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One can only feel sorry for the American, Russian, European and United Nations’ diplomats of the «quartet.» Their task is unenviable: to offer, on a silver platter and for the umpteenth time, a sovereign state to a people who have been rejecting it again and again.

Understandably, they have to become more creative each time. Now they are talking about a «provisional state» (whatever that means) and full independence by 2005. I wish them luck but also remind them of a few historical facts that might help them better understand the roots of Palestinian rejectionism and thus articulate realistic policy options.

In 1959 Yasser Arafat and other revolutionaries founded Fatah. In 1964 then-Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser established the Palestine Liberation Organization. Both organizations set the «liberation of Palestine» as their strategic goals. This took place before a single Israeli soldier set foot in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, before a single settlement had been built in «occupied territory,» before the Israelis began to «humiliate» and «oppress» Palestinian workers at checkpoints, and at a time when Jerusalem was in Arab hands (under Jordanian rule).

In other words, Israel had committed no sin yet. The Jews were living in «Israel proper,» this side of the Green Line. The «Palestine» that Fatah and the PLO wanted to liberate was not the area including Jenin or Nablus but that containing Haifa and Eilat — namely, the Jewish state. They wanted, and still want, Palestine from the river to the sea — a purpose that they codified in the most important documents of their national movement and that the PLO and the Palestinian Authority proclaimed, in Arabic, throughout most of the 1990s.

This fundamental rejection of Israel crosses many borders in the Middle East. In Ramallah and Beirut, people celebrate whenever Jewish blood is spilled. In Dubai and Damascus, they burn Israeli flags. In Cairo and Tripoli, they accuse the Jews of conspiracy theories. In Baghdad and Teheran, they stockpile weapons of mass destruction for what could be described as their ideal Arab solution to the Jewish problem. Indeed, Arab hostility to Israel is so visceral that during the past century Arab nations sided with the most fanatical enemies of the Jews (and mankind): German Nazism and Russian communism.

And yet, there is room for measured optimism. Two of the 22-member Arab League have peace treaties with Israel. That is not much, nor quite encouraging for a 50-year experience. But it is something. In particular, Egypt’s «cold peace» format offers a workable, if disappointing, model of relations.

Hosni Mubarak’s regime maintains alive the flame of anti-Semitism in the country’s controlled media; it repeatedly blocks Israeli attempts at economic, scientific or cultural cooperation; and it promotes policies of political isolation of the Jewish state in international fora.

But Egypt has adhered to the peace agreement’s military clauses, keeping its borders with Israel free of aggression for more than two decades. In fact, the peace treaty has been successfully tested in the past: when Israel bombed Iraq’s atomic reactor in Osirak in 1981, when it entered Lebanon and expelled the PLO in 1982, during the Gulf War in 1991, and during the current and previous intifada.

More than at peace, Israel and Egypt enjoy a state of no war, which — in the context of an Arab Middle East where Hitler’s Mein Kampf is a best-seller — marks quite an achievement. This kind of «peace» does not realize the optimistic dreams of regional integration, but it does provide Israelis with physical security. This isn’t a warm, harmonious peace; it’s cold and imperfect but achievable.

So perhaps negotiators need the right thermometer that would allow them to measure the exact temperature of the viable peace. A warm peace, the kind found between Sweden and Norway, is impossible to have today in this chaotic Middle East. Egypt’s cold peace might emerge as the only realistic way of coexistence between Arab and Jew.

It is up to the diplomatic geniuses of the «quartet» to figure out how to make it happen between Palestinian and Israeli.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Washington D.C.