Is there a way to achieve peace in Israel and Palestine? I believe there is | Daniel Levin

If the current tragedy offers any hope, it's a growing clarity on how Palestinians and Israelis could forge a brighter future for their children

In 1948, my father was severely wounded in the final days of the Arab-Israeli war, referred to by Israelis as the War of Independence, and by Palestinians as the Nakba, or catastrophe" in Arabic. The left side of his body was blown away, including his left arm. When I was a little boy, he often told me about his friends who had died in battle, and said that he dreamed of the day when there would be peace between Israelis and Palestinians, so that my generation would no longer have to fight these wars. In 1990, during the first intifada, I served in an Israel Defense Forces combat unit in Gaza. And here we are, all these decades later. So much for my father's dreams.

We are being inundated with commentary about the culpability for this conflict, with biased dissections of history, culture and religion, and with predictable posturing through the use of selective sources of information and disinformation. Despite maximalist demands from the Israeli and Palestinian camps, defended by religious endorsement and amplified at a time of war, neither side is going to self-deport and create another homeland elsewhere. What is missing, tragically, is a serious discussion of a vision and solution that might actually be acceptable to all sides. Before everyone dismisses this idea as naive, let's take a moment to revisit the prevailing choices.

Daniel Levin is a member of the board of the Liechtenstein Foundation for State Governance, which is engaged in track 3 mediation initiatives in the Middle East, including hostage negotiations

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