The Osterley Times: General who helped redraw the borders of Israel says road map to peace is a lie

Shlomo Gazit, the Israeli general put in charge of the West Bank and Gaza forty years ago, just after Israel had seized the territory in the Six Day War, has said that the "road map" is simply a pretext for the Israeli's NOT to talk to the Palestinians and thinks the idea that the US can or should veto a peace process between Jerusalem and Damascus is a "nonsense".

At first sight Mr Gazit could be a classic military hawk. A tough, unsentimental man with 37 years in the Israeli Defence Forces behind him, he has never been slow in condemning Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians. Yet he enjoys the unique distinction of having, from the heart of the Israeli military, proposed in writing a Palestinian state exactly 40 years ago yesterday - 24 hours before the war had even ended.

And he has never been more convinced than now that such a state, its negotiated borders based on those that preceded the war, and involving withdrawal from most of the West Bank Jewish settlements, remains the only answer to the conflict.

Mr Gazit, who in June 1967 was head of the assessment department in military intelligence, says he remembers little of the day-to-day progress of the war. The reason is that on 5 June 1967 he strolled over to a jubilant air force command to be given reports of the spectacularly successful assault on Egyptian airfields - which arguably won the war on its first day.

He also learned, however, that his 23-year-old nephew, Dan Engel, was one of the few Israeli pilots reported missing. "I spent the rest of the week in a kind of trance," he says.

His grief did not stop him producing a remarkably clear-sighted - and, for the times, heretical - memorandum on 9 June that proposed "the establishment of an independent Palestinian state [without military forces] in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip". The Old City, holy to three great religions, and taken over by triumphant Israeli forces only 48 hours earlier, should "become an 'open city' with an independent status resembling the Vatican".

It's astonishing to realise that people like Gazit were as forward thinking as this a mere twenty four hours after the conflict ended and one has to mourn the loss of life that has since come about because people like him were ignored by the factions inside what he insists was mainly the Likud Party to establish a Greater Israel against all advice and certainly against international law.

Where does Israel stand now? Four decades ago, the Khartoum Arab summit of August 1967 famously said "no" to negotiations, to recognition of Israel and to peace. Mr Gazit - now at Tel Aviv University's Institute of National Strategic Studies - is among those who have questioned whether the summit did torpedo peace hopes as absolutely as Israel has always claimed. However, he points out that in any case this year's Arab summit in Riyadh - which promised recognition of Israel in return for a withdrawal to 1967 borders - turned the three Khartoum "nos" into three "yeses".

On top of that, he says, opinion polls show that a clear majority of the Israeli public want an agreement on a two-state solution. They realise that "small is beautiful, and that if Israel wants to survive as a Jewish state, we have to get rid of the territories".

Therein lies the rub. The majority of Israeli public opinion opposes the Occupied Territories, but the opinion of the majority has always somehow been silenced by the shrieking, "They're going to drive us into the sea" minority, and many American Fundamentalist Christians who continue to believe that a Greater Israel brings them a step nearer to Rapture.

To enable this, they have for forty years bought into every notion that prevents Israel from seriously negotiating with the Palestinians. However, Gazit isn't buying into any of their preconceived prejudices.

Nor does he see any problem in Israel talking directly to Hamas, elected to run the Palestinian Authority in January 2006, "not because I'm a lover of Hamas, but because you can't ignore it" - and because he believes that it is impossible to reach agreement without at least its tacit consent.

In the veteran's view, "conditions are very ripe to reach an agreement" with the Palestinians, but as he wrote last week on the joint Israeli-Palestinian Bitterlemons website, the problem is weak leadership on both sides of the conflict. "It will be sad and painful if... yet more confrontations and more sacrifices... are required before we can fully reap the fruits of [the 1967] war."

That said, Mr Gazit still believes that the Palestinian state he envisaged as the Six Day War continued to rage 40 years ago will happen. A man who has never bowed to the conventional wisdom of the moment, Mr Gazit declares that "ultimately, I'm very optimistic".

I share Gazit's optimism. The answer to the problem has never been more clearly seen by so many as it is now. The only answer is for all sides to agree to abide by resolution 242.

The US is actually a hindrance in this dispute allowing the Israeli right wing to indulge in the notion that their dream of a Greater Israel might actually come true. To this end they have created a series of bantusans for the Palestinians to live in, surrounded them with the wall, and generally created a set of circumstances designed to make life so unbearable that they will simply pack up and leave.

Forty years after the Six Day War it should be obvious to all but the most bigoted Zionist that this is a failed plan that has resulted in nothing but misery for both sides.

Now, we have the Riyadh plan on the table and the first American President in history to call publicly for the creation of a Palestinian state. The only people standing against this are the people who secretly still yearn for a Greater Israel whilst publicly pretending that this is not about the expansion of the Israeli state, but - in actuality - about Israeli security.

These people have caused enough damage over the last forty years and deserve now to be exposed as the enemies of peace that they are.

For forty years they have ignored the wisdom of men like Shlomo Gazit, for forty years they have been allowed to make love of Israel synonymous with their failed plan to ethnically cleanse the people of Palestine from their land.

In the last forty years it is quite clear that they have not made Israel safer, they have actually done the opposite.

It is time that the world listened to the majority of Israelis and Palestinians, and less to the bigots.

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