated politically and economically from many countries, and most Gazans simply exist on hand-outs.

While Hamas' attacks on Israel are well known, it actually trails Fatah in terror against Israelis. The nationalistic, secular Fatah Party is the elected government in the West Bank. Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, was a co-founder with Yasser Arafat of Fatah and they were both key players in the PLO. Abbas was educated in the Soviet Union and his doctoral thesis was written on a Holocaust-denying theme. Regardless of Abbas' mild looks and his Western attire, incitement against Jews and Israel is unabated under his premiership.

Despite Fatah having its own terror militias, Abbas refuses to eliminate the Hamas members in the West Bank, even as Hamas very successfully annihilates Fatah forces in Gaza. While Israeli and Western leaders consider Abbas a moderate, he is weak and shows all signs of capitulating to Hamas, which means that the money, training, and armaments that the West pours into Fatah will eventually strengthen the hold of Hamas over all Palestinians. In addition, Palestinians and other Arabs steadfastly demand that Jerusalem be the capital of Palestine, that Palestinians have the "right of return" to Israel, and that the 1949 Armistice Line be the permanent border separating Palestine from Israel.

Now, let's examine some of the less obvious impediments to genuine peace with the Arabs. Many times you'll hear or read that "Virtually everyone knows what the end of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict will look like." What pundits mean when they say this is, that the Palestinians will surely compromise on parts of Jerusalem, will finesse the right of return, and will give up strict adherence to the 1949 boundaries. But the Palestinians don't reflect this conventional wisdom, nor do Arabs generally. You won't find a single Palestinian leader who will give even lip-service to those statements.

Then there's the so-called necessity for a contiguous Palestinian state, with some sort of link between the West Bank and Gaza. The problem here is that such a link would necessarily run through Israeli territory, which I find unacceptable. In fact, there's no necessity for a country to be contiguous. To cite the obvious example, America is doing fine though Hawaii and Alaska are located far from the mainland. Many countries include offshore islands within their territory, but I can't think of any countries that have separate sections connected by a land-bridge through another country.

Perhaps even more relevant to these knotty negotiations, is the blatant hostility towards Israel of the majority of the world's 57 Islamic countries, especially Iran, Syria and Lebanon. Although Israel has peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, it lacks diplomatic relations with 34 countries, mostly Arab or Muslim, in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

The status of Jerusalem, for example, is a subject that many Muslim countries are intensely interested in. For the most part, they consider Jerusalem to be a Muslim city and would vociferously object to almost any agreement between Israelis and Palestinians on that subject, short of Israel giving in to every Palestinian demand. There are no foreign embassies in Jerusalem, Israel's capital. In fact, U.N. Resolution 252 calls on Israel to stop any measures that change the legal status of Jerusalem, including Israeli steps to unify Jerusalem as the Jewish capital.

Another less obvious impediment to peace is the impractical idea of a Palestinian state. I've mentioned the geographical separation between the West Bank and Gaza. But there's an even bigger gap between the populations of the two areas. In our part of the Middle East, affiliations between Arabs are more east to west than north to south. In other words, the Palestinians of the West Bank have much in common with the Palestinians of Jordan, and the Gazans have more relationships with the Arabs on the Sinai Peninsula. The clans that make up the Palestinian communities aren't common to both the West Bank and Gaza - they are either in one area or the other. Even the accents of the two groups are noticeably different.

Besides the lack of familial relationships between the West Bank and Gaza, there is no likelihood of a viable economy for a prospective Palestinian state in either place, separate or combined. Both areas, thanks to the United Nations, have been dependent on hand-outs from the UNRWA agency, which was formed 60 years ago, specifically to keep Palestinian refugees in an uncomfortable and tentative state, pending the elimination of the Jewish state.

The West Bank is much more suited to some type of economic association with Jordan, rather than with Gaza. As for Gaza itself, a tourism partnership with Egypt's Sinai Peninsula might be its best option, given the beautiful beaches they both share.

Another huge problem is the multitude of Palestinian refugees in other Arab countries who would presumably swarm - or be pushed - into a Palestinian state. It's unlikely that these generations of Palestinian diaspora "refugees" would be successfully assimilated into the new "Palestine," given the dearth of Palestinian organizational expertise ever since 1948.

Moshe Sharon is Professor Emeritus of Islamic History at the Hebrew University. He has written a brilliant article about negotiating with our Arab adversaries entitled, "No peace, no peace plans, no price for peace - A short guide to those obsessed with peace." In it, he tells a story from the very beginning of the negotiations between Israel and Egypt in 1977. The Egyptian President Anwar Sadat said to Sharon, then an aide to Prime Minister Menahem Begin, "Tell your prime minister that this is a bazaar; the merchandise is expensive." Sharon said that he told the prime minister, but that Begin failed to abide by the rules of the Middle Eastern bazaar, as have all Israeli governments and the Israeli media.

PART II will explore Professor Sharon's strategy for negotiating with the Arabs.

Stephen Kramer resided and worked in the Atlantic City area until 1991, when he moved to Israel with his wife, Michal Langweiler, and two sons. He can be reached at Sjk1@jhu.edu