The just completed election campaign in Israel was notable for its lack of reference to the question of Palestine or Arab-Israeli negotiations. This reflects the fact that the matter is effectively resolved, according to PNS commentator Rami Khouri, and in a way that is strikingly even-handed. Khouri, former editor of the Jordan Times, writes a regular column from Amman.

AMMAN -- The Arab-Israeli conflict is resolved, for all practical purposes.

The outlines of the resolution are now clear, and all that remains is to work out the details. This is why the Israeli election campaign paid little attention to the Palestine issue or Arab-Israeli negotiations, but was mostly about personalities, domestic issues, and matters of "identity."

Conventional wisdom has it that Israel has defeated the Palestinians, that Zionism has defeated Arabism, and the Arabs must accept unfair terms because of the imbalance of power between a strong, U.S.-backed Israel, and a weak Palestine erratically supported by a fragmented Arab world.

A slightly longer historical perspective, comprising a full century of Arab-Israeli conflict, shows a rather more balanced picture -- perhaps not fully to our liking in the Arab world, but more balanced nevertheless. Such a perspective suggests that the principal parties to this conflict will both end up enjoying a sovereign state as the heartland of its people, with the rest -- a majority -- living elsewhere but enjoying protection and full national and civil rights.

In the late 1800s, after Jews around the world had suffered centuries of serious personal and communal traumas, some European Jews sought to create a Jewish homeland or nation in Palestine, arguing that this was the only way to protect the Jewish people and let them enjoy their national and personal rights.

A century later there is an Israeli state with a majority Jewish population on only part of the land that extreme Zionists see as their national patrimony. This state holds a minority of the world's Jewish population; the majority live in other countries around the world -- including small communities in pockets throughout the wider Middle East in land they define as their national patrimony.

A meaningful number of Jews -- with the approval of world public opinion -- live on lands in Palestine/Israel. Some of the indigenous Palestinians who were dispossessed by Zionist colonization in Palestine continue to live on their lands inside the predominantly Jewish state of Israel.

Most significantly, all Jews around the world feel relatively safe today, because they enjoy both the protection of their sovereign state of Israel as well as full citizenship rights in the countries of their birth and residence around the world.

So, the Jewish "problem" of the late 19th Century has been effectively resolved by combining territorial sovereignty and statehood on a part of the land Jews define as their ancestral homeland, and citizenship rights for Jews elsewhere.

The same kinds of arrangements will define the resolution of the Palestinian dilemma.

The emerging regional and global consensus indicates that Palestinians, too, must enjoy the protection of their own sovereign state in a part of their ancestral lands, comprising most of the West Bank and Gaza. A minority of all Palestinians will live in this state, the majority will live elsewhere in the Middle East and the rest of the world, where they will enjoy full citizenship rights.

A meaningful number of Palestinians -- with the approval of world public opinion -- must be allowed to return to their original homes or receive compensation for their lands and property.

Jews or Israelis, along with other peoples, will also continue to live within predominantly Palestinian and Arab lands, whether as distinct and largely separate communities (like existing Jewish settlements) or, preferably, as integrated parts of the wider Middle Eastern community.

It is even possible to envisage a rebirth of Jewish-Arab communities in the major Arab cities where such communities once flourished (Cairo, Sanaa, Baghdad, Marrakech, Damascus, Beirut and others) alongside a re-birth and reinvigoration of the indigenous Palestinian-Arab communities within the predominantly Jewish state of Israel (Jaffa, Haifa, Ramallah and others).

Only such balanced and reciprocal resolutions of the Jewish/Israeli and Palestinian national dilemmas can lead to permanent peace and security based on mutual justice and equality. Most noteworthy, in my view, is that such a balanced, mirrored resolution of the conflict is not a romantic future dream -- it is the repeatedly reaffirmed, but never fully acknowledged, regional and global consensus that is well on the way to being achieved.