JERUSALEM (AFP) — A Middle East peace deal is possible only if it is forced on Israelis and Palestinians by US-led efforts, one of Israel's best-known authors has written as he hit out at a speech by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu's speech on Sunday "tells us between its contorted lines that there will be no peace here if it is not forced upon us," David Grossman wrote remarks published on Wednesday in the liberal Haaretz daily.
"It is not easy to admit it, but it seems increasingly that this is the choice Israelis and Palestinians face."
"A just and secure peace -- forced on the parties through firm international involvement, led by the United States -- or war, possibly more difficult and bitter than those that came before it."
Grossman virulently criticised Netanyahu's address, in which the premier for the first time accepted the creation of a Palestinian state, but set a slew of conditions rejected by the Palestinians.
"What the speech exposed ... is the standstill we have come to, we Israelis, in the face of a reality that requires flexibility, daring and vision.
"I saw my prime minister in his tight-lipped juggling act, a sophisticated performance of close-eyed rejection.
"Other than acceptance of the two-state principle, which was wrung out of Netanyahu under heavy pressure and sourly expressed, this speech contained no tangible step toward a real change of consciousness.
Grossman decried Netanyahu for not saying that most Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank would have to leave their homes as part of a final peace deal and for listing conditions for Palestinians to accept without listing the risks that Israel had to take for a deal.
He also hit out at the Palestinian leadership for rejecting the speech out of hand.
"I also observed the Palestinians who responded to the speech, and I thought that they are the most faithful partners to standstill and missed opportunities," he wrote.
"Their response could have been much wiser and more prescient than the speech itself" if they grasped the "drooping" branch Netanyahu was offering and challenged the premier to an immediate restart of negotiations, he wrote.
Grossman is the author of such acclaimed works as "The Yellow Wind" and "Sleeping on a Wire."
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