The man who was the secret force behind the Oslo peace talks more than a decade ago is now promoting a 25-year plan to form an Israel-Palestine confederation, as a way to end Middle East strife. The Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, Riah H. Abu El-Assal, says the two nations should work towards the establishment of a confederation with a common currency, open borders and even a shared head of state.
Bishop Riah, who recently toured Australia, met Foreign Minister Alexander Downer to argue his case that only closer cooperation between Arabs and Jews can resolve the 40-year conflict. “Both Arabs and Jews, Palestinians and Israelis, have more in common than people in the West believe,” said Bishop Riah, who is one of the dwindling group of Palestinian Christians. “We are both Semites—the majority of us—we are both hard working and both groups are committed to their homelands.”
Back in 1990, as a guest of Christian peace activists in Norway, he convinced the country’s conservative foreign minister, Kjell Magne Bondevik, to host a private dinner with the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and some Israeli activists with links to the government. He was later present as Arafat and the later assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzak Rabin toasted each other privately—Rabin with his Scotch, Arafat with his milk—before accepting their Nobel Prizes.
Bishop Riah has been advocating a confederation since 1984, when he was an Anglican priest in Nazareth. He now believes the impasse between the hardliners in the Israeli government and the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority makes his proposal more important than ever. “There is very little alternative to a peaceful outcome because neither people is going anywhere,” he said while in Australia.
While a minority of Palestinians—and an even smaller minority of Israelis—advocate a single, bi-national state, Bishop Riah does not. “If I were a Jew, I would not support it because it would defeat the very cause for which I had fought for so long,” he said. “They fear that demography is against them as the Arabs are having more children. Anyway it [a bi-national state] is not necessary.”
He says that, just as the European Union has opened its borders, introduced a common currency, integrated its economies and elected a continent-wide form of government, so too could Israel and Palestine. “After the state of Palestine has been officially established, the two parties should set up a high-level team to