In separate area appearances, supporters of an Israeli-Palestinian peace process warned that Israel’s situation will deteriorate unless the winner of next week’s presidential election pledges a more active American engagement in the process.

“None of this happens by itself,” said former Middle East peace envoy Dennis Ross in an Oct. 24 speech at Livingston’s Temple Beth Shalom. “We have to get back in the game.”

Ross spoke on the future and past of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in support of his new book, The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace, about his time as negotiator under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. The talk was sponsored by the synagogue, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey’s Community Relations Committee.

The goal of U.S. engagement is not to “pressure” Israel, Ross said, but to help Palestinian reformers emerge from the upheaval surrounding Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to disengage from Gaza. “As long as Israel is running Palestinian lives, controlling Palestinian lives, preventing Palestinians from living normal lives — for reasons that are completely understandable — you’re not going to have any possibility of changes that will create peace or any chance of peace,” said Ross, counselor and Ziegler distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Israel has to find a way to disengage from Palestinian lives.”

Ross’ comments echoed those made earlier in the week by Stephen P. Cohen, founder and president of the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development, at a forum sponsored by the northern New Jersey chapter of Brit Tzedek v’Shalom.

“The reality that Israel faces is not something we can put under the rug,” said Cohen. “What Israel needs now is not a quiescent America, but a wise, decisive, certain America,” supporting the goal of, for example, removing the settlements, which Cohen called a “terrible barrier to Israel’s future.”

“Whatever the outcome [of the election], this challenge will be ours to face, and if we give ourselves the false conceit that silence will be enough, it’s a dangerous pretense that Israel and its neighbors cannot afford,” said Cohen.

Cohen was joined at the Oct. 21 forum at the Leon & Toby Cooperman JCC, Ross Family Campus, in West Orange by Mark Seal of Maplewood, chief operating officer of the American Jewish Congress and a longtime Peace Now activist, and Steven Masters, national Brit Tzedek chair for advocacy and public policy. The panelists tended to agree that neither President George W. Bush nor challenger Sen. John Kerry has offered specific ideas to effect peace between Israel and the Palestinians; rather, they have issued general statements of support for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his government’s response to terrorism.

Masters said neither presidential candidate had distinguished himself over the course of the campaign in terms of trying to help resolve the issues in the Middle East.

Decrying an “absence of leadership” by the current administration, he said it was up to the Jewish community to demand that the United States resume the active mediating role it played under President Jimmy Carter and Clinton, “because Israel and the Palestinians cannot do it on their own.”

Masters called for the appointment of a presidential envoy, to be named by the winner during the first 100 days of the new administration to signal “intentions to pursue full implementation of the disengagement plan and a renewal of negotiations leading to a final-status accord.”

Masters asked audience members to sign and circulate an “Open Letter from American Jews to the Next President.” The letter states, in part, “We believe that Israeli and Palestinian leaders can be brought back to the negotiating table through your committed and persistent leadership in support of a…two-state solution…. We strongly urge you to take all steps necessary to renew the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and thus advance America’s historic contribution to regional stability, global security, and international peace.”

Seal, who emphasized that he was not speaking as an AJCongress staff member, opened the forum by asking whether the “Jewish vote” is animated by the single issue of Israel or by other concerns.

Seal said that the core of the Jewish vote has remained strongly committed to Democratic Party principles for more than 60 years, citing as evidence that 50 percent of the money raised for the party comes from Jewish contributors.

The impression that there has been a significant increase in Jewish support for Bush is largely because of the engagement of Jewish organizations in public-policy issues following the Intifada, he said. These organizations have been reluctant to oppose the administration in other areas of concern because they don’t want to jeopardize the president’s support for Israel.

“Though [it] is not the ultimate litmus test in a multi-issue agenda, candidates who are otherwise in sync with the Jewish agenda — on choice, on the environment, on human rights, on civil rights, who had a history and track record on immigration and Soviet Jewry — but who were iffy in their support for Israel would see diminished dollars come their way,” Seal observed.

Speaking in deliberate measures, Cohen, who played a key role as a private mediator during the heyday of the Oslo peace process, spoke ominously of Orthodox rabbis in Israel who have warned soldiers that they would be violating their religious convictions if they participated in attempts to remove settlers from the Gaza Strip. Cohen recalled that in their televised debate, neither vice presidential candidate — neither Democrat John Edwards nor Vice President Dick Cheney — specifically stated what his party would do to help bring peace to the Middle East. It was, Cohen said, as if the topic were something “that should not be discussed in polite company.”

Some of the 50 audience members expressed skepticism at the speakers’ remarks. One woman asked who within the Muslim world, either as a nation or as an individual, could be trusted to represent the Palestinian cause? No one name was offered.

Seal agreed that Israel and America were “stuck in a situation” in which “there is no one to talk to — but the status quo is untenable.” Masters said that there are several Arab-American groups, including the Arab American Institute and the American Task Force on Palestine, that were working toward the same goals.